#first post with my real new watermark!

[rurukas-arcade]

animatronica badges (10/12)

[neechees]

hello, thanks so much for doing your scam busting, is the account @/shtunning another palestine scam? i can't find the images used on google anywhere, but the lack of a gofundme makes me wary

This one is looking veeeery suspicious & is pretty much most certainly a scam for the dollowing reasons:

El-shab-hussein, a Palestinian who's been helping us with vetting real Palestinian fundraisers from scams, says that the ONLY confirmed Palestinian fundraisers who claim to be in Gaza are on this list, and that blog is not one of them

That blog already has me preemptively blocked 🤨 🚩 I've never interacted with this person in my life, and its a big red flag to have scam busters blocked

Their donation post was made YESTERDAY, and their archive is turned off 🚩we see scammers do this to hide how old their blog actually is (that it's new and suddenly asking for money) and to make it harder to investigate them

Their donation post reblogs and replies have been turned off 🚩scammers do this usually after someone has called them out on their suspicious behavior, often with proof that they're scamming, and they do it to hide the evidence and prevent anyone from seeing or reblogging this evidence against them

They're asking for donations, but do not provide a paypal or gofundme attached 🚩 scammers nowadays also often try to hide their paypal because they like to reuse one account across multiple scams, and used them enough for those accounts to be recognizable bc scam busters keep track of them. Additionally, you can tell someone's actual location by a paypal link, so scammers often are trying to hide any discrepancies in their fake story (like say, pretending to be in Europe but are actually in Canada). Laura Deramas & co have been doing this a lot, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was her

They claim that the photos they provide are of their family in Gaza, but there's literally a watermark of these photos originally being from the website Gazanow 🚩 why you would use a seperate website's photos of your family & then blur out your family's faces from the photo (even though it's already on a public website & that's where you got it?), instead of any photos that THEY themselves took, makes no sense to me, & is extremely suspicious.

They claim their "entire family" is in Gaza and that they've been working & supporting their family abroad (presumably allegedly in Europe since theyre asking for money in Euros) since 2016, and that they are 24 years old. So according to them, They've been the single sole supporter of their entire family in Gaza & moved to & have been living in Europe ALONE since the age of 16? Idk that kinda doesn't seem that plausible to me.

They've backdated their blog, and tried to use posts with thousands of notes to make it harder to find that out lol 🚩🚩🚩according to the screenshots below, they backdated their blog (& in particular, this post) to look like it reblogged a post on February 17th, 2024. But once I looked in the notes, I very quickly found it in the most recent notes that it was ACTUALLY reblogged YESTERDAY

[Image description: two vertically stacked screenshots with a blue water filter over them. The first shows a screenshots of a reblog by the user shtunning, showing a falsified reblog date of February 17th 2024. The second shows the real date within the notes of this post that they had reblogged, dated to "1 day ago", April 17th, 2024. End image description.]

And as another thing, they're claiming to be Palestinian, but using language an actual Palestinian who has lived in Palestine would never use lol, such as "revive peace between us". There was no "peace" in Gaza before this, Gaza is an open air prison under a settler colonial occupation and has been bombed regularly for decades?

So yeah this is definitely a scammer lol

[artfightdramaconfessions]

I'm really grateful for how artfight reminds me that I'm actually a pretty good artist despite barely having 700 followers on my main art social media which I've been posting on for eight years (I've been drawing properly for 11 years) and getting 0 traction, no comments, 5-20 likes on a post if I'm lucky. A quarter of my following is just my sibling's following because they're a professional. If I put an ounce of care into my social media responses, I'd probably end up quitting art. But I do it for me, and by jove I do it for Artfight. Every July, I draw like a feral creature. The rest of the year I make about half of what I make for artfight.. total.

On Artfight my ratio is always greater than 50%, and I've commented on EVERY drawing I've ever received (except two who ignored my permissions). Plus, I've made friends... who I DON'T feel obligated to draw for and they don't feel obligated to draw for me.

I actually fucking love artfight and I'm proud of how far I've come with it. I LOVE looking back on my shitty attacks from the year that I first started learning digital art. I LOVE comparing them to the attacks that I'm GLOWING PROUD of now - attacks that for once in my life I actually care to watermark. I've been on artfight for MANY years now. I have over 1000 followers, over 100 profile comments, just under 250 defenses and what makes me feel really good is that I have almost 280 attacks. i.e, more attacks than defenses, despite my art and my profile being fairly popular (on artfight) and my hitlists getting over 250 responses this year and 150 last year. I'm putting numbers to give actual benchmarks for where I'm sitting now, after 8 damn years of fighting for this.

Trust me, first years. I had the most toxic, bittersweet, love-hate relationship with artfight for my first three years. It was not fucking easy. I barely got attacked. Half my drawings never got commented on, my ratio was always over 80%, buffered by friends from my high school and some chads from Wattpad (back in the days). I hated getting to the end of a week of artfight and dwelling on how "I drew all this" and "no one wants to draw my characters" and "my art sucks" and "no one attacks me first".

It's hard, it can be disappointing, but it gets so much better and really becomes properly rewarding over time if you just put yourself out there and do it all for YOU and YOURSELF. Draw like crazy. Improve like crazy. Learn new things. Interact. Go crazy bananas and make the most of it, even when it feels like you're not being seen. Advertise yourself on the discord in MAY next year, when the real G's are hanging around and the server is still quiet enough that you aren't posted over all the time. Join hitlists, make hitlists and add a compulsory "which character of mine do you like" question to make people actually look at your page and see how much much they like you/your ocs/your art.

