#i used a particular technique to color this image so that everything uses flat color

[krmayerillustration]

Kodama in the forest, with the Great Forest Spirit walking quietly behind them. Growing, private things, with no mind to keep the scars of war.

On Etsy

[audreydoeskaren]

Abridged history of early 20th century Chinese womenswear (part 3.1: 1920s-silhouette)

Source:  lucianolapadula.wordpress.com

*Disclaimer: I mostly talk out of my bum so don’t ask me for academic sources, I would love to know where they are but I haven’t found any reliable ones. I only share my own observations so please read me for filth if I’m wrong.

*There are almost no public domain images I could use because this topic is too obscure so I have to use random images that work and link the sources.

Intro/Context

In the 1920s the dominant form of womenswear was still technically the aoqun, however one piece dresses, sometimes with a fake vest, became popularized later in the decade and that could be considered a kind of proto-cheongsam. Many scholars and people on the Internet have different theories as to which particular garment was the true predecessor to the cheongsam but I think that’s a pointless quest, everything went in 1920s fashion and many styles bearing the same silhouette coexisted and they were all valid, it’s just that the one piece dress emerged victorious in the 1930s as the dominant form of womenswear. Looking at 1920s fashion with the sole purpose of finding the origins of cheongsam doesn’t do the decade justice.

In the 1920s Western influence also became more visible and many Art Deco designs were integrated into Chinese fashion, making it an all round exciting and creative decade for Chinese fashion.

Silhouette

In the early 1920s, the hem of the robe was similar to the mid-1910s ao from my previous post, hitting about the top of the hips. The sleeves became somewhat wider, but not reaching the widest point until the mid 20s. The skirt became shorter, usually mid calf, and was not as full as the pleated skirt of the previous decade. I was not able to find a lot of information about early 20s fashion but from the few contemporary drawings I did find (such as the one below) the outer robe of the previous decade seem to have become sleeveless in some occasions, resembling more of a vest, exposing the sleeves of the undershirt. Put a pin in this as the vest style will become quite prominent later in the decade.

Source: https://historypipe.blogspot.com/ (a cigarette ad from 1920)

Aoku (robe with pants) was still considered a fashionable way of dressing in the early 20s, then it started to fade out of popularity. The pants of the early 1920s were shorter and less form fitting than those in the 1910s, usually ending below the knee, allowing stockings to show, which could be very colorful and elaborate.

Source: lai yiching0926 on Pinterest https://www.pinterest.de/pin/675540012850646515/ (a tea ad from 1920)

Around the mid 1920s the skirt began to shorten, eventually reaching knee length, a development similar to that in Western fashion at the time. Pleating became fashionable again; instead of the mamian style pleating with flat sections in the front and back popular in previous decades, mid to late 20s skirts were completely pleated along the waistline, giving them an all round even fullness. Mid to late 1920s skirts commonly had wide hems, which could be decorated with embroidery, trimmings, scallop edges or other Western finishes. The sleeves were half length or shorter and became wider at the bottom, a style commonly known as 倒大袖.

Source: lai yiching0926 on Pinterest https://www.pinterest.de/pin/675540012850651575/ (a calendar showing the years 1926-1927) (the lady to the left is wearing aoku and the other aoqun. Notice the vest look)

Source: http://robertbrowngallery.com/artists_exhibited/artist_pages/image_page.php?image=Chinese_Advertising_Posters- (a raisin ad from 1925-26)

Around the same time, the proto-cheongsam one piece dress look was also being popularized. In the mid 1920s this style was usually knee length, with short sleeves and a high collar; they could also have the fake two piece effect, giving the appearance of a separate vest/tunic being worn. These dresses could have flared hems or short slits down both sides to allow freedom of movement. Interestingly, these dresses were tighter and more body-hugging than Western women’s dresses at the time, which were baggy and rectangular.

Source: http://www.thepankou.com/history-of-the-qipao-recluse-to-national-dress-1910s-1920s/?epik=dj0yJnU9UU82azlTdzgzSXBiYXV6dzJmUHdQcUFBaXQtci1KQVImcD0wJm49MmZTY3pna3FzQXBVOFJ3bGJSY1laZyZ0PUFBQUFBR0FVVU8w (I’m actually not sure if this is late 20s or early 30s, judging by the baggy look it’s probably 20s but the early 30s one piece dress had a similar, albeit tighter, silhouette)

Another thing about 1920s Chinese fashion is that I rarely see long-sleeved women’s garments, even in images supposedly depicting fall/wintertime. The more common way to fight off cold weather throughout the 1920s and 30s was to wear Western coats, especially Paul Poiret style fur wrap coats. I recall a lady in a contemporary film saying that coat design of this period was dominated by Parisian trends.

Source: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/19256348_hang-zhiying-1899-1947 (late 20s/early 30s) (the lady on the right is finally wearing long sleeves, not so easy to come across haha)

Source: art.com (their website shut down I can’t find the url) (1920s Western fur coats)

Late 20s Chinese womenswear was quite easy to identify. The skirts in aoqun outfits became longer, usually ankle length, with very wide hems. They had a tube like silhouette but were quite full, so I deduce that they were constructed from rectangular panels that were then cartridge pleated or gathered around the waistband. The waistline of the bodice (I don’t think these could be considered separate robes anymore...) rose quite significantly, ending at the natural waist. This was a divergence from the Western silhouette, which remained rectangular until late 1929. 

