#i might post more mini comics in the meantime!

[ask-pomni-blog]

made this while working on my next couple of asks! ^

[mayhavemayhem]

Posting some of the smaller drawings here, the first was another concept for a small comic I was going to make(never really finished)

The other was one of my first NSR doodles that was originally traditional, turned digital.

I'll be taking a mini hiatus, but I'll be back soon! In the meantime, enjoy these scribbles!

Oh and one more, for the funsies:

Here's one of my traditional drawings, It's not much, but I think it might be the best out of all the traditional ones i've done!

Okay, okay, I'll see you all soon!

[third-arch]

Account Update!! (Temporary post)

If I’m not posting, I’m either writing, drawing, sleeping, doing college stuff/homework, or talking to my boyfriend LOL.

So I gotta fit in research and studying somewhere in there

Once my semester is over, I think I’m gonna start posting and talking about all of my Law merch.

Anyways, I already got some stuff that should be coming in and a figure that I gotta pick up from the post office (I was supposed to pick it up today but I slept in)

Here’s what I’m waiting on (pre/ordered):

Banpresto Law + Nika plushies

King of Artist Law (white tank top)

Fem Law figure

Nika Zine

So, if anyone’s interested, I’ll give a review of these once they arrive.

I'm not out to collect every single piece of Law merch there is. Usually it's "I really like that for months, I think it's okay now" lol.

I found all of these for like unbelievably cheap prices and they’re all official, so I’m like yay I love saving money :,))

Also there’s a Heart Pirates Zine, but I’ve really struggled to try to order it, so I’m not getting it. Maybe once orders open up again, I might change my mind idk. Just not interested.

A lot of writing and research stuff rn!! Doing research for No Surprises and working on Pt.2 of the Flower Crown chapter. I’m also working on chapters that requires me to know some stuff about nature and BLS, so I need to pull out the textbook and research that :,))

The fanfic emotionally takes alot of energy and thinking, so it’s taking a bit. Also working on a mini comic, but it’s becoming longer than I want it to be, so I’m having to shorten it.

In the meantime, I’ve been writing a lot of HC’s and mini drafts for Law and Kanna, so the more I post the fanfic, readers will have something to look at to wait.

Anyways, I've been drawing alot of prompts and such to practice with art!! I feel like I'm starting to find more texture possibilities with my most recent piece and utilizing different stroke sizes. Things are coming together more fluid for me, so I just need to keep drawing at least something everyday.

My next target of practice: Tokyo Ghoul artstyle. I really want something soft like that. I've always had this softness to my style that I wanted to keep, and I feel like it'll either vanish or bring out the best in me with art. So, there's that.

Anyways, thanks for sticking around guys. As far as music goes, $uicideboy$, Lil Peep, Mili, Radiohead, and Taylor Swift keep me rambling on haha.

[davidmariottecomics]

Too Many Conventions!

Hello! 

Turns out, I'm a liar. If you read last week's blog, I ended it with a whole little plan for the next couple of weeks, completely having forgotten that I'm about to enter the most convention heavy stretch I have all year! This is my last "free" weekend until April pretty much! 

A week from today, 2/25, I'll be at the Arizona Comic Book Arts Festival! If you're anywhere near the Phoenix area and want to see me to buy comics or bring your own to get them signed, this is the place to do it! I'll be bringing a pretty chunk of my stock, including stuff from Sonic, Godzilla, and pretty much what's left of my Transformers/Hasbro stock! Maybe this one, maybe in a couple more events like this, I'm going to be running out of Transformers vs. Terminator and Wreckers, so get 'em now while you can! Becca will be there too and you can get us both to sign our little mini-comic, Jimmy Squarefoot! We'll also be bringing copies of a zine we made explaining the issues with AI! And Becca will have a bunch of other stuff at their own table! 

There are a bunch of other really great people attending including Elizabeth Brei, Danny Djeljosevic, Mitch Gerads, Steve Rude, John Layman, Henry Barajas, Jay Fotos, Jeff Mariotte, Marcy Rockwell, John Yurcaba, Andrew MacLean, Alexis Zirrit, Meredith McClaren, James Owen, Ryan Cody, Tone Rodriguez, Cecil Castellucci, and so many more! So come on out and see us! 

Then, Becca got into WaifuExpo the following weekend, 3/3-3/5! It's going to be a cool little adult (18+) focused con in the Dallas-Fort Worth area! Becca's going to be in the artist's alley and I'm going to be there as their booth babe. I will NOT be bringing any of my stuff, only Becca is tabling (*tho if you are planning to attend and get ahold of me ahead of time, I might be able to pack a few things to give in person). Becca's working very hard on preparation and will have some exclusive stuff for adults debuting there! 

