#but this is far from a completed design

[eternally--mortal]

This is an AI rendering. The problem with AI renderings in costuming and in clothing design is that AI begins at a completely different place than actual designers: It doesn’t consider the materials necessary, or the time it would take to construct the project, or the structuring of the dress. Yes, it’s beautiful, but a good designer begins with a budget and works from a knowledge of fabrics and structure. If you asked someone to put together this dress, they would not only have to take the time to ‘reverse engineer’ how to do it, but they would have to start from scratch in figuring out whether it’s possible to simulate the colors and textures and layering while maintaining a structurally sound gown. They would have to compute the extra cost for the color work and addition of details.

Yes, it’s beautiful, and it’s likely that a reasonable construction plan could be formed for a dress like this, but the time and the money spent on such a dress would likely outweigh a shop or a consumer’s desire for the gown to be made as it was designed.

A lot of designers are very upset right now because posts like these are flooding our spaces on social media—to the point that non-designers who do not understand the job are claiming that Costumers and Designers will become ‘obsolete’ in the face of AI. This is particularly maddening when AI is being fed the works of humans and then constructing images that would require outrageous cost and work to re-design in a workable way and then construct.

It’s normal for designers to draw from each other and become inspired by existing works. There’s a reason why fashion designs aren’t copyrighted—it allows the industry to remain fluid and to base itself in a common cultural zeitgeist without unnecessary possession over a particular cut or pattern. In fact, you’re not likely to get in trouble for draping a Couture dress unless you try to pass it off as the work of the original Couture company—because the logo and the branding are copyrighted, and the design sketches are copyrighted, but the style and drape and cut of the dress itself is not copyrighted.

The problem with AI is that it doesn’t innovate in the way that humans do. We draw from the same sources and make something new and carefully considered and wearable and, most importantly, buildable within reason of the resources available to us. AI doesn’t do that. It re-mixes existing work without the human touch of newness. It doesn’t consider the ‘how’ of building. It doesn’t consider the expense or the people involved in the process of creating the dress. And, the faster a computer designs a dress, the faster work the ignorant consumer base is going to demand of the construction team.

Sewing is a specialized skill that takes a good eye, a knowledge of industry precedent, a knowledge of textiles, an awareness of timing and budget, and so much more. People are already overworked to the point of burnout in this industry. Please please please, do your research and familiarize yourself with the process so that you can better respect the artists involved. Yes, AI is beautiful—but it will never be human. And it’s already doing a great deal of harm to how people perceive the human parts of the design and construction portions of the industry.

[surven-snacks]

This one tag: *lives in my head rent-free until I draw it*

Me: *draws it*

He's rocking it though,

(Pats the top of his head ) This boy is so handsome he can fit so many traumatic memories looks on him

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[can-of-slorgs]

Completed the Shenkuu Stamp collection some time ago, so it was only fair to draw my girl Mirsha

[nerosdayinanime]

(1)gay fish be upon ye

[arom-antix]

@fishshit I consider your post canon so I made it

Edit: I FOUND IT

Edit 2: Yakov trauma

Edit 3: I lied, here's the design rant

Edit 4: Updated design!

[infiniteglitterfall]

pretty please, my fellow progressives

Could we please all keep in mind that the concept of "The Jews In General, or A Specific Type Of Jew, Controls Education, Government, Media, and/or Banking", is a longstanding antisemitic trope?

And most of all, that it is false??

No, a marginalized group does not also control education, the government, the media, and/or banking?

No, Jews do not secretly control these things and just pretend to be marginalized? No, Jews have not secretly been accumulating power since the Holocaust, granted by too-generous gentiles, out of pity?

No, it isn't better if you just mean a specific subgroup or kind of Jews. It's still specifically Jews.

It's like when people who hate trans/queer people are fine with rich white cis gay men. So they think it's not bigoted to blame "people with blue hair and pronouns" for the downfall of society.

We all know this means, "I only see some of you as human like me. You have to speak and act a certain way to count. Everyone in your group has to pass a test to get into the Good group."

Doesn't work.

Sure, it gives them plausible deniability to the people who matter to them. But everyone else can see exactly how they feel.

We've all known for years that it's bad to think of a marginalized group as having some "good ones." Rein it the heck in, please.

Because YES, all of those examples are ones I've seen implied, or stated outright, over and over, within the progressive community. This month alone.