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/contumacy-singh/2803160798/in/photostream/?epik=dj0yJnU9cWhFcko0YUU5WXd1OERGQWd2VW9aQ1RXcFZ2S0VUTEEmcD0wJm49bWtmNTUzX0oxY2N3Zl94TWgycU5sZyZ0PUFBQUFBR0FVSW5R (a perfume ad calendar showing the years 1927-1928)

Source:  rs.bift.edu.cn (a cosmetics ad from 1928) (this company, Kwong Sang Hong, was founded in the 1890s and was really iconic and produced many advertisements which are great primary sources)

By the end of the 1920s there were four main styles of womenswear: the two piece aoqun with robe and skirt, the three piece set with robe, vest and skirt and the proto-cheongsam one piece dress. These styles coexisted; it was the silhouette (length of skirt, sleeve shape etc.) that changed throughout the decade and these changes applied to all styles. Interestingly, I don’t think I have seen photos of 1920s Chinese women wearing actual Western fashion, which is weird considering the level of westernization in the 20s and how easy to make and accessible 20s Western clothing was, in addition to the fact that many women in neighboring Japan had already adopted Western clothing.

Source: https://simplycirculate.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/beautiful-20s/?epik=dj0yJnU9WFVWLWtXQU9WM3NhOWVPZTJjZXlTMjc5SHVqeVNTUHQmcD0wJm49U1R4b2swZmxzQU9IUWpkX1o5TWVaUSZ0PUFBQUFBR0FWa2Zz (late 20s Western summer fashion) (Isn’t it interesting that when people think of 20s fashion they usually think of late 20s fashion? Early 20s with the long dresses and big hats deserve more appreciation, even though I don’t really like it personally)

Chinese women began wearing Western fashions in very small numbers beginning in the 1900s, but I guess because of the elaborate nature of Edwardian clothing and the lack of corsetry traditions in China it was expensive and not really popular. I have only seen uber-rich Chinese women in portraits wearing Western fashions. If a lady wanted to show Western influences in her fashion sense it was usually by using Western decorations or fabrics to make her Chinese clothes, or by wearing Western accessories.

Source: https://driwancybermuseum.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/semarang-history-collections/amp/?epik=dj0yJnU9TWRsc3pQU05nQTBVa19xVjZzSFBpSzlHclpTUHZrSUQmcD0wJm49WkdreF9VZnZqUEY3RWVOSVBaOExsdyZ0PUFBQUFBR0FVSnlz (Madame Wellington Koo in a 1910s ballgown)

I think it’s of some importance to discuss the methods for pattern drafting and construction. Chinese clothing began to become more form fitting in the late 20s, however it should be noted that this form-fitting shape was not achieved by Western dressmaking methods i.e. shaped pattern pieces and darts/tucks, but rather using the historical Chinese method of pattern drafting 平裁; Western dressmaking techniques would not be commonly used on Chinese garments until the 1950s. With this method, the front and back pieces of a robe/bodice would be two identical T shapes with overlapping parts at the front right closure. Historically (I mean in the Ming Dynasty) the overlapping bits at the front would be cut separately and then attached to the front pieces, resulting in a seam down the center front 中缝 that many people consider to be a staple of hanfu, although I’m not sure if this method was used before or after the Ming Dynasty. Similarly, I’m also not sure if this was the way 1920s/30s bodices were constructed, they may as well have two separate whole front pieces joined to the back piece at the shoulder and underarm/side seams. Until I get my hands on a period original this shall remain a mystery unless someone enlightens me (please). Anyway, bodices constructed in this method are not three dimensional and could be laid flat on a surface; this method was also used in other East Asian countries, maybe you have seen that when kimonos are laid or hung flat they have a T shape as well.

Example: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/88086 (mid 20s ao, can’t show the image here unfortunately)

This is getting very long so I will split the 1920s into multiple sections, information on design details, hair and accessories will be in subsequent posts.

[peroxidepoems]

“What’s on your mind pet” !!!!! That made me smile lol I almost forgot what I came here to ask

I absolutely love your drawings and am in complete awe at how much you can get Spike’s likeness! I can’t draw (like, at all) but I am fascinated by it. So, I was wondering where you even begin when you draw? And how long would you usually spend on your art? Do you start with a little sketch and plan it out, how does it work for you? 💖

I’m glad you like my lil’ ask text. Felt it appropriate and might lend a smile to someone.  Anyway, I’m glad you asked this! I enjoy diving deeper into the process of drawing, and it makes me happy when others take interest in it. I’ve drawn something to help show the steps visually since I felt pure text can only go so far. I’m going to add a “read more” now because this is a little on the long side. 

The first thing I do is contemplate an idea. What I’d like for the character to be expressing, facial or pose-wise. I like it when my drawing can tell a story. Even if it is a simple one, at that. Once I have an idea in my head I compile a reference sheet. Especially for fictional characters portrayed by real-life people. It would look something like this. Although, in most cases, there are more expressions and head angles.  (including alternate clothes and, for Spike, game face)

There is nothing wrong with gathering reference images. Professionals use this technique all the time. It has been proven that the results will be better when you have references to study from. For example, try to draw a dog from memory then try again with a reference. Basically, your mind can only hold so much detail and can start to warp in your head. No matter how often you’ve seen a dog.  Once I have all those pulled up, I start the sketch process. It isn’t anything too pretty and often the finished version may differ as I continue. During the rough sketch part, I tend to scribble more than one thought down and go with the one that speaks more to me. Typically I will start with mere shapes then add details on top so that is why you can see circles, grids, and box shapes beneath character details like face, hair, and clothes.  