Artfight is pretty awesome. It's hard not to get bogged down by high ratios, but trust me... it gets better. You just gotta do it for you. :) <3 If you're struggling to get defenses, remember you aren't alone and that if you keep fighting... one day in another fight in another year you're going to struggle to keep up with revenges and you're going to anguish over your ratio dropping. I hope you get some art that makes you cry happy tears this year <3

.

[vilevampirez]

long list of funny things abt my experience doing emote commissions for mike

first of all I wasn't expecting to get commissioned at all (my commissions weren't even open, I just made an exception for mike) let alone by MIKETHELINK of all fucking people, so I had nothing prepared. I had no portfolio, commission sheet, nothing. I had never made any twitch emotes, so I had no examples to show either. meaning that when barbmine showed up in my dms asking if I took emote commissions, first I lost my fucking shit, then I panicked and rushed to find the most recent emote-like illustrations I had, including animation, and the most recent animation I had on hand happened to be a viewtiful joe one lmao. the animation in question 👇

(the usernames on the watermark aren't even accurate anymore..)

I have some experience taking commissions but they'd always been for friends of mine, this was my first time getting commissioned by a real "client" and the client was fucking mikethelink tazercraft of all fucking people . I know he "found" me through Mine, she sent me a dm first asking for commission info, saying she would show it to mike later. the thing is that when she said that she also implied that she was in touch with other artists too, so I was like "oh ok I'll send my stuff but I probably won't get chosen lol" and then a few hours later I got two twitter notifs, one saying that mr. thelink tazercraft was now following me and another was his DM. to say I almost had a heart attack would be an understatement

later I found out Mine had made a tweet asking for artists to reach out/people to rec artists for mike's twitch emotes. that post had around 40 comments. many people had been recommended more than once. I wasn't mentioned by anyone once, and in fact, I had no fucking idea that post even EXISTED until way after the fact. I have no idea how I ended up getting this job

mike happened to contact me on a day where I was severely sleep deprived. our entire business conversation took place while I was half-panicking, half-almost-passing-out. I don't know how I survived

at many points during our conversation I gave a lot of leeway for mike to give up on commissioning me, implying multiple times that he would be better off commissioning a different artist. and it's not because I lacked confidence (though a bit of that too, of course), but because of my lack of experience. I was very open about that to him, so many times I expected him to second guess his decision to commission me. unexpectedly, he was really insistent. I think partially he didn't want to go through the trouble of finding and contacting a different artist, but also I guess he just liked my art that much (??!?)

I definitely undercharged him lol. it's not that I don't value my work, it's just that I was absolutely not prepared for any of this shit to happen and didn't have enough time to think

I use adobe after effects for animating mike's emotes. I already knew how to animate (though I had never animated anything big), but I had never used after effects before. I even told mike this before accepting the commission, but he just said it was easy and I could totally do it, and I was just like "fucking hell. fine". and look, I know my limits, I knew I'd be able to learn after effects with relative ease. if I thought it'be too much for me to handle, I wouldn't have accepted the commission. it just that to this day I'm still shocked that mike commissioned an artist who HAD NEVER USED THE TOOL NECESSARY FOR THE COMMISSION HE WANTED.

due to the point above I was pretty apprehensive about animating the emotes, but now I'm glad I got this opportunity bc it reignited my passion for animation that had been dwindling for a long time and I've been learning a lot while working. also with every new emote I figure out how to use a different feature of after effects and it makes the job a little bit easier

before giving my payment information I came out to him to avoid confusion with my legal name being different from the name on my socials. he was very chill about it and always used the right name and pronouns for me whenever he mentions me on stream

fun fact: I was reached out to by another big (brazilian, not in qsmp) youtuber for a commission but I had to refuse because I had too much on my plate already (still do..)

my favorite emotes are the devil one and the nerd one

I made his twitch avatar and banner too! I'm really proud of the avatar. the banner was absolute hell

I'm a lurker (and nowadays a vod watcher since I've been busy w/ uni work) but I do watch every single one of mike's streams, so just know that I'm always seeing you guys use the emotes :3

[whumpacabra]

How would someone start posting their writings and things on tumblr...? Im new to actually posting and lost!

Hi! My advice is largely writing based; I’ll put a more detailed explanation under the cut, but basically:

1. Change your default blog icon/bio/etc. if you haven’t already (people may mistake you for a bot and block you if you’re using the default avatar!)

2. Keep your posts organized, especially writing. Make it easy for a reader to find a list of chapters, the previous, and the next piece in a series by linking them on a post.

3. Initiate interaction and maintain connections. Reblog other writer’s work with comments in the tags or notes; play ‘ask games�� off anon or DM blogs you want to be friends with. It’s awkward and intimidating but honestly consistent interaction is what will bring people to your blog regardless of its content, just to check out what your blog is like.

Customizing your blog

This is a big one - regardless of your blog content or interactions, no one trusts a default icon in their notes. Make it a stock image watermarked photo, make it a solid color, but do not leave it as the default geometric shape. Bots and spam accounts rarely customize their icons, so you’ll be lumped in with them and summarily blocked.

Blog titles aren’t super important, but it can be nice to customize it to your blog content or just a silly phrase to indicate “hello I am a real human do not block me please.” Blog descriptions are pretty straightforward. I advise going light on personal details (especially if you’re a minor) but generally a name people can refer to you as and your pronouns is all people are looking for in a description. You can also customize your blog colors, but it’s a good idea to be mindful of readability (eg. avoiding eye strain, colorblind unfriendly combinations, etc.).