Similarly, lots of cool guests including some very notable cosplayers and voice actors and other artists! It also seems like it's going to be a very activity heavy con if that's your jam! 

It's also our first time in the DFW area, so if you have recommendations, those would be appreciated! 

Then, if everything goes right with the first two cons and I'm still feeling groovy, I am tentatively planning on going up to TFCon LA on 3/10. Again, this is health and finances permitting after two other back-to-back shows, and I am not coming as anything other than an attendee, but if you catch me at Jack Lawrence's table and want me to sign your Wreckers or Alex Milne's table and want me to sign your TF/Terminator or whatever, I'm happy to do so! 

And finally, I expect to be attending WonderCon 2023, March 24-26! Again, same deal as TFCon--my availability will depend a little bit on not having gotten sick/burned out from the other shows with only one weekend of "downtime" and I'm going mostly as an attendee, rather than tabling individually or with IDW, but this is the one con where I'll be most open for meetings. 

After that, I have to assume that I'll hibernate until the summer! And somewhere around there I'll get back to what I mistakenly proposed last week and do another "Ask Me (Almost) Anything". In the meantime, new posts are going to be coming to the blog, but they'll be a little irregular because they'll be coming in-between shows! 

Thanks for rolling with that change and hope to see you soon! 

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Honkai Impact (Video game--I managed to get the new Kiana and Mei back-to-back, so I'm pretty happy!), House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (Book), Poker Face (TV show), Romantic Killer (Anime), Warioware Inc (Video Game), The Fablemans (Movie--I cried 3 times!), Kaguya-Sama: Love is War-The First Kiss That Never Ends (Movie), Valentine's Day, Snack vs. Chef (TV show), Chainsaw Man (Manga), rearranging my desk (I had to dust the... 150 [estimate] little hunks of plastic on my desk and decided to rearrange them), Becca's first Twitch stream (more on that below)! 

New Releases this week (2/15/2023): Off week for my books

New releases next week (2/22/2023): Also an off week for my books!

Announcements: Wait, this is still a section? With all that other stuff I've already been promoting? Well... Yeah! 

Social Media - I am still primarily on Twitter because that's still where I know the most people and the format I like the best, unfortunately, but you can find me on all my socials here as I continue to try to move away from that site that is less and less functional each day! And, hey, sometimes it still works to reach people like this update on Sonic (it is good and fine and in many languages and countries). 

Aradia Beat - The past few weeks, I've been plugging this cool Magical Girl Anthology Magazine that Becca's part of! This morning, the campaign closed and they had just exceeded their second stretch goal! Thanks anyone here who contributed and if you missed out, well... you missed out! No, but give Aradia Collective a follow and they'll be able to tell ya if there'll be any other ways of getting it in the future! 

More Magical Girls - Our pals Elizabeth Brei & Danny Djeljosevic and a bunch of their friends are getting close to their goal on their Kickstarter for Sweet Little Resistance, which you should check out! And you can tell them you're psyched for it at AZCAF! 

Becca is a busy beean - Somewhere in all this con prep and the many shows we're attending, Becca's also managing regular Patreon updates (and this month, any new sign-ups will have their first pledge go to The Brown Building here in San Diego). They're also open for commissions. And they're now streaming Wednesdays & Saturdays (including tonight, but not when we'll be at shows) on Twitch! I'll usually be there too, moderating the chat and making jokes, playing the soundboard or whatever. You can check out their first stream playing Heartbreak High on their page now! I think the plan is Wednesdays will be games and Saturdays will be art, so come check it out and hang! 

Legislative Tracking - Legislators are doubling down on attempting to pass anti-trans bills. Fortunately, some of them are not managing to move forward. Unfortunately, the bad guys keep trying. Here is a legislative tracker for you to keep an eye on and hopefully if anything is happening locally to you (and on the federal level), you're able to reach out to your reps and can tell them to knock that shit off. 

Pic of the Week: A very dumb little promo I made for all of our upcoming stuff (or... well, a lot of it) to the theme of Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania, in theaters now! (NOTE: Made when Aradia Beat was still funding, it's over now, sorry!)

[lutiaskokopelli]

Hi everyone ! I just wanted to give some news, and reassure you in case you were possibly worried not to hear from me for a while (I mean, I'm rather active on the Discord server, but not all of you would know that).