Now that I’ve chosen which one I want to focus on, I start to line it. This part can differ, especially if I plan to have a background, but without one I tend to make the outline thicker. All the details on the inside will have a thinner line width. Then I will select a layer beneath it and start to color by laying all the flats down. During that stage, however, I will start to add small gradient tones. I will also color everything on different layers: skin, eyes, shirt, jacket, items, and hair. It makes shading easier.

Depending on how detailed I want the piece will justify how much shading and lighting it��ll need. Typically there are only two. This is also the point where I decide which direction the lighting will come from. As one can see in the example below. I add the darkest shading on smaller sections, very subtle notes. While the overall shading is lighter and throughout the piece. Third example is both together. 

Nearing the end, I will select the entire image and add an overlay color. This will blend the tone of the piece together nicely. In most cases, I use reds or blues. Seeing as this character is often seen at night I picked blue. It offers a colder atmosphere while red can offer a warmer tone. This is also the part where I add the main highlight. Again I pick the color that compliments the character. So instead of a gold hue, associated with warmer tones, I will go with something closer to purple. I lower the layer opacity to roughly 10% for overlay and 20% for the highlights. Here are both versions. 

I’ll add some final touches like the font on the tombstone, a crack, some small detailed lighting, etc. I might even add one final, small blur shading that will sit over everything (but below the overlay and highlight) just to really imply where the light source is. 

For this image, in particular, I felt something was missing. The hand needed something in it, and at first, I thought a cigarette would work. Then I sat back to stare at the image from a distance — which I often do during the whole process. I took in what type of story I am portraying here, and though Spike with a cig matches his personality, I decided to add a rose. Thing is, I had the entire image done when I decided this. As you can see throughout the entire process above there was never a rose sketched in. This is what I meant by a piece can differ as I go along. For now, this explains the process enough and it is already too long, so I will have the finished drawing posted separately — rose included.  

In the end, it really depends on the details — if it’ll be just a sketch or full rendered illustrations, on how long these can take me to finish. For example, I can sketch something up in under an hour. It is the lining and shading that seems to take the most time, for me. And, if the artwork is done in a painterly style, then it’ll take even longer (eight to twelve hours). For this drawing, it roughly took me three hours.  I hope this answered everything nicely and thank you again for asking! 💙   

[crushzone]

Hi Nin! I know this might be weird of me to ask because you are an artist yourself, but I am rather new here and was wondering if you have any other artists you'd recommend? If not that is ok!

Hi there, not weird at all! I LOVE supporting fellow artists, I find their wonderful talent and dedication incredibly inspiring, seeing their beautiful works on my feed constantly reminds me to take a step back from my exhaustion and to simply remember why I love to draw to begin with: because it’s fun.

I’m usually really picky about artists I follow and their style, but when I find the ones that I enjoy, I go ALL OUT with my support. So without further ado, the following artists listed are those I am not only in love with, but those who I genuinely look up to. 

So make sure you stop by their page to show them some love and appreciation for their hard work (because hard work extends beyond the individual pieces they’ve made, it’s also for the countless hours they’ve spent on practicing and perfecting their craft, constantly challenging themselves to learn new techniques). 💛

👇🏼👇🏼 Nin’s Artist Recommendation👇🏼👇🏼

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@aku-jumbi - HQ!!, Various, You all had seen me share a BUNCH of their works on my blog, but it’s just because their art is so SOOOOOOOOO good. Your style leans toward photorealism, while still maintaining its painting-like quality, so if you had ever wondered how your favorite characters may look like irl, they’ve got you!!! Watching your speed painting is so fascinating, idk how you do it, but you’re always killing it every time (Like our process is so different, so it was really interesting to see how you approach your works you know?). This piece of Kei Tsukishima and Oikawa Tooru are two of my favorite works you’ve done!

@achieve-the-sun - HQ!!, Various, Let me start off by saying that I love Morghy’s art so much, that they are the first and only person I had ever commissioned from so far. They drew Keishin and I sooo adorably, it brings me so much joy to look at it on the daily. Your style reminds me of freshly baked cookies, or the warmth of bakeries, I can’t help but feel a sense of coziness whenever I look at your adorable artworks. This piece you did of Kageyama and Hinata was what had drawn me to you. Everything from your color choices, fluid gestures, and expressions are such a delight to look at!

@chaotickatts - HQ!! I am so in love with Katts, you all. I had never seen anyone draw like this, her style is really unique. I can go on forever about why I love your art, but one of the biggest things that drew me to your style is the way you draw bodies. I like the variation and realistic details you include, for instance, I absolutely adore the way you gave Sakusa more moles on his body, and the way you drew dad bod Osamu. Idk, I think there’s so many different types of body shapes and details out there, and it brings me joy to see you being so inclusive of them in your art.

@namusw - Hunter x Hunter. Was drawn to their Hunter x Hunter works and I don’t even watch/read that manga. Honestly, just check them out, I love everything about their works, they are also a killer at both traditional and digital styles. This piece of Hisoka, Illumi, and Chrollo was the one that made me fall in love.