I would also recommend turning on your blog’s custom theme (see guide linked here). This can only be done on desktop, but it makes my second point about organization easier. A standard blog will link as tumblr.url.com, but a custom domain will like as url.tumblr.com. A custom theme changes your blog’s links to ‘permalinks.’ This means that if you change your blog name (its url), permalinks will not break, so you don’t have to go through every link on every post to change your url in the link. You can also edit the html custom theme of your blog it this is enabled, as well as access your blog archive.

Organization and links

Obviously tagging your work appropriately helps it reach people - tag browsing is generally how people find blogs to follow outside of their dashboard. But that means you might tag chapter 26 of a work that shows up, in isolation, for a reader. If they think it’s interesting and want to go to the very beginning, how many clicks does it take? It shouldn’t take too many - people get bored or frustrated very quickly when investigating something new and might decide it isn’t worth their time.

Appropriately linking up your story and making it easily accessible to readers isn’t a hard and fast ‘you must do it this way or no one will ever read anything’ kind of rule. But, I think, making your posts as easy and simple as possible for a new reader to approach is good. A reader might scroll through your blog post by post to find what they want, but if you make it easy for them, it decreases their frustration or boredom by minimizing search time.

The easiest and first step would be to make a masterpost. This can be a Blog Masterpost (usually pinned, containing multiple links to multiple different story masterposts- not just chapters) or a Story Masterpost (tagged with the story name, one story’s chapters all consolidated in one place). You can see an example of a pinned blog masterpost and it’s linked story masterposts at the top of my blog.

If you’re writing a sequential story (or intend to have the story readable in a sequential chapter by chapter order), it helps the reader to link a) the story masterpost, b) the previous chapter, and c) the next chapter, somewhere on the post itself. You can see a few different examples of that in my writing posts, as my style and UI philosophy has evolved over time.

Organizing your writing by tag isn’t as ‘important’ as tagging your story appropriately for new readers to find. If you haven’t been here long, you should know that tumblr’s search function can be truly terrible and fail to find something you know to exist. This is why activating your blog’s custom theme (and therefore it’s archive and the ability to access a post’s permalink) is so important. You can manually force a search of a specific tag if you’re at a url.tumblr.com blog, but you are at the whims of tumblr’s noodle code trying to search a tumblr.url.com blog.

I tag my writing (and reblogs of other people’s writing) with specific unique tags so that I personally can have an easier time searching for them, but not everyone will notice, use, or care for unique tag searching given tumblr’s unpredictability.

Interact

So, your blog looks like it was made by a human being, your posts are meticulously organized and easily accessible, now what? Do you just wait for someone browsing the #enemies to lovers tag to find your story? No!

Tumblr is a microblogging platform with social media elements. There is no traditional algorithm that will magically bring your target audience to your blog. If you want to be social, you need to initiate social interactions. That means reblogging posts as a bare minimum.

Liking posts can garner some interaction - someone might see your icon in their notes and think oh a person let me check out their blog - but it doesn’t…say anything. Reblogging a post says very clearly ‘i want to share this with people’ regardless of your actual follower count (‘cause this is tumblr and no one but you can see your follower count, as it should be).

If you’re reblogging someone else’s work, you probably liked it, and might have some compliment or comment regarding it - share it! You can ramble in the tags, write in the notes, or write it directly in your reblog. This a) is a really nice thing to do; writers love and remember people who have comments on their writing and b) reinforces that you’re a human being (that a writer could personally thank, start a conversation with, share ideas, etc.). Having something to say makes you stand out in someone’s activity, and in the notes of a post. Both the OP and anyone else looking at that post will see your comment or tags, and that can incentivize them to check out your blog and your writing.

Obviously you want to approach this as a community building exercise, not min-maxing your interaction to get the most attention, but you shouldn’t be super friendly or overly involved if you don’t want to - it will show and come off as insincere. This is where the whole ‘be yourself’ thing comes in where it’s trite and sucks but it’s true. There are people who will vibe with you somewhere on this hellsite, you just gotta find them. Step out of your comfort zone but don’t force yourself to be something you’re not.

[frogletscribe]

Can you draw more Anthe? I love their design.

Hi! Thank you so much, I love Anthe that means so much to me that other people like them too! i do actually have a couple of drawings of Anthe i never got around to posting on Tumblr that I can share

The first one is the drawing Ref I made for them for ArtFight (and also just for myself) I honestly might add a bunch of outfits to it bc they keeps getting new outfits lol (@pollie-wog is my main art account, hence the watermark)

The second one is a cleaned up comic-style sketch i did a while back from the first chapter of Until It Doesn't Hurt! (ignore that i didn't really draw their riffle lmao i got lazy). Theres a few scenes that live in my head as like little comics over just fic stuff that im tempted to actually tackle, alas life is busyyyy

I did actually reread all of Until It Doesnt Hurt again just to like revisit Anthe and kinda got hyped to work on it again? I love and miss my ocs lmao gotta give them attention again. Don't hold me to that tho, I do have a real life job and such that takes priority and tends to burn me out creatively, but once ArtFight is over ,,, maybe 👀 (Also entirely possible i re-write the whole thing tho)

[sirfrogsworth]

My First "Viral" Post

Like, 20 people told me to submit my Brady Bunch GIFset to @world-heritage-posts and hundreds more tagged it #worldheritagepost.

So I was like, "OKAY OKAY, I'll submit it!"

And they never posted it.

Which is completely fine!

WHP, it's cool. We're cool. I don't need World Heritage Post reblogs.

I have reblogs at home.

(my reblogs at home)

I am definitely *NOT* going to do the "DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM???" thing.