For the short version, the good news is that I'm fine and nothing has happened, but the bad news is that TFS might be on break for a bit. I'm not gonna call this a hiatus though, it shouldn't take that long and it has nothing to do with me losing motivation or inspiration, far from it.

For the long version, what I've been doing lately and what I will keep doing is something that I've been meaning to do for a VERY long time: that is to say, bring some actual closure to my two previous long-lasting fan-stories (my Gravity Falls comic, Pythagorean Thoughts, and my Undertale fanfic, Learn When to Quit), and once that is done and/or while it's being done, finally give TFS its remastered version. I hope the remastered version won't diverge more than it needs to be and the overall plot won't change at all, but I'll most definitely add a few details / mini inconsequential scenes whose purpose would be to better show how some things work -- notably Player's inventory, whose mechanisms are in fact quite simple, but haven't so far been explained clearly enough in my taste.

Regarding my two previous stories, I was sadly unable to complete them because of how hard they were to draw/write, and how my motivation / mental and physical health weren’t enough to let me keep working on them. It doesn't help that I was in a heavily depressed period during the past five years, the period when I was drawing/writing these stories... As much as I love them and wish I could complete them, the fact that working on them unavoidably reminded me of how depressed and lost I felt back then... that didn't help.

Still. The readers of these stories, and the stories themselves for the sake of their own plot, deserve a decent closure. And so I started for the past few days to put all of my story notes in order in a Google Drive folder, and started redacting a detailed summary of what was left of the plot for both stories, including additional trivia, backstory details, the like -- pretty much everything I judge the readers should be allowed to know.

I'm kinda stuck in a pseudo-depressed nostalgia trip because of the reasons I mentioned, but I'll be okay. I'm proud of what has been done so far, and I know that once it'll be done, I'll be done with it forever and I'll finally be able to move on for real; I'll still answer the questions I receive if I ever get some, but the stories themselves will finally be put to rest, hopefully with a satisfying enough conclusion. It'll be a bittersweet conclusion... but a conclusion nonetheless, which is still better than keeping them stuck in limbo.

Anyway, I think what will happen in the near future will be rather simple: I'm currently working on the summary of Pythagorean Thoughts, then I'll move on to summarizing its backstory (which is probably necessary in order to fully understand the main plot in all its details); then I'll move on to Learn When to Quit and do basically the same. I may or may not add some extras, but I've already added and completed a good enough list for both stories, which means that the summaries are really all that's left. And, in the meantime, whenever I get tired of writing aboard the nostalgia train, I'll draw a bit for TFS's remastered version as a break -- hopefully I'll be able to post some updates during the whole process every now and then!

Anyway... I just wanted to let you know. I'll be fine, it's just that both Pythagorean Thoughts and Learn When to Quit were, on one hand, stories very dear to me, and thus I want the closure to be as satisfying as can be; and on the other hand, their plots were just as long and contrived as TFS's, if not far more. They were both meant to be extremely long stories, heavy with many plot elements all around, which almost makes TFS's Episode 2 sound like a walk in the park in comparison. Translation: Even writing a summary alone will probably take a while, and a lot of brain power.

Thanks for reading up till this point! I hope you won't mind the break while it lasts, but once it's over it will be over for good.

You all take care <3 I'm currently reliving by proxy some of the most depressing years of my life, and my mood is a bit gloomy as a result; but I know I won't fall back, because I now realize how far I've come.

If you too have been depressed, or are currently depressed... It's okay. Just try to hold on to that hope -- it will get better. It'll be hard; it'll take a lot of work; but once you'll have climbed out of your abyss and finally reach the light, you'll have learned so much about who you are, and who you want to be. Some things will still need to be patched up... but it'll be okay. Even mistakes and failures will be lessons and advice for you to learn, and will further help you know yourself. There's no regrets to be had; no matter the hardships, you'll know how to make it work and finally be happy.

That conclusion is sappy, I know... but I hope that if someone who needs to read these words gets to read them, it'll give them the strength and courage to push through. It will be worth it in the end, I promise.

[beyarmamo]

BeyArMaMo 2018 - Event Info

- Beyblade Art Making Month -

A B O U T

BeyArMaMo is an annual art event that encourages fans of Bakuten Shoot Beyblade to get creative throughout October.

The Beyblade Art Making Month came about in 2008 after it occured to me that I loved art and I loved Beyblade but I hadn’t been combing the two together enough. I decided to rectify this by setting myself the challenge to create a piece of Beyblade art every day for an entire month. There were plenty of scribbles and hastily drawn nonsense (and a inexplicable drawing of Daichi sitting on a cow) but somehow I managed to complete the challenge. And I felt awesome.