@cranbearly - HQ!! I really adore the way they draw expressions and their coloring style (inspired me to attempt some flat coloring). This piece of Oikawa and Iwa made me follow them instantly. Expressions are so difficult to nail, and you’ve done such an amazing job conveying every emotion the characters are feeling, I’ve learned so much just from looking at your works, so thank you for blessing us with your craft.

@a-zebra-was-here - HQ!! Their art has a very carefree type of vibe and their coloring style brings me so much joy. I’ve really enjoyed your drawings of the Miyas’, this piece of the twin was what got me, and this other piece, the first image of young Miyas’ was so SO well done, I am in love with the way you colored that. 😻 

@erionmakuo - Various, dude....I want to cry, I don’t even know what to say, EVERY SINGLE PIECE of your artworks just BLOWS ME AWAY. The way you color your art is just so ethereal, the color schemes you had chosen, the way you mix the color of your lighting, textures, and everything in general, I can go on about this all day but just hop on to their blog and you will know exactly what I mean. I don’t have a particular piece that drew me in because I was blessed by all your works at once.

@uranarino - HQ!!, Your artworks bring me so much joy. If I have to describe your style like an experience in life, I would say it reminds me of how it’s like to fall in love with someone for the first time, if that makes sense. That sudden overwhelming feeling you get when you’re doing the most mundane things with someone you care about, only for time to stop as you realize how in love you are with them? Yea, your art captures that really well. These two pieces of Kuroo returning home with his groceries and of him taking a day nap with his cats was what had drawn me to you.

@queenoftheantz - HQ!!, Various, Their style is really unique, it kind of reminds me of an adventurous graphic novel or something you would see on Cartoon Network (idk, I thought of Chowder, but please, I really mean it as a compliment, I just really love the fun cartoon style you have.) They also do some animations! I really love this piece of Kyotani you did, the landscape and colors look SOO GOOD!!

@noodlemanjpg - HQ!!, Various, love LOVE your style and the way you draw expressions. I also really love how you color, your works “appear” effortless, but I know a lot of knowledge and precision is put into crafting it. This piece of Kuroo x Yaku being all cozy at the couch was what had drawn me to your blog, it makes me smile every time I look at it. Kuroo’s smitten expression is just...ahsdl;adjs I can’t help but smile with him.

@diabolism666 - HQ!!, c’mon, you can’t be in the HQ!! fandom without at least seeing one of their artworks. In fact, I had seen your art even before I’ve gotten into this show, and it was love at first sight, lemme tell ya. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. you had drawn are so good, it doesn’t even matter if it’s a more simplistic drawing or elaborate one, I am just always staring at it in awe. Thank you for being so incredibly active about it too, idk how, but you’ve produced so many amazing drawings and we’re just incredibly grateful for it. You draw some of best Tendou, Reon and Toshi out there. Your works have so much range, I really feel like you can draw ANYTHING hahaha.

@viria​ - Various, Viria *sobs* your works are so good. The way you draw faces and affection just gives me butterflies. I don’t even watch Fullmetal Alchemist, but this piece you did of Edward and Winry made me fall so deeply in love with your works. Your style has a certain softness to it, even when it is of an angry character, and I love it.

@nipuni​ - Various, another artist that I am incredibly nervous to tag because your works are just out of the world. You also seem so so nice and is always incredibly helpful whenever anyone sends you an ask. Just...I have the biggest crush on you and your works. EVERYTHING you had drawn is so stunning, and I mean it. The details, pose, composition, and coloring, it is just so perfect, I could pull up particular artworks, but I was really blessed by it all at once. If you are into fantasy-esque realistic looking portraits, check her out, she exudes so much knowledge and talent.

@hinamihere - HQ!!, Your artworks are soo stinkin adorable. Your color choices, expressions and the way you draw hair is just so cute, your art always bring the biggest smile to my face. This piece you did of Akaashi and Bokuto was what drew me to you, when I saw it, I “awhhh”ed so loudly, my hubby had to ask me what’s up, and when I showed it to him, he had the same reaction, even if he’d never seen Haikyuu!!

@oxxuri - BNHA, so SO good, the way you color, light, and draw is so beautiful. Every single detail, down to every lashes and strands of hair is so beautiful. You draw some of the most attractive faces I had ever seen, these drawings of Aizawa and Midoriya brings me so SOOOO much joy, and I don’t even know anything about BNHA.

@amezure - HQ!!, their comic strips always make my day, I was giving their blog a peep so I can pull up specific examples and my statement is instantly confirmed when I stumbled across their newest comic art of Kuroo and Bokuto and started laughing HAHA. 😂 Your self study sheets are incredibly informative and I find myself referencing them often, it’s so nice to see my favorite artists continue to polish their craft through endless amounts of studying, practice, and analysis. It serves as a constant reminder for myself to do the same. I love the way you draw people (check out this piece of Bokuto x Akaashi), but I ESPECIALLY love the way you draw animals. (Specifically anything that has to do with lil owl Bo and Akaashi 🥺)

@obobro - Avatar the Last Airbender, HQ!!, I am absolutely in love with the way you color and draw portraits. Your drawing and detailing has so much range; you have a series of hand drawings, and that alone already displays so SO much range. I was really drawn in by this drawing of Tsukki, Zuka + Azula, and of Sokka + Katara, you can really tell they were related and I love it so much. Your art has so much life to it, it’s truly fascinating. 