I only do cool and funny "Don't you know who I am?" interactions like Tony Hawk.

But when I submitted the post it reminded me of an even earlier time on Tumblr when there were only a few people who could make a post go viral.

The main one was called @thedailywhat. If something got posted there, it could get HUNDREDS of notes.

HUNDREDS!!!!

Oh, that's another funny thing. Several people commented "Why does this only have 20K notes!!???"

There are currently 135 million active users on Tumblr and the site got roughly 2.4 billion visits in 2023.

In all of 2010 the entire site got 50 million visitors. Not users. Just people who went to a Tumblr address during that entire year.

In any case, if you thought you created something cool and you wanted more than 10 people to see it, you had to submit your cool thing to The Daily What. It was the first Tumblr to reach 100,000 followers which was more than the actual founder of Tumblr had at the time.

It was run by a single person but he was very private and never revealed his name.

His emails were very cryptic.

I'm pretty sure he sold the site and went to live on a beach or something. But whoever bought it did not understand how to run the blog and the final post was in 2013.

I'm not surprised the new owner crashed and burned. Johnny Internets was irreplaceable. He really understood what would connect with people. Nearly everything he posted would gain decent popularity. I'm not sure people realize how much of a skill curating content can be and how hard it is to post popular things with consistency.

He would reject a lot of content outright and was very picky about what went on his Tumblr. But when he actually posted something you made, it was almost guaranteed to go viral.

Well, viral relative to the time period.

I suspect I submitted nearly a hundred things before he finally agreed to reblog me. And I still remember the first thing I submitted that he liked.

I posted this in 2010. How many notes do you think it got?

Probably a million, right?

No less than 100K.

I mean, look at how cute that panda is!

SONOFABITCH!

Back then, that was enough.

But that was just me putting words on something. My ultimate goal was to get him to post one of my original photoshops.

And do you see how he gave proper attribution? That meant a lot during a time when other curators were cropping my watermarks and claiming things as their own.

A real mensch, this Mysterious Stranger was.

These two posts got me enough traction to grow my following and before I knew it, I was The Daily What for other people. I was able to help other artists and content creators get traction and grow their following.

It was a beautiful Tumblr version of paying it forward. Only not as awkward as those weirdos who do it in drive-thru lines.

I ONLY GOT A SODA AND NOW I GOTTA PAY FOR 40 MCNUGGETS?

It's fine.

Enjoy your nugs.

[sing-it-togetherzine]

F.A.Q*

I never participated in a zine before, what exactly are you expecting a “finished piece” to look like?

For artists, it depends on the artist and their style. For some it may mean fully rendered figures and backgrounds. For others it may mean a simpler background and colors. Everyone is going to have a different definition of “finished”. You want it to be presentable and nice to look at, not something you threw together without much thought. Try to think of what movie posters might look like, or phone/desktop wallpapers.

For authors, your story should have been edited at least once for spelling and grammar errors. Your story should be self-contained, a.k.a. a one-shot, with a beginning, middle, and resolution. There will be beta-readers available in a specific channel on discord, so if you need help and don’t want to ask anyone directly, you could always shoot a message there and someone will know to help.

Overall, it doesn’t hurt to apply! If you’re not sure what your “best example” work is, you can include a link to your blog/online portfolio (wherever you post art) and we’ll take a look.

Relationships aren’t always happy, can my piece be something besides fluff?

Within the limits of the PG rating, your piece can be happy/fluff, hurt-comfort, or angsty. Things that are generally not allowed for PG ratings include heavy violence/gore, heavy adult language, and explicit bedroom themes. Do you want to make us cry for Grandma Rosiepuff all over again? Bring it on.

What if I want to change my idea partway through the creation period?

If you get partway through your piece and decide on changing it to something totally new, please notify the mods first. Given that there are 3 months to work on your piece this will likely be allowed but you will have less time to finish it. To avoid this, we recommend really thinking over your idea early on, and if problems do arise you can use the #wip-feedback channel to get help.

Can I change from writing to art or art to writing after the creation period started?

Unfortunately, once you are accepted as either an author or artist, you are locked into that position. If you are someone who likes to make both art and fanfic, please take your time in deciding what you would like to focus on for the zine and apply at a later date. Applications are open until August 31st.

When I submit my art piece, how can I make sure quality stays the same?

To start, it helps to format your canvas to 2400px by 2400px or 8in by 8in and 300dpi. This will be the final size and resolution of each page of the zine. If you start with a smaller canvas and lower resolution the image will be blown up/stretched to the correct size and will likely loose clarity. When finished and ready to submit final files, you can simply save to Google Drive and share the link with the appropriate mod.

Can I sign/watermark my art before I submit?

Yes, you are welcome to sign your artwork anyway you normally do (if you do). However all creators will be listed on a credits page with their name and page(s) of their work, so you don’t have to worry about unsigned artwork not being credited. If you do decide to sign your artwork, we simply ask that you do so in a way that doesn’t interfere with the overall presentation. For example, a signature that is too big, a signature that blocks an excessive amount of details, or a watermark pattern that makes the image difficult to understand.

Do I have to use my real name for the credits page? What if I just want to use my online handle?

We will never ask for sensitive information, and that may mean the real or full name for some people. All we ask is some way to credit you. This can be your first name only, a nickname, or an online handle from any of your accounts (i.e. Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter/X, etc.). We will also include the primary account name/address for any creator who wishes to include one. For example, a piece could be credited like: Jane Doe, Jane, JD, Jbug, jbug @ tumblr, or any other combination. This goes the same for fanfic authors, although you will also be credited under the title of your fic.