The following year, I decided to take up the challenge again but this time I was joined by a handful of friends from DeviantArt. It was received positively and that was pretty much that. The event has since been held each October, growing year on year, and with fans participating from all around the world. This year we will be celebrating BeyArMaMo’s 10th Anniversary.

T H E  C H A L L E N G E

The BeyArMaMo concept is pretty simple. Participants are challenged to create Bakuten Shoot Beyblade art throughout October - that’s it. It doesn’t even have to be good art. Or finished. The focus is on creation so there’s no problem if you can only manage a scribble or something comes out a bit wonky. It’s simply about creating something when we otherwise might not have done. It’s all good.

It sounds pretty easy but when you’re crawling in from a long shift from work the last thing you’ll probably want to think about doing is, well, anything. Or maybe you’ve got the school run, and the shopping to do and you need a tidy round and before you know it it’s bedtime and you haven’t had chance to pick up a pencil. Perhaps you just can’t think of anything to draw or you might simply be lacking any measure of motivation. This is where the challenge aspect comes in. Some days you’ll be throwing out art left, right and centre and others will leave you cursing all your life choices. But that’s part of what makes it exciting. It’s sort of stressful in a good way.

If you’re not loving the idea of stress then don’t worry - help is at hand. There are three challenge types for you to choose from. Each is akin to a different difficulty so if you want a nice gentle time, have at it. But if you want an all encompassing Beyblade art extravaganza then you can have that too.

Simply pick the challenge type that appeals to you most and rock on.

01 - BeyArMaMo

This is the original, and most difficult, challenge. Your aim is to create at least one piece of artwork every day throughout October. By the end of the month you should have created at least 31 pieces of art.

02 - Mini-BeyArMaMo

This is a gentle challenge to motivate you while keeping the stress at a minimum. Your aim here is to create at least one piece of art every week throughout October. By the end of the month you should have created at least 4 pieces of art.

03 - Super-Mini-BeyArMaMo

This is, in theory, the least challenging of the three options. Just a 1 piece of art, that’s all you need to do. Perfect for those of us with hectic lives. And procrastinators.

T H E M E  D A Y S

Theme days are an optional extra to help inspire or challenge you. Each day, a new theme will be posted for you base your work on. It might be a colour or an object, a feeling or a place. You can choose to use all the themes, some of the themes or none at all. Participants in the Mini-BeyArMaMo challenge may pick any of the themes posted in each particular week.

The full theme list will be posted one week before the start of BeyArMaMo to help you plan your artwork.

R U L E S

BeyArMaMo was designed to be a challenge but it’s also extremely casual. Like, whatever. Above all else it’s meant to be fun so please don’t worry about the rules, even though there are technically rules. You can actually get away with a lot. But if you do wish to be mindful of the rules, here they are.

1) This event is solely for Bakuten Shoot Beyblade fan art. ‘Beyblade’ is not used as a blanket term for the entire franchise. Only art based on Bakuten Shoot Beyblade, Bakuten Shoot Beyblade 2002 (V Force), Bakuten Shoot Beyblade G Revolution, Bakuten Shoot Beyblade The Movie: Gekitou!! Takao vs Daichi (Fierce Battle) and the manga (including Rising) is permitted.

2) All art must contain Bakuten Shoot Beyblade characters. They can cosplay, reference other series or even dive into a world of crossovers, but the main focus must be Beyblade. OCs, however, are not permitted.

3) Your art shouldn’t be created in advance. Art for day one should be created on the 1st of October, day two on the 2nd of October, and so on. For the weekly challenge, art for week three should be created during the third week,etc. Creating your art in advance sort of lessens the joy.

4) Your art can be in any form. Digital illustrations, traditional illustrations, comics, literature, photography, crafts, cosplay - baking even! If you want to knit Kai’s scarf, you go for it.

5) Enjoy. It’s not technically a rule as such but… Please just roll with it and try not to stress yourself out. If you don’t finish or you miss a day, don’t worry. You’re still awesome because you’re embracing your Beyblade love. And that’s all that matters.

H O W  T O  P A R T I C I P A T E

You will be able to sign up for the event from the 1st of September until the 30th of September. A list of registered participants will be made available so you can share links to your artwork and find other artists so follow.

If you prefer not to sign up officially then that’s fine too. You can participate in your own way.

Exclusive BeyArMaMo goodies will be available for registered members to purchase during the event.