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I have a couple more artists to recommend, so if you’d like a part 2 to this, please lmk.

But yes, I genuinely stand by my recommendations, these guys are so SO good at what they do and I am currently sweating because the thought of tagging all my artist crushes in one post is actually kinda scary lol.

Hope this helps! ✌️ 

[knifeonmars]

Capsule Reviews, February 2021

Here's some things I've been reading.

The Curse of Brimstone 

DC's New Age of Heroes books, emerging from the beginning of Scott Snyder's creative-flameout-as-crossover-event Metal, mostly constituted riffs on Marvel heroes like the Fantastic Four (in The Terrifics) or the Hulk (in Damage). The Curse of Brimstone is a riff on Ghost Rider. It's... uneven. The first volume is generally pretty good, and when Phillip Tan is drawing it, as he does the first three and a half issues, it's gorgeous and unique, when he departs though, the quality takes a nose dive. None of the replacement artists, including the great Denis Cowan, can quite fill his shoes, and the story gets old fast. Guy makes a deal with the devil (or rather, a devil-like inhabitant of the "Dark Multiverse" as a not horribly handled tie-in to the conceits of Metal), realizes it's a raw deal, and rebels. The characters are flat, lots of time is spent with the main character's sister haranguing him to not use his powers (it is, in my humble opinion, something of a cardinal sin to have a character whose primary role is telling other characters to stop doing interesting things), too many potboiler "I know you're still in there!/I can feel this power consuming me!" exchanges, a couple of underwhelming guest spots (including a genuinely pointless appearance by the old, white, boring Doctor Fate) too many flashbacks, and not enough of the action. There's potential in the classic demonic hero rebelling plotline and its link to the liminal spaces of the DC universe, forgotten towns and economic depression, but the wheels come off this series pretty much as soon as Tan leaves. The really disappointing this is that the series is clearly built as an artistic showcase, so after Tan's shockingly early departure, the main appeal of the series is gone and there's nothing left but the playing out of an obviously threadbare story.

Star Wars - Boba Fett: Death, Lies, and Treachery

I don't care much about Star Wars these days, and I think that most of the old Expanded Universe was, as evidenced by Crimson Empire, pretty bad. Death, Lies, and Treachery, is that rare Star Wars EU comic which is actually good. John Wagner writes and he's in full-on 2000 AD mode, writing Boba Fett as a slightly more unpleasant Johnny Alpha (who is like a mercenary Judge Dredd, for those unfamiliar) right on down to the appearance of a funny alien sidekick for one of the characters. The main attraction is Cam Kennedy's art though, along with his inimitable colors: this might be the best looking Star Wars comic ever. The designs are all weird and chunky, with an almost kitbashed feeling that captures the lived in aesthetic of classic Star Wars, and the colors are one of a kind. Natural, neutral white light does not exist in this comic, everything is always bathed at all times in lurid greens or yellows, occasionally reds, and it looks incredible. In terms of "Expanded Universe" material for Star Wars, this hits the sweet spot of looking and feeling of a piece, but exploring the edges of the concept with a unique voice. It's great. I read this digitally, but I'd consider it a must-buy in print if I ever get the chance at a deal.

Zaroff

Zaroff is a French comic (novel? novella?). It's like 90 pages and it delivers exactly on its premise of "Die Hard starring the bad guy from The Most Dangerous Game." It's pretty good. Count Zaroff, he of the habitual hunting of humans, turns out to have killed a mafia don at some point, and after miraculously escaping his own seeming death at the end of the original story, finds himself hunted by the irate associates of this gangster, who have brought along Zaroff's sister and her kids to spice things up. Zaroff not only finds himself the hunt, but he also has to protect his estranged family as they struggle to survive. Nothing about this book or its twists and turns is likely to surprise you, but I don't think being surprised is always necessary for quality. Zaroff delivers on pulpy, early-20th century jungle action, is gorgeously rendered, and the fact that Zaroff himself is an unrepentant villain adds just enough of an unexpected element to the proceedings and character dynamics that it doesn't feel rote. There's a couple of points, ones typical of Eurocomics, which spark a slight sour note, such as some "period appropriate" racism and flashes of the male gaze, but for the most part these are relatively contained. It's good.

Batman: Gothic

Long before Grant Morrison did their Bat-epic, they wrote Batman: Gothic, an entirely different, but then again maybe not so different, kind of thing. It starts off with what must be called a riff on Fritz Lang's film, M, only where that story ends with a crew of gangsters deciding they cannot pass moral judgment on a deranged child-murderer, in Morrison's story they go ahead and kill him, only for the killer to return years later to rather horribly murder all of them as a warmup for a grandiose scheme involving unleashing a weaponized form of the bubonic plague on Gotham City as an offering to Satan. Along the way it turns out that said villain, one Mr. Whisper, is a former schoolmaster of Bruce Wayne's, who terrified the young Batman in the days before his parent's deaths. It's an earlier Morrison story and it shows. Certain elements presage their later Batman work; Mr. Whisper as a satanic enemy recalls the later Doctor Hurt, and the cathedral Mr. Whisper built to harvest souls recalls what writers like Morrison, Milligan, and Snyder would do concerning Gotham as a whole years later.The art, by Klaus Janson, is spectacular. If you're familiar at all with his work collaborating with Frank Miller you'll see him continuing in a similar vein and it's all quite good, even when he stretches beyond the street milieu which most readers might know him from. There's one particular sequence where Janson renders a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg machine in motion that manages to work despite being static images. The writing by Morrison though, is not their finest. The M riff doesn't last as long as it could, and Mr. Whisper's turn in the latter half of the story from delicious creepy wraith to a cackling mass murderer who puts Batman in an easily escaped death trap feels like something of a letdown from the promise of the first half of the book. Gothic is good, but not, in my opinion, great. It's certainly worth checking out for Morrison fans however, and I imagine that someone well-versed in his latter Batman stuff might be able to find some real resonance between the two.