Are alternate universe settings (AUs) allowed?

Alternate universes are absolutely allowed! However we do ask our creators to be mindful of how much the average viewer may know about them and work accordingly. For example, an au that needs a lot of explanation and previous knowledge may be a bit confusing, but more simple or self-explanatory aus (like human-aus or role-swap aus) should be fine.

Are original characters (OCs) allowed?

We ask that creators focus on canon characters in their piece, but ocs are allowed to be included. OCs are welcome as side characters, as in a fanfic, or in backgrounds of artworks for example. This is to avoid confusion for anyone who may view the zine but isn’t familiar with the multitude of fan-created characters.

*This list will be updated as necessary

[physalian]

My experience with Miblart cover designers

I picked Miblart on recommendation. They're a Ukranian company, so my money's at least going to a good cause. Priority one, however, was making sure I had accountability. Freelancers make me very, very nervous, because I have been screwed over and scammed by people on instagram and the like who will just take your money and run without consequence. So this website gave me the all-important paper trail, and the second all-important factor: A deadline I can enforce.

First off: They are very nice, and their website is very easy to use. You get exactly what you ask for, for better or for worse.

However.

—

Biggest complaint: They work with exactly what you give them and don't stray very far from your original design. Which is great, if you're able to give them a quality concept image. If you are not able to do that, and you hand them something jank as hell, you will recieve back a polished version of your jank design. Artist's intuition is what I pay a real person for, instead of dialing up The Robot to generate an image for me.

Secondary complaint: Delivery time*** which I will excuse for the holidays, but their standard delivery time is 8-10 days. Revisions also did not have a true deadline, the only response I got was an "asap".

Tertiary complaint: They don't give you a preliminary sketch to approve general composition. It's radio silence until they give you your cover, watermarked, waiting for your approval. If that's how you like it, then this is a feature, but I don't, and things might've been different if I had been able to make corrections before the hard work was done.

These are general issues, below are my specific issues with my specific cover.

—

I hate clipart covers.

Maybe it's just me, but the images you pick to make the composition of your clipart cover have to be exactly on point so they all look like one cohesive piece, and that's far harder to do compared to a fully illustrated cover, and they make illustrated covers.

I see a clipart cover and I'm immediately looking at how elements don't fit. Everything from the black levels (how one piece is inexplicably darker or more saturated than the other elements, telling you that they're from different photos), to the instagram-y filters to the eras and tones of those different elements all crammmed together.

A cover is supposed to help tell your story. For example, if I'm writing a historical fantasy pirate novel, but the ship you pulled off Getty Images is a 19th century cutter, when the plot says it should be an 18th century Spanish galleon, it's going to look sloppy. Especially if I'm reading this novel because I love historical fiction, if you have the wrong type of boat on your cover, I might not read it thinking somebody somewhere cut corners and didn't do their research picking style over substance.

Especially when clipart covers are pulling more "realistic" images with excessive detail over an impressionist style of an illustrated cover. Your sci-fi novel might be about an underground cyberpunk war, but have a spaceship that leans more into space opera, and maybe a robot that's absolutely steampunk. What genre am I supposed to be getting from these mis-matched elements?

Outside of a horror novel, which tends to be pretty minimalistic with the cover design (a haunted house, a keyhole, a rosary, a grave), they look cheap, and messy.

So, I got my commissioned cover back from my designer.

And they're... not great. I don't know where the rules lie for who owns what so I won't post the watermarked concepts. What it boils down to is a disorganized composition of photoreal elements mixed with semi-illustrated silhouettes, and they clash pretty jarringly.

So after I sent them an essay explaining why I didn't think different elements worked, along with six different examples of where to take the new direciton to experiment, the V2 I got back was even worse.

Little things, like how I gave them a fishing boat, and they used a yatch. Very big difference in the tone and purpose. The revamp of their corals were also bright and healthy, when I'd already told them the whole point was mass coral bleaching, with example images.

The same illustrated silhouettes were copy-pasted in, reoriented, and shrunk, so my initial issue with them remained, and I wasn't pleased.

When I sent them examples for the changes, I felt awful about changing the design since they pretty much gave me what I asked for, it just did not look as good compared to the version in my head (they even used the exact position of that mer that I had given them in the jank sketch). I gave them plenty of suggestions of elements I wanted to change from their own database of covers, but felt bad for the artist so I told them this was in effort to preserve as much of the work they had already done.

And, well, they definitely reworked what was already there. It just feels...

Lazy? The only element they had to draw was a silhouette. So if all you're doing is yanking images off the internet and tweaking the lighting, I can do that, too. I'm paying you to look at a mess and make it better than the sum of its parts. You're an artist, so make something, instead of simply rearranging something. For $220, neither of Miblart's offerings were worth it.

And Miblart does have some gorgeous covers. Idk what happened with mine.

I paid an artist because I psyched myself out of what a typical cover of my genre demands—contemporary sci-fi—and convinced myself I could not draw with the skill necessary.

Well, while waiting for the revisions from Miblart, I made my own cover, from scratch, as I have done for my past two books, and I love it more. The combined work probably clocks in around 4 hours, with everything drawn by hand. Theirs took 12 days, and is all but one copy-pasted elements. I'll be dropping my version with the official book release announcement shortly.

—

Overall, Miblart seems to be very hit-or-miss. If you yourself like clipart covers, and you have an already solid concept to give them, you'll probably find success. Though it does bother me that this implies complete unoriginality, if their artists can only recreate what you give them instead of devising something new. Adhering to genre principles is one thing, but being unable to truly get creative is a red flag for me.