The sign up form will be posted at the beginning of September.

S C H E D U L E  

BeyArMaMo runs from the 1st of October to the 31st of October but there are a few other noteworthy dates too.

1st September 2018 - BeyArMaMo sign-up period begins.

24th September 2018 - Daily themes announced.

30th September 2018 - BeyArMaMo sign-up period ends.

1st October 2018 - BeyArMaMo 2018 begins.

31st October 2018 - BeyArMaMo 2018 ends.

1 0 T H  A N N I V E R S A R Y

BeyArMaMo is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and to commemorate this momentous occasion I am planning a souvenir art book. I’ll be sharing more details about this shortly and I hope some of you might like to take part in it too!

A N D  F I N A L L Y  

I think I’ve covered everything here that needs to be covered but if there’s something you’re not sure about then just get in touch. I’ll be sorting out a few extra things over the next few weeks before sign ups start so expect one or two more updates before then. In the meantime, keep being awesome and if you feel like sharing news about the event then that would be lovely. Hopefully we’ll have an absolute bunch of us raring to go by October!

Take it easy, guys!

Laura (Gasara)

[iced-souls]

Oh yeah so I am just gonna talk about it now because *cough* it’s probably gonna take a lil while longer to finish cause of schul *cough* so I shall now update you all on

MY PLANS—

SO this is both for myself and if y’all wanna know what I shall be doin or somethin—

Ok so—

Obviously, as I’ve said before, I’m gonna finish this next update for left behind, in which I have almost finished the line art for it, and then hopefully if I don’t give up on doin which I might do cause meh—, I’ll finish the ut dr anniversary drawing. WHICH I MADE THE SKETCH FOR IT on the day but ran out of time…. It’s also not the beeeest but if I do give up on it then I’ll just post the sketch with the next school doods post probably—.

But anyways, after that I am planning on trying to post less/draw less/ focus more on school stuff for a while, at least until I get the hang of things….. which I do not know how long that will take—.

Mainly decided this cause I’m getting distracted and I stress out a lot when I have to many things to do/ want to do, so I’m cutting off a bit for my brains sake.

However I DO also have plans for if I ever get free time and want to do some stuff.

Lemme find my notes—

Ok so 1st thing which I can do in any free time, also possibly if I go to this 1 club in my school that happened last year(art club) so I can get a specific time to do drawing stuff hehehe, is make some more oc references, which I’ll probably add onto artfight for next year. There’s only a couple I REALLY have been wanting to do for a while now, which I have in my notes—.

So that’s: that one Skeleguy, lollipop guy, pineapple baller guy (edit: also jimjam). And then some other guys I might do are: Dust! Undyne, Sun angel + lightning rainbow guy, minecraft sona stone golem guy, aaaaaand underscrungle guys.

Speaking of underscrungle, I’ll probably figure out some more roles for that, I’ll probs just right it down sometime—.

Ight ok, 2nd thing iiiiiiiis…… OH YEAH, also have mentioned before, but I might also work on another rottmnt x my ocs compilation. I have 2 clips in my head currently and there’s bound to be more. When will I work on this? I have an animation club starting up at my school so imma work on it 1 day of the week during that time. So probably will take a while to finish��.

Tttthhhheennnnnnnnnnnn……..OH ok so I will be working on setting up left behind and void gang. As in writing up what each update will be if that makes sense.

Cause for left behind. I have the basis written up, aswell as some lil short stories that’ll happen, but that’s it really. So the ending is finished really but I’m gonna layout the mini episodes that are taking place in chapter 1 and chapter 2. Actually cause I find it kinda funny let me show you the papers I have for the left behind writing—.

So as you can tell I am CLEARLY a very organized person— honestly half of this is all of chapter 3. I have to run through it all to find where my comic lore is currently at tho lol—

Worst part about that is that is that I go through—

—THESE OLD FRICKIN DRAWINGS OH MY GOSH—. THEY MAKE ME CRINGE EVERY TIME I LOOK AT THEM OOOUUUGHHH—

ANYWAYS—

Void gang I’m just gonna set it up but I’m trying not to get toooo detailed in that cause I want it to be more of a surprise…… if you can even call it that tho—.

Anyways, so that about it. There also probably won’t be AS many school dood drawings for the same reasons, but I’ll get like… 1 page at least done?

But yeah. OH ALSO I’ve had some character challenge thingies in my draft box for a while now that I’ll also probably get more time to do—. So yeah.