[sysig]

Portal 2 replay review: Hrmnnngggngmngm 💕💖💝💞✨❤️💗

[asphodeline-lutea]

Something that Happened while trying to work out Takiza’s backstory and listening to The Oh Hellos

Just a headcanon+ character analysis maybe? Young Takiza when he broke with Hokuu

(Song is Dear Wormwood by the Oh Hellos which has absolutely nothing to do with Shark Wars, but I’m sort of obsessed about both at the moment, and my brain tends to make weird connections in this kind of state—)

[here-there-were-dragons]

i'm seeing three times as many people bitching in the tag about the very idea that someone might not like this breed than i see people actually expressing unambiguous dislike for this breed

[multidusk]

spilling my thoughts about wally

you can have his last sighting as a bonus

it became a habit for me to take a stroll around the orbiter every time i come back from a mission

i started doing it out of curiosity, seeing him appear in a new spot every single time was quite entertaining, but eventually the curiosity began to turn into a different feeling

the lingering fear of the unknown

i can never know how, where and when he might decide to show up

not finding him for a long period of time feels worse than suddenly encountering him in that one brief moment of forgetting he even exists, and it's not because i miss him this much, but because it doesn't feel like he ever left

it feels like he always lurks, always watches, sometimes deciding to say "hello" to remind me that he's not leaving me alone any time soon, if ever

something that i find quite fascinating yet terrifying at the same time is how convenient the places he appears in are

the way i currently check my orbiter is by turning left, going down the ramp and then making a loop from the left hallway to the right one

i can't help but notice that lately he prefers to appear on the codex desk to the left of navigation and in various spots near the hallway to the left of the arsenal

that spot i showed on the screenshots above? he appeared there at least 3 times already and he never switched the side

lastly, something that makes his presence even more uncomfortable is his eyes

he doesn't look at my warframe or my operator/drifter

he looks directly at me, the player, the viewer

there are so many things we don't know about him

the question is, do we want to know?

[constantvariations]

Why did they create such a useless character to show Cinder's backstory when Salem is literally right there AND the real question the audience wants answered???

Imagine if it had been Salem who stayed at the hotel and saw something of herself in the scrappy servant girl. She saw how the Madame treated little Cinder and offered a way out only if Cinder has the power to be useful to her. Maybe she put Cinder to a test of how far she was willing to go for freedom, or maybe Salem wanted something from the Madame that she wouldn't give so it was up to Cinder to provide

Either way, Salem gets a young disciple that's ruthlessly ambitious and easy to manipulate and Cinder gains the illusion of freedom under a new master

[dairyfreenugget]

It's not theft if I'm stealing from myself 😎

Also I'd like to thank my friend Saturno and my patreons for enabling my poor financial decision that is buying two closed species MYO tickets

Vernids and base were made by lilaira

[supercantaloupe]

okay don giovanni review from last night. under the cut bc it's me. tldr the vocal performances were great, leporello carried the show, one of the most insane productions i've seen thus far but somehow in a new bizarre direction from normal. good snacks.

first of all i don't care how much wine you offer i think it's kind of ridiculous to charge $165 for a base ticket price for a performance that 1. isn't even in a concert hall or theater 2. is a concert performance rather than a staged performance (which was not advertised ahead of time) and 3. was not even a full production because they made the absolutely mind boggling decision to cut 100% of the recitative and replace it with Some Guy sitting on the stage narrating the plot between every 1-3 numbers

i did not pay that much gd bless. the student ticket was way cheaper.

the narration wasn't even good it was weirdly ungenerous to the women (like how do you even make elvira out be a "women, amirite" thing and also vaguely imply anna was into it in a production with zero acting? well they figured something out) and i don't think it even explained well enough what happens between each number to truly give a first time watcher a good idea of what's actually going on. not to mention that it absolutely kills any sense of momentum in the plot and makes the entire show drag like hell, because you have to wait between every single aria for either Some Guy to talk at you for three minutes straight, or wait awkwardly while people onstage walk off and people offstage walk on. it was so painfully clunky

they had a piano up there but since there was no recit it's not like she was accompanying much of anything. in practice what it ended up being used for was 1. the mandolin part for deh vieni (acceptable in the absence of a mandolin player; they were working with a limited chamber ensemble of musicians so i get it) 2. the party music at the end of act i (egregious fault imo because it absolutely kills the vibe of the scene and completely obfuscates the way the music is supposed to be adding to the tension and chaos with its different instrumental groups playing in different meters)

and 3. used to give singers their notes when the vocal line of their arias start on beat 1 measure 1, which they otherwise would have been able to get from the preceding recits (which is imo painfully amateurish for an ostensibly professional production)