When I tried to cancel my order, after insisting that I wanted to compensate the artist for their time, they hit me with the same canned apology email. On the one hand I can chalk it up to a language barrier, but on the other, once you have an upset customer, the time for canned responses is over. After already dealing with a lack of human artistry in the design, I was not pleased to be dealing with a lack of human comminication with customer service.

These covers aren't awful. They're just uninspired and unprofessional. If I saw it on the shelf, I might only pick it up to study how off it looks, and would not trust the competency of the book inside.

[rinumia-blog]

THROWBACK SUNDAY

18/8/24 The Olympics have come and gone. The highlight of the summer, there was enormous amount of space and connection in both opening ceremonies torch and closing ceremonies medals.

Last year Google posted a video reel of hits based on most frequent searches on its X page. various moments ranging from sports to pop music to protests and peace-advocates made the cut.

Today in sifting through the grain of consumer-apps, we rely on the unobtrusive Play Store. Google understood the mass appeal of social media and mobile support early on, and figured out service models like *GoogleTalk, *Google+ and *V8, all native to Android TM.

● KEEPING DATA TO OURSELVES?

With expansion of machine learning services ( including TENSOR processing unit upgrade and COLAB integration ) there will be unprecedented interest in protecting data from "scrapers".

This interest is in opposition to one of the founding principles of Google, to take the world's knowledge and make it universally accessible. Libraries are taking down books in response to complaints, and even Archive.COM reports losing its legal claim to 500,000 published works, all because the publishers vowed to 'secure' those titles.

● MIDDLECLASS TAX DOLLARS VS MULTIMODAL AGENTS

For better or worse this panic: over A.I. getting in touch with source data, and training on looks, poems, or speech style IS REAL. Pretty much every 12 weeks new models are rolled out and leaderboards construct new tests / build better red teams.

Google, being a W3C leader: is heading the efforts to 'fix the environment' by requiring guardrails in the form of digital watermarks . Second, encouraging banning of bad actors, angry scrapers going behind people's backs just to gain access into their private data. Apple is also motivated to redeem their brand from security flaws either through monitoring or misinformation prone apps.

We grew up with an /Internet which might have been slow, but for the most part there was a reliability in security /protocols and /antiviruses. However, our children will have to cope with a deluge of generated ads, artificial scripts and comments.

[cxsmiicc]

a friend of mine the other day said that he didn't see editing as a real hobby because it had no deeper meaning. everything im about to say in this post i said to his face on this day. now this dude is like. classic snobby english student. turns his nose up at any book that isn't written in such a way that it takes a week to read. genuinely enjoys poetry and is forever trying to get me to like it too (i violently hate poetry, just not my thing no hate if u like it). we somehow got onto the topic of hobbies and i was talking about how i had a fair few, and i started listing some off of the top of my head. the few i mentioned were editing, writing, reading and crocheting. he offhandedly says that he doesn't think editing is a real hobby because it has no deeper meaning and the look i gave to this boy could have levelled cities. first and foremost, editors. work. fucking. hard. it is not easy to find clips, find audios, and put them all together to make something cohesive. shit takes hours every time. i have cried over edits countless times. i've seen people cry over my edits before and it feels amazing (sounds odd i know but you get it). my next point, a hobby BY DEFINITION is something you do for fun. to relax. to enjoy yourself. not in pursuit of some deep life lesson. hobbies are hobbies because they are something you do for enjoyment, in pursuit of some peace of fucking mind. my edits lately?? mostly lanfear, with a hot audio, and minimal transitions. and what do they mean? that i think she's hot. i still made it. that edit didn't spring fully formed from the void. time and effort went into it. editing is a real hobby, a real career if you're good enough, and an edit can have as deep a meaning as any novel or any song, or be as shallow as a fucking teaspoon. and someone still made it. someone still found the song, marked the beats, cut the clips, added their effects and transitions and colouring and watermark. just as a book can be self indulgent, so can an edit. obviously the two are different, and people can and will argue themselves blue about which is better, film or literature, the old versus the new. but for fucks sake don't be like him. he knows exactly how much time i spend on my edits, how much i agonise over the smallest details. it hurt when he said that so casually. he just threw a year of my life away, saying it doesn't qualify as a pastime because it doesn't teach me anything. okay. can he use after effects with the skill that i can? no. he didn't even know what an mp4 was until i explained this morning. having practical skills can only be an advantage. plus ofc doing anything for a long period of time will teach you these deep philosophical lessons he's oh so fond of. i met my favourite person in the world through editing. she's the reason i started my current editing account. ly babe if ur reading this. posting edits and being an active part of a niche fandom is also incredible for getting better at interacting with people. both the comments on my posts and the comments i leave on other peoples edits are so so supportive and sweet, and yeah. im losing steam with this post so imma leave it here bcs its 2:30am and i am most definitely rambling.

sorry for a long post but this is important to me and every other editor who has had people laugh when they mention what they do for fun

[quantumvaudeville]

It's been an age and a half since I updated my commission info, so here's the new prices and info for the new year!! More information and a transcription of the prices listed are under the cut.