May/ probably will pop up every now and then in the meantime. So If I DO get any asks I’ll probably be able to answer them cause I can usually finish answerin them quick—. All of these plans probably look like I’m not ACTUALLY taking a chill period but in relation to what I planned on doing, it is. Uuuuuuuhhhhh anything else? …… OH yeah I am still gonna post undertale September stuff. Uuuuuuhmmmm.. so yeah.

Really, a summary for all of this is instead of trying to split drawing with school work like a 50 50 thing, I will be more focused on school and drawing will only happen at certain and random times when I am free—.

Sooooooo yeah. BUT THAT WILL START ONCE IM DONE THIS NEXT LEFT BEHIND PAGE. I have also just planned out today of how the next update will go so that’ll be the first thing to right down—

ANYWAYS IM I THINK IM DRAGGING THIS ON LONGER THAN IT NEEDS TO BE SO I SHALL SAY BUH BYE AND HAVE A GOOD DAY ALRIGHT SEE YA—

[theda-rison]

Writing Journal 9/1/2020

Writing Journal 9/1/2020

So, an update! Because I don’t think I’ve updated the journal portion since I finished Camp Nano. 

Whoopsie.

I finished my “72k in 22 days”? Whatever I decided to call it. Not because I wrote another 72,000 words, but because I finished the draft. That’s right! My first draft is finished.

Or like, it’s basically finished? It’s mostly finished. It’s like 98% of a first draft. There were a couple scenes that I didn’t know how to write (the big battle scene at the end, mostly) and because I was kind of getting all “oh god, I just want this to be done,” at it, I decided I would do research during October, and then rewrite/edit in November, and that’s when those scenes will get written.

SO: That’s also my Nanowrimo 2020 plan, right there; editing and rewrites.

In the meantime, I’ve been reading a bunch of manga (I read Shin Angyo Onshi in like two days and loved every minute of it. I <3 young Munsu’s hair. 10/10 would run my fingers through it). I guess it would make sense for me to read a bunch of comics while I’m working on a comic? At least, that’s how I try to justify it in my head otherwise it feels like a big ol’ waste of time. 

I also spent a few non-consecutive days just chilling, reading, or watching videos, just to recoup from all the intense typing that made my carpal tunnel flare up again (then again, it’s never really totally cooled down anymore. I need to do more PT and take care of it better. It’s partly my age and partly my own neglect). 

I also: 

Started writing ideas for a new comic (unrelated to the one I just finished)

Wrote at least one full poem, and a few fragments 

Wrote one personal essay

Wrote another blog post that I need to publish

And am now starting a podcast with a friend 

Because like… if I don’t do things constantly I slide into a depression from under-stimulation, and if that happens, my brain will grow mold and I will die and become very much like the rotting wood of a fallen tree dead center in a thick forest, where no one even knows I exist and so no one pays attention to me. Instead of no one hearing me meaning I don’t exist, it’s more like me not thinking and therefore not “am-ing.” To split my philosophies.

So I might as well follow every whim the little fucker decides it wants to play around with otherwise I will be sitting here, bored and depressed. Or just like, asleep. I tend to fall asleep pretty easily when I’m bored. It’s very weird.

I’ve also made a to-do list of writing things, since I keep starting shit and not finishing it. I was going to give you the short version but I recently made a mini-kanban board and have kind of tried to prioritize things a bit more, so we’ll see if it works, I guess.

Now I just need to figure out how to want to write when work has started up again. That’s probably the hardest part.

[pepperstrawberry]

Okay, so got some actual rest. Not a lot of solid sleep, but I”m not as much of a zombie as I was when I got home. Like sometimes I wonder if i’m being too much of a baby about things... but when I get home, sit in front of my compy and can barely lift a finger... yeah, I was just as exhausted as I felt at work.

Anyhoo....

So lets cover a few things here.

First off, some base good news: Bills wise, I have my rend with my last normal check, and aside from $20 bucks for a loan due on the 11, I do have all my bills paid till the 19th. I’m going to have roughly about 150+ for food till then, so I’m not hurting just yet.

Tomorrow, I’m going to force myself out of the house and down to the unemplyment office to try to see if I can talk with someone about my options. I was told about there being a graphic design option, and depending on things, I’m going to see if that is a road that might be good for me.

Understand, I respect every worker that sits in a call center, works night shift at a grocery store, or flips burgers. I respect the workers, but at this point, I can’t go back to any of that. Some jobs will make it hard for me to push forward with being fully out and proud as a woman, others I just don’t have it in me to work.