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters

For a long, long time, Longbow Hunters was THE Green Arrow story. It is to Green Arrow as TDKR is to Batman, deliberately so. Mike Grell wrote and drew the reinvention of the character from his role as the Justice League's resident limousine liberal to a gritty urban vigilante operating in Seattle over the course of these three issues, which he'd follow up with a subsequent ongoing. Going back to it, it certainly merits its reputation, but its far from timeless. Grell's art is unimpeachable absolutely incredible, with great splashes and spreads, subtle colors, and really great figure work. The narrative is almost so 80's it hurts though, revolving around West Coast serial killers, cocaine, the CIA and the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Yakuza, and it's hard to look back at some of this stuff without smirking. The story begins with a teenager strung out on tainted coke sprinting through a window in a scene that's right out of Reefer Madness. In the cold light of a day 30+ years later, parts of it look more than a little silly. The 80's-ness of it all doesn't stop with that stuff though, even the superhero elements smack of it. Green Arrow realizes that he's lost a step and has be to be shown a way forward by an Asian woman skilled in the martial arts (recalling Vic Sage's reinvention in the pages of The Question), and Black Canary gets captured and torture off-panel for the sake of showing that this is real crime now, not the superhero silliness they've dealt with before. The treatment of Black Canary here is pretty markedly heinous, it's a classic fridging and Grell's claims that he didn't intentionally imply sexual assault in his depiction of her torture is probably true, but still feels more than a little weak considering how he chose to render it.The final analysis is that this book is good, but it exists strictly in the frame of the 1980's. If you're a fan of Green Arrow, there are worse books to pick up, or if you're interested in that era of DC Comics it's more than worth it, but as a matter of general interest I wouldn't recommend it very highly.

SHIELD by Steranko

Jim Steranko is sort of the prodigy of the early Marvel years, a young guy who came up through the system, blossomed into an incredible talent, and then left the company, and by and large the industry, behind. He would go on to dabble in publishing, work in other mediums, and generally kick around as the prodigal son of Marvel Comics. This collection, of both his Nick Fury shorts in the pages of Strange Tales and the four issues he drew of the original Nick Fury solo series, charts Steranko's growth as an artist. The book starts off with Steranko working from Jack Kirby's layouts with Stan Lee's dialogue and writing, and Steranko might be the one guy in history for whom working off of Kirby's blueprints is clearly holding him back. The first third or so of this collection really isn't much to write home about, as Steranko is obviously constrained by someone else's style, and at the end of the day those early stories still read as somewhat uninspired pulp compared to the highlights of early Marvel. There are flashes though, of techniques and ideas, which foreshadow what Steranko is capable of, and when he finally takes over as solo writer/artist it's like he's been unleashed. He immediately has Nick Fury tear off his shirt and start throwing guys around over psychedelic effects. He writes out most of Kirby and Lee's frankly uninspired boys' club supporting cast, he makes Fury visibly older, wearier, but also so much cooler. It's the birth of Nick Fury as a distinctly comic book super spy.By the time he finishes wrapping up the previous writers' plotline with Hydra and Baron von Strucker, Steranko is firing on all cylinders. By the time it gets to Steranko's Fury solo series, he's somehow surpassed himself, turning in effects, panel structures, and weird stories which make the earlier installment about a suit-wearing Man from UNCLE knockoff and its strict six-panel layouts look absolutely fossilized.I can't recommend this collection highly enough for any fan of the artform, even if the stories themselves might not be everyone's cup of tear. It's truly incredible to watch Steranko emerge as an artist over the course of this single collection. The book itself has a few problems, it's not the most elegantly designed in its supporting materials and index, but the content of it more than outweighs that. It's great stuff.

[nomanwalksalone]

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND MENSWEAR

by Josh M

It is surprising that in this tremendous field, ranking conservatively among the first five in the United States, such unregulated and primitive conditions obtain that unreserved pilfering is tolerated and openly permitted.

The leaders of this gigantic segment of our commercial life who have labored so effectively in strengthening the weak spots of their organization, have completed ignored a situation that is eating away at the very roots of its existence.  Style and creation constitute the life blood of this multi-billion dollar business.  Without them, the industry would fade into obscurity.  Yet, for some unknown reason, style piracy is treated more indulgently than much lesser offenses involving deprivation of one’s rights and property.

Samuel Winston, Inc. v. Charles James Servs., Inc., 159 N.Y.S.2d 176, 718 (Sup. Ct. 1956).

“There is no justice in the fashion business,” Karl Lagerfeld once remarked.

Indeed, many clothing designers in the United States would agree.  Recent years have seen a proliferation of “fast fashion” chains, offering an array of inexpensive, unauthorized copies of designer clothes.  Thanks to digital photography and fast production, these chains can offer nearly indistinguishable copies of a designer garment months before the original even reaches stores.