all the numbers in act i were there although the narration was so bad i got jumpscared by fin ch'han dal vino because i forgot it was supposed to be there and thought we had skipped over that point in the plot. act ii had some really bizarre additional cuts made, notably they just entirely skipped over meta di voi and vedrai carino. it was like masetto and zerlina fuck off for the entirety of act ii save for, like, mille torbidi (they VERY briefly mentioned masetto getting beat up in the narration and i don't think they mentioned vedrai carino at all, they just skipped straight from deh vieni to sola sola. and also there was a painful awkward pause before deh vieni because i think the pianist forgot she was supposed to play there and the narrator jumped ahead to the next chunk of plot explanation too early). kept both dalla and tesoro (i'm fine with this ottavio was quite good though could've used a bit of ornamentation imo), kept mi tradi, kept non mi dir (more on that in a bit). no per queste which is probably a good thing not only for the show itself but also my head would have absolutely and irreversibly exploded if they had, probably

the whole thing kind of felt underrehearsed. like a quarter of the time it seemed like people didn't know what they were doing or had to be reminded where to be at that point in the show. and there were a few moments throughout where the orchestra struggled to keep up with the singers, but i really don't think they had much time to rehearse together, honestly.

and then, to my utter shock, the finale was actually really good?? like. insane compared to the rest of the show thus far. though it helps that 1. i absolutely love the harmonieband arrangements of cosa rara/i litiganti/non piu andrai, after possibly the draggiest non mi dir i've yet experienced it was like a breath of fresh air to hear that (and non mi dir was actually well performed i liked this anna but considering how much the Entire Show was dragging, the fact that they cut meta di voi and vedrai carino, AND the fact that they promised this act would be short, it felt crazy to me to keep it at that point.)

2. leporello and the don were by far the best performers of the night. so much so that i sought them out during the post show reception to tell them how great they were and enjoyed their performance. which i usually do not do, but in this like, high school recital ass production value. unbelievable relief that the final scene is dominated by the two actors in the show who most remembered that they can, and in fact Should, be acting. so much more movement and physicality and expression from those two compared to most everyone else. leporello especially, his actor apparently specializes in comedic bass roles and it shows, he was the standout all night

and 3. for the first time in the entire production they made an interesting decision regarding the physical space and staging! they had the commendatore sing from up on a balcony overlooking the audience in the foyer. the bar admittedly was set very low in the previous act and a half but the finale reminded me that i actually like this show again which is appreciated

though they then threw another curveball at me by Cutting the sextet at the end. which like didn't even piss me off at that point i was just baffled. like the don sinks down in agony and leporello sinks down whimpering in fear and the orchestra cuts off. and i'm expecting an awkward pause while they quietly get up and shuffle off so the rest of the cast can come back but nope. big orange title slate appears on the big screen behind them and the audience breaks into a roaring applause and the announcement of the wine and dessert reception. felt like i was in a fever dream

i will say the desserts were very nearly almost worth the bullshit that was the preceding show. they were so good. thank you austria for your dedication to pastry. and because i don't drink and couldn't appreciate the free wine offered i had to indulge in my own manner. spread contained chocolate oat bites (tasted as much like espresso powder as chocolate and coated in coconut, 4/10), almond sponge cake (classic, 7/10), cardamom apple bread pudding with caramel cream (not enough cardamom but otherwise very tasty and autumnal, 8.5/10) and honey cake (11/10. i don't know how they made this so good. i want more right now so much). i take both my mozart opera and my desserts very seriously.

anyway overall the production was. i would say frustrating. the singing quality was Really Good (leporello was the clear standout, probably followed by the don though i prefer my dons with a lighter voice but technically he was very good, then probably ottavio, then maybe masetto or anna. the commendatore was great but he's in it so little it's hard to compare)

i just wish they could have, like, actually done a full production. it would have been so great if they had gotten to tell the actual story and had been fully allowed to act. when there Was acting were the best moments of the show, and it's really unsurprising that most of that came from leporello, the absolute legend.

[potatoeofwisdom]

Sobsob

[torra-and-the-toons]

Speaking of Rufus and Dingo, I also wanted to try to make a production bible for them. (I probably won't submit it anywhere, I don't have the mental fortitude or knowledge it takes to make an entire cartoon, but I love to see the ones for like KND and EEnE so I wanted to try my hand at making one for them for shits and giggles.)

There's more to it, of course, but at least here's the character descriptions for the bois!