This might just be my chance, who knows. The next month is going to be scary, but there is some hope. I know for sure that many of you guys are wonderful and so full of support. Thank you. Even if you are just hearing about this just now, I know all of my followers, friends, and mutuals are wonderful people with wonderful hearts.

My plans for the next four days are thus:

Tonight: work on sketches and scripting for comic things that I have been puttering on for a while. Research ideas for Patreon, work on changing the rest of my info across media like I was going to do when I changed my name here.

Tomorrow: Unemployment office, maybe call up councilor (I have access for the rest of the month, so might as well get up the gumption to do something about it), hang with girlfriend, do everything to raise my morale.

Friday: work more on art, and anything that the office may have suggested/offered. FNM. Should be a couple of bucks and it’s part of what has been lowering my morale. Even if I lose, I like playing the game and being with my friends. I’m going to need that this week. Thanks to @calemor for the Ko-fi, that will help in case there is saturday showdown at my shop too. I know I should be saving every dime possible and only use what will help, but right now, getting a few games in inbetween trying to make things work will certainly help.

I’m also going to be selling some things, starting with my KR Wizard stuff to buy me a bit more time, I’ll reblog the post I made about it a while back to give some folks a first crack at it if they got the cash. XD If it sells like I think it will, then that will take care of most of my bills for next month, leaving maybe my utilities or cell and my rent.

But again, thank you for the Ko-fi, @calemor X3

And in the meantime while I’m getting things going, feel free to buy a mini a Ko-fi here

for now, I’m going to grab some food, and maybe do some tests to see if my stream will work...

Thank you again, everyone X3

[ralphmorgan-blog1]

Meet Genies, the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news

“We plan on making Bitmoji obsolete,” says Akash Nigam, CEO of Genies. Bragging about beating one of the world’s top apps before his has even launched is emblematic of Nigam’s and Genies’ brash style. But with $15 million in funding at a valuation over $100 million, top investors like NEA and Hollywood royalty like CAA are buying into the avatar startup. It already has 680,000 kids waitlisted to sign up for the Genies iOS app that launches today.

“If, God forbid, Donald Trump bombs North Korea, you’ll see your Genie riding a nuke to North Korea,” says Nigam. Whether that idea makes you giggle or roll your eyes, this is Genies’ plan “to be the next BuzzFeed,” the 24-year-old CEO tells me. “Your Genie is the star of the show. The script is whatever happens in the world that day.”

It all starts with customizing your big-headed, photorealistic Genie avatar. While Snapchat-owned Bitmoji look like a comic strip, Genies are closer to Pixar. First you’ll select a personality type that determines some of the scenes you’ll see, based on clouds of brands like Coachella, BuzzFeed and Supreme for cool kids, or TechCrunch and the BBC for techies. Then, using the Genies trait selector wheels, you can quickly scrub through tons of options for a dozen characteristics, like face shape, hair and eyes. Finally, you’ll outfit your Genie in clothes ranging from generic shirts to popular brands.

Genies sends you 10 to 15 animated scenes throughout each day that are around 10 seconds long and feature your avatar. They include quirky little situations for holidays like Christmas, cultural staples like hungover-Sundays and ones based on the top daily news for your personality type. Human editors review the scenes for factual accuracy, coherence and humor, and can tweak them before they’re sent out. Typically, new scenes will arrive quietly in the Genies app, with notifications reserved for huge breaking news or batched digests of updates.

Nigam says Genies taps more than 1 million sources with a focus on reputable news outlets to figure out what’s trending as early as possible. He claims that Genies’ art team and AI have built millions of pre-designed creative assets, and that the AI can actually piece them together to automatically create the animated scenes. If all the blogs are reporting Elon Musk’s plan to colonize mars, then it will cobble together space, stars and Elon himself to show your Genie rocketing to the Red Planet alongside the headline.

You can swipe up to read the top source article for the news. But what Genies really encourages is you messaging the video scenes to friends via other apps like Instagram Direct, Facebook Messenger or Snapchat. “Everyone has Giphy, but they use it everywhere else. Exact same thing with us,” Nigam tells me.

The idea is to leverage vanity to make the news seem interesting and shareable, and deliver it through a social app instead of a traditional media publisher. “At our age, we get the majority of our news from Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram.” And for added virality and personalization, many scenes include an empty silhouette you can fill with a celebrity of your choice, like Trump or Kylie Jenner, or insert a friend so you act out the scene with your buddy. If Facebook taught us anything, it’s that people will always open a notification if they get tagged in an image.