To make matters worse, these practices are legal.  Although intellectual property (IP) law in the United States covers a wide range of artistic works, inventions, designs, and images, it offers effectively no protection for fashion designs.

On one hand, proponents of protection rely primarily on traditional arguments for protecting IP:  copyright for fashion designs would encourage greater innovation by ensuring that the profits from a design went to the designer and not to those who merely copied the work.  Unestablished designers and labels especially need protection, they argue, as copying stymies their efforts to build a brand.  On the other hand, opponents of protection argue that unique features of the fashion industry make IP protection for fashion designs counterproductive.  The fashion industry, they argue, thrives on imitation, and IP protection would impede the formation of trends and slow the rate of change in fashions, chilling innovation and hurting the industry.

Much ink has been spilled on IP protection in the context of the women’s fast-fashion industry.  Kim Kardashian’s relationship with Fashion Nova, and her lawsuit involving Missguided, is nearly household knowledge at this point (well, at least for me).  This article, following a brief discussion of the IP protection available in theory to clothing designers, briefly addresses IP protection—or a lack thereof—in the “Menswear” industry, and touches on considerations for consumers.

A brief overview of IP protection in the United States

Clothing designers can seek IP protection in three main areas:  patent; trademark (and trade dress); and copyright.

A patent is used to protect “any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement therein not before known or used.”  If possible, clothing designers will typically seek a design patent (as opposed to utility patent), requiring the designer to show “novelty, non-obviousness, ornamentality, and non-functionality.”  There lies the rub.  First, clothing is inherently functional; it serves the purpose of covering the body (for better and for worse).  Second, designing an article of clothing that is non-obvious is nearly impossible given the derivative nature of the industry.  Finally, even if a designer jumps these legal hurdles, it typically takes the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) over two (2) years to review each application.  By that time, we may yet again be reaching for low-rise, flat-front pants.

A trademark refers to:

any word, name, symbol, or device … used by a person, or … which a person has a bona fide intention to use in commerce and applies to register … to identify and distinguish his or her goods, including a unique product, from those manufactured or sold by others and to indicate the source of the goods, even if that source is unknown.

At base, the mark must be distinctive.  That is, it must be “(1) inherently distinctive or (2) have obtained distinctiveness by way of acquiring a secondary meaning.”  Trademark law provides a great deal of protection for certain types of designs when there is a logo affixed to them and protects the designers from others using the logo or anything substantially similar that would lead to a consumer being confused.  Consider, for example, the “Supreme Box Logo Tee.”  While trademark refers to a symbol or a name affixed to the article, trade dress offers protection to the overall look and feel of a non-functional product.  This includes the protection of features “such as size, shape, color or color combinations, texture, graphics, or even particular sales techniques.”  A distinctive color can be a protected interest in the fashion industry. Tiffany’s aquamarine blue, for instance.  But it’s not easy. Off-White’s numerous efforts to seek IP protection for its “signature” red zip-tie highlights the difficulty of obtaining trademark and/or trade dress protection under United States law.

Copyright protection would “offer[] the most protection,” but currently “is extremely limited.”  Section 102 of the Copyright Act provides that copyright protection extends to “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium.”  Problems for clothing designers arise because this type of protection does not extend to “useful articles,” a category which encompasses clothing designs.  Because clothing articles are inherently “functional” and serve the utilitarian purpose of covering the body (again, for better and for worse), it is extremely difficult for designers to find refuge in copyright protection because the bar to prove that their design is “non-functional” is exceedingly high.

The scant IP protections that are available under United States law help to explain the proliferation of certain trends in the fashion industry, i.e., Louis Vuitton placing its logo on, well, just about everything that it makes, Bottega Veneta utilizing its trademarked, signature weave, or Christian Louboutin tending to use lacquered red soles on all of its high heels.

IP Protection in Menswear and Considerations for Consumers

If your eyes glossed over reading the last section, I can summarize it for you briefly: intellectual property protection in capital-M “Menswear” is effectively nonexistent.  In an industry where adjectives like “staple,” “timeless,” and “versatile” abound, the vast majority of clothing is inherently functional, non-distinctive, and useful – particularly, from the perspective of the rest of the world.  This may, depending on your perspective, create issues.

For example, I would characterize the late Eidos x NMWA cut as distinctive – perhaps even revolutionary – in lieu of what was available on the ready-to-wear market.  Since then, less expensive replicas have appeared.  Was the Eidos x NMWA cut ever capable of IP protection?  Probably not.  

Because of this complete lack of protection, we, as consumers, must decide – is this something that is worth protecting?  For me personally, I feel that even if the law doesn’t recognize in clothing the same kind of inspiration and creativity that it recognizes in art and literature, I can recognize it myself. And when I do recognize a piece that contains an idea, I want it straight from the person who thought of it, rather than an imitator.

Of course, each person will draw their own boundaries between imitation and development. One person may view, for instance, all garments inspired by U.S. military designs as knock-offs and only want the original vintage pieces. Others may view the same design made in a different fabric as an innovation. These things won’t get decided in court, so we don’t have to agree on them. But it’s part of my appreciation of my own clothes. I enjoy them a little bit more knowing that what I’m wearing came from someone who had an idea.  

This article represents the views of its author, who has little training or experience in intellectual property law, and is not legal advice.