Prices: Bust Sketch: $20 Waist-up Sketch: $25 Full-Body Sketch: $30

Bust Color: $40 Waist-up Color: $45 Full-Body Color: $50

Reference Sheet: $125 (Includes two figures and one detail shot OR three figures)

Additional Charges: Complex character designs, difficult poses, or major revisions: $5+ Simple backgrounds, complex props, or intricate patterns: $10+ Additional characters: Same as base price

I'm generally willing to draw

Humans, including portraits of real people

Animals

Furries/Anthros

Non-sexual nudity

Clothed pin-ups

Mild injury and blood

I'm generally NOT willing to draw:

Real people in sexual or romantic contexts unless I have the explicit consent of the involved parties

Cars/Mechs

Explicit sexual content

Gore/Dismemberment

Please note that there are exceptions to both of the above categories. If you are unsure of where you stand, please feel free to email me and we can discuss the specifics, though I reserve the right to reject any commission for any reason. Thank you for your understanding.

How to Reach Out/What to Expect: If you're interested in a commission, please email me at ApplesToAtoms@gmail.com, outlining the details of what you want. I'll look it over and quote you a price, which may be slightly higher than those listed above depending on how difficult or complex your request is. When you confirm that you're happy with my offer, I'll send you an invoice.

Once payment is received, I'll do my best to send you the first preliminary sketch within 3 business days, via email. After that, I'll try to send further updates within 4 business days of receiving feedback on the previous stage. If it looks like I won't be able to meet these deadlines, I'll let you know. Generally speaking I try to finish commissions within 30 days of receiving payment, but that's not always feasible depending on how many revision passes are required and how quick the commissioner is at responding.

By default I retain the right to post the finished commission, albeit resized and watermarked, to my social media, though I will credit you as the commissioner. You may opt out of this, and I will prompt you to either do so or give a means by which to credit you when the commission is completed.

Revision Policy: After we’ve decided on a price, I generally like to send over one very rough sketch to confirm that I’m on the right track with pose/composition/expression and so on, at which point extensive revisions can be made at no penalty to you. I’ll keep sending progress sketches after this, but at this point any revisions that require me to redraw more than half the piece will cost an extra $5, so make sure we’re on the same page before then.

Payment Policy: I only accept payment through PayPal - however, do not send me money directly. After we have discussed the details of your commission I will send you an invoice. Payment of half the cost of your commission is due up front, with the rest to be paid upon receiving the finished piece. If something prevents me from completing your commission or you change your mind before I've sent any sketches, I'll refund all but $5 of your payment.

You MAY:

Repost your commissioned piece to your social media or use it as an icon, as long as I'm credited as the artist in the post or somewhere on your profile.

Color sketches or pay other artists to color sketches you've commissioned from me, as long as I'm credited as having done the sketch.

You MAY NOT:

Use my art to train AI art generators

Use my art as an NFT (Non-Fungible Token)

Resell my art in any form, including as prints or other merchandise, unless you've discussed it with me prior to paying.

Pay in any form of cryptocurrency

[judesmoonbeauty]

Update

Hiiii, it's been a a couple months since I've updated about translations.

First, a thanks to everyone for their support of my blog and content! I really enjoy being here and engaging with you all. ♥️

Next, sorry for spamming my blog with random thoughts and about Jude, but please be prepared for more to come.

Now on to the real blog updates. It’s a lot, but please bear with me:

˚☽˚.⋆ As you may know, I've returned to using full-sized screen shots in my translations because there seems to be no further issues, yay! However, CGs will still be watermarked.

˚☽˚.⋆ Originally, I wanted to get back into Prince translations, but this isn’t happening anytime soon. I do have one expo story I may work on, but it’s not a priority right now.

˚☽˚.⋆ All available bond levels on JP server for Jude are still capped for me, but whenever CYBIRD releases new levels, I will start translating those. In the meantime, I’ll continue to translate Nica’s levels that are available as I progress with him.

˚☽˚.⋆ I’m planning to translate all upcoming Jude events in addition to his main story. It obviously will take time, but I will do it....somehow. I do have a plan for now. If others translate his route and/or events as well, that's cool with me, but I’m still planning to translate them also.

˚☽˚.⋆ On my main page I have a Translations WIPs master list. I update this on a regular basis (date included), so if you want to know what I am currently working on then please check it out. This link has been added to Jude’s Main Story Master List.

˚☽˚.⋆ I will be adding a link to his master list for a main story highlights post. This will feature key points of each chapter, his side stories, premiums, epilogues and letters. This will be very pared down, so don't expect full summaries because that's not what this is; but I do hope it will provide a basic understanding of what happens in his route, so that his BD event translation will make sense.

˚☽˚.⋆ Not that any of you have done this, but I kindly ask that you please be patient and not send me asks or DMs about the next update. I know we are excited, and we've had to wait well over a year for him, but Jude is not easy to translate and he takes time. There's literally been times that I've gotten a headache over his lines.

That’s all for now. Sorry, this is a bit more lengthy than my usual updates, but it’s been a while. Thanks again for your support and I hope you're all doing well!

(⸝⸝> ᴗ•⸝⸝) -Cici

[shinxistudio]

Studio Thoughts 2024MAR01

I've been thinking a lot since first finding out about the MidJourney deal Tumblr is taking. I've been wanting to make this post for just as long. (This sounds ominous, but it's not.) (Cut for a giant wall of text. Massive rambling.)

I don't know what to do. I've made an infinite number of new accounts across all the different social media I can find. I had to make a sheet to keep track of all the different websites I've joined. The thought of trying to post and maintain 20 accounts minimum to cover myself depending on where people flee to is overwhelming. I'm already averse to updating the accounts I have now. It takes too damn long as it is. (I need to set up PostyBird for the love of god. It doesn't work on a lot of mainstream sites, though.)