Overall, the Genies look great, with much more nuance than you see in alternatives with either fewer customization options or that rely on facial detection. Nigam says he’s not a believer in technologies for automatic avatar generation, saying that even small inaccuracies can be jarring, and testers enjoyed the personalization process. If Genies just released an emoji keyboard with the avatars so you could use them anywhere, it could prove popular.

But the animated scenes are often gimmicky, crass or even offensive. Over a few days of testing, I saw ones advocating for beer bonging, pot brownies, study drugs like Adderall and pouring crappy vodka into Grey Goose bottles to save money. Nigam defended the content, saying these were “party-oriented” for a “young demo where they share and learn through the lens of pop culture.” Others like “Wanted: Holiday Bang Buddy” might be too lewd even for college kids. And one even parodied the important NFL protests of racism and police brutality, featuring students “taking a knee” to get out of a pop quiz. That should never have made it past the human editors.

Those that weren’t worrisome often felt mediocre, like showing two avatars building a sandcastle to represent an article about Facebook launching the Messenger Kids app. Your Genie runs across the screen dropping bitcoin before someone bursts the bubble in one of today’s scenes. Perhaps the best one I saw was a mock-up for what Genies could have sent after the Las Vegas mass shooting tragedy that encouraged people to read a Newsweek article about how to give blood.

As a social app, the avatars are too contorted into specific situations for general use, and as a news reader, it feels haphazard and inefficient. The team has a powerful idea, and the graphics are pretty, but the execution on the content needs work.

Trying to make magic

“We did a bunch of apps, and they sucked,” Nigam says about previous products his team built before Genies. “We’d think they were gonna blow up and there’d be 16 users.” Born and raised in Silicon Valley’s Mountain View, Nigam is the kind of guy who’s been dreaming of launching his own app since he was old enough to be allowed to use them.

Genies co-founder and CEO Akash Nigam

He met his co-founders during hackathons while studying computer science at University of Michigan. They raised a seed round and built a failed group chat app called Blend while working out of a tiny room attached to a mosque in San Jose. They had a weak exit opportunity for Blend and turned it down. Seeing Bitmoji hover around App Store No. 1 for years convinced them there were greater riches in the avatar space.

Now they’ve pivoted Blend into Genies with $15 million over a few rounds of funding from traditional investors like NEA, Foundation Capital, Box Group, Great Oaks, Lerer Ventures and Trinity Ventures. The entertainment industry was also hot to trot, with backing coming from CAA Ventures, production company Management 360, Prizeo/Represent’s Bobby Maylack and former Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull. And strategic celebrities are also funding the startup, including NBA star Russell Westbrook, the football great Joe Montana, musician Shawn Mendes and former Vine stars Cameron Dallas and Jake Paul.

They see plenty of revenue opportunities in Genies, which could easily do product placement and sponsored content in its animated scenes. “Your Genie doing a Gatorade shower,” Nigam suggests. “We can monetize any time we want to turn on the spigot.” The startup also plans to let you buy the clothes you put on your Genie, or even get your avatar plastered on custom merchandise. “Brands get really fascinated by the wheels. We could do an entire Supreme wheel,” he explains, referring to the trendy urban fashion wear line.

Now the company has Silicon Valley and LA offices, plus engineering in Bucharest. “We take kids from the streets into our office every day for testing,” says, noting San Francisco doesn’t always know what’s hip. The startup spent the summer on an aggressive college marketing campaign, with tons of scantily clad models wearing Genies merchandise and signs asking the company to “Make My Genie.” All those waitlist sign-ups could help it score some traction today.

When asked about what he’d do if Snapchat’s Bitmoji started acting out the news too, Nigam fired back that they’d “force you to live inside Snapchat itself” rather than share elsewhere. And just to dig the dagger a bit deeper, he said, “They’re a trend that may have already reached its peak.”

Perhaps I’m showing my age by being put off by some of  the content. Nigam boldly states “We don’t really trust people in product unless they’re actively talking to teens all the time.” But being a news publisher, even one that looks nothing like the rest, can be more complicated than it seems. Snapchat has had to go to great lengths to teach news outlets how to make Discover channels for Gen Z. And Facebook is reckoning with how much damage can be done with fake news.

Genies has a ton of potential. The idea of a mini-you visually depicting the news is fun, and piggybacking on other messaging apps instead of trying to build another feed is wise. Still, the content feels rushed and half-baked at times, and could either fail to entice users or be too thin to persist as more than a fad. It has plenty of money and connections to find the talent necessary to improve the scenes, though. And if the avatars become something everyone wants, that could be enough in the meantime.

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