I want to share my art, but I don't want that to mean that I'm giving up my rights to it so some fuck can shove it into his dataset to create images and act like they're superior to something made by a real human and the human experience. I've opted out of the 3rd-party sharing option that they gave us, but I know that doesn't mean anything without proof. If they were giving data over that they shouldn't have from private conversations and password-locked blogs, they're not going to give a shit if someone toggled a setting. The whole issue with these datasets is the lack of consent to begin with, so why would they stop Now. I don't even know why they plan to pay Tumblr for the data in the first place because how much of it has already been scraped before they decided to tie it up in a bow for them?

I hate that people just parrot "Nightshade and Glaze!!" as if they're not open-source software that the tech bros can reverse engineer with the available coding. (As well as being easy to remove/get around in the first place.) Not to mention the stupid amount of processing power to use them, if they even work on the type of art you're putting into it in the first place. Even if they worked for your art, they're not accessible to everyone. That's not fair to artists who don't have or can't afford the highest-end PC parts. And even if they Worked to prevent AI it would only be a matter of time before they Didn't, like the constant fight UBlock is having with blocking YouTube's new coding to prevent ad blockers.

I'm just tired. I'm tired of feeling that the modern internet hellscape is just not meant for artists because the algorithms expect you to post as much as possible in order to get seen. I'm tired of artists finding a place to settle only to feel the need to move again and again because they just want their work and themselves to be respected. I miss old DeviantART when it was still a giant hub and community for artists instead of the shell it is today. I still see a lot of people still posting when I check in every now and then.

I don't know what the answer is, because I know data scraping for generative models isn't going away. I can only hope that it cannibalizes itself into hot garbage by taking in generated images that weren't tagged as AI. I would love it if all the wild shit people post on here could make the dataset completely unusable.

At the moment it looks like the only thing I can do is continue to watermark my art heavily and post low-quality versions. I've never had a large enough following to worry about art theft, but I can't control an all-consuming bot scraping everything.

I've been toying with the idea of making my own website and it's seeming more and more appealing. I've seen that you can make your own Patreon-adjacent subscription setup and have a pay-to-access feature. I don't know if that could help prevent scraping or if there are methods to get around that, too. Can bots scrape Patreon itself?

I'll need to update my LinkTree with all the other hundreds of sites that I'm on I guess. I was hoping that this long-ass post would help me come to some sort of conclusion or peace. I think I just gave myself more work to do. I also feel bad that my only other text post here is so hopeful, only to be slapped down immediately in this one.

TLDR: I'm gonna keep posting but like, I'm Not Gonna Like It. MidJourney Sucks. Tech Bros Suck. Ya'll can eat my entire ass.

[mdrafiulislamrakib]

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[local-pickpocket]

Oh yeah, I should probably track what I’ve taken on here.

Here’s the bag of loot!

• A few hundred gold pieces

• A nice ring

• A driver’s license

• The Door To The Outside [The first on Tumblr!]

• A Teleportation Potion (Single Use)

• AutoHemomancy

• The Lake on Wizard Island Island

• A badge for posting that I got, finally, and now have a duplicate of.

• O R B

• Two instances of “ok”

• Two instances of “not ok”

• Some Red Candles

• A pixel of Weezer Blue

• The Rat

• A couch, potentially magic

• The Moon

•Blood moon

• Blue Moon

• A Rock, and its watermark

• Some Delicious Caviar

• @gimmick-thief , @the-gimmick-shipper , all in cardboard boxes

• The Sun

• Inscryption’s Long Elk (The Snelk)

• A Bite to Eat (Burger)

• 4 / 26 English Alphabet letters

• Like 1000 knives

• A cool looking pocket watch that’s probably magic.

• The Earth

• Mercury

• Pink Venus

• Pink Neptune

• Uranus scratch that, got kicked :(

• Titan

• Callisto (Dead Space)

• Eris

• Kepler-186f

• Haumea

• 7 Iris

• Pluto

• Juno

• Polaris

• Alpha Centauri

• Makemake

• A Cursed Amulet

• Stanley

• @ichangenameseveryfiveseconds

• “Money”

• two instances of “thief”

• A set of seven rings

• gimmick thief’s scraps

• gimmick remover’s face and name

• “gimmick thief”

• Mask of a True Ditto

• @the-disemvoweler

• A thieving license

• A Chess Pawn

• @hileynoteson , as requested.

• A 10/10 rating

• The eclipse

• @new-york-for-real

• My official design off of a wanted poster

• All of Utah’s wildlife

• The Dragon

• Permanent Immunity to Curses

• @dude-the-ancient-dragon

• A few ‘name’ and ‘names’

• ‘shitpost’

• a lovely little url.

• a mask of my own face (kinda weird overall)

A Dramatic Thief Makes His Grand Appearance! A Gimmick Blog The Ages!

Hello, hello, to one and all! The is your local-pickpocket speaking, and I’m glad to finally reveal myself to the public here!

Thief as I am, You should know the valuables in your posts and other announcements are never safe while I’m lurking. Keep an eye out, and you might, might, be able to protect it.

Fare thee well, and try to keep your coin purse nice and heavy. Helps make it a challenge.

—————————————————————————

OOC:

Say hi to the mod everyone.

Just something of an RP-ish-kinda blog. He gonna sneaky thief. Maybe edit some photos or screenshots.

No relation to Gimmick Thief.

[Tags:]

#this tag is a calling card - Something was “stolen” from the post

#thieves cant - just talking, or asks

#great heist - actual effort put into the theft.

#shit! - got caught or foiled. :(

#never take me alive - caught on purpose :)

#damnit I want - Shiny thing he can’t steal

#greedemon - He MUST have it.

#lore - self explanatory.

Yeah. New gimmick!