[queenxxxsupreme]

Burning

A/N: just a little something I’ve been messing around with. 

Warnings: mentions of blood, religion talk, 

Word Count: 3.3k

Summary: Michael finds a strange being he can’t explain. 

18 Months Before Nuclear Destruction of the Earth

Michael wasn’t sure how long she had been there, sitting on her knees in the center of the fallen trees. The ground beneath her was scorched. Her hands were held in front of her, crimson-covered palms facing the sky like she was waiting for fall into her grasp. Her head hung, her chin tucked to her chest. Unruly blonde waves blocked her face from his eyes. Blood was splattered on her face and up into her hairline, speckling her porcelain skin with the red substance. Her eyes were closed, dark and full lashes resting up rosy cheeks. Pink lips were parted but Michel couldn’t hear her heart beating or hear her lungs fill with air. 

Curious, he stepped forward then decided he’d have better luck transmutating to her side rather than walking through the maze of fallen trees. He came to stand by her side, his hands clasping together behind his back. 

“Who are you?” His tone was firm and demanding. He knew he was dreaming, it was a sense he got from the surroundings. But she didn’t belong here. 

Now that he stood beside her, he could see the trail of charcoal gray feathers behind her. They were spread out, almost like they’d fallen here and then as she moved to where she currently rested. 

“I don’t know.” Her voice was sweet and gentle. He inhaled softly, studying her carefully now that he was closer to her. 

There was blood dripping from her nose and her lips were busted. There were scratch marks on her cheek. She had been in a fight. 

“Who did you kill?”

“We’ve all killed someone, haven’t we?” She murmured gently, her eyes opening to reveal vibrant blue eyes. He had been told before that his were an icy blue but hers were the color of the sky on a cloudless day. “We kill who we truly are to be who others want us to be. You killed who you are to be who your father wants you to be, just as I did a long time ago for my father.”

Michael’s lips parted. He wanted to say something, whether it be a snarky comeback or a question he wasn’t sure. But for the first time in his life, Michael Langdon found himself speechless.

She turned her head to look at him, her hair falling out of her face as she looked at him. 

“You have humanity in you, Michael. You just ignore it because your father has plans for you.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about me.” He growled at her, his hand flying out to grab her throat. Just before he could make contact with her, she was gone. His eyes widened as he looked around the little clearing.

He could sense her behind him. Instead of turning to face her, he decided to close his eyes and feel her energy. She felt like the embodiment of warm vanilla and honey. It was oddly warm and welcoming. 

“Violence is only the answer when you have no other way out, Michael.” 

“How do you know my name?” He glanced over his shoulder to her.

“I know everything about you. My father has told me about you for centuries.” Her eyes remained on the back of his head, studying his long golden locks. 

“Your father?” He repeated, turning to face her. She was nearly an entire foot shorter than him. Her figure was slim but her hips were thick and the little white dress with thin straps she wore threatened to reveal her backside should she bend over. “Who is your father?” Michael inquired, tilting his head to the side just slightly.

“He’s told me you’re dangerous.” She took a step towards Michael, bringing her hand up to stroke his cheek. The crimson blood on her palm was delicately smeared across his flawless skin. “But you wouldn’t hurt me.”

Michael almost laughed at her words. She’d be a fool to think he wouldn’t hurt her. He’d have no problem snapping her neck. But a part of him was curious about her. Who was this girl? Why was she covered in blood? And who was her father?

MIchael jolted awake, bumps rising across his skin as he blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes to clear his vision of the trance-like state he was just in. It was too real to be a dream. Perhaps it was a vision. 

A knock on the door to his office reminded him that he was still in his office at Kineros. He sat up in his seat and straightened his suit jacket.

“Enter.” 

“Mr. Langdon, sir?” One of the interns poked her head in, pausing for a moment to bite her bottom lip. “Your driver is here and ready to take you to Outpost Two.”

“Good.” With his flat reply, the door closed behind her. 

Michael stood to his feet and moved towards the windows of his office that overlooked the courtyard. He watched the people move about, hurrying to get last minute things together. In a matter of a few days, the world would be ending. 

The image of the blood covered blonde woman flashed through his mind. His nails dug into his palms as he curled his fingers into tight fists. 

**

There weren’t many things that Michael let bother him. He usually got rid of anyone who irritated him or fixed the problem that was vexing. But in the months following the end of the world and even after, he began to see the blonde woman frequently. 

Every ‘dream’ started the same as the very first one. She would be standing in the center of a clearing, surrounded by trees that appeared to have been knocked over by some sort of wind storm. Each time, she would be on her knees with her head hanging and her hands held out in front of her. The only thing different each time was the amount of blood on her. Sometimes, there was so much blood on her that Michael barely recognized her. Other times, the only blood on her was on her fingertips. 

Eighteen months passed and Michael had had the ‘dream’ a total of sixty-three times. Outpost Three was his last stop before he could start rebuilding the world. He already had a plan for what would happen at the old school for warlocks. 

He moved through the hallways, surveying the empty halls and scowling at old memories. The moment he arrived, he could feel something was different about this outpost than the others. This one contained someone different, a being different than the others occupying it. Whoever it was, their life-force felt like the embodiment of electricity. His skin pricked and tingled and bumps rose on his skin. When Michael tried to look further into the being, the harmless tingle turned into a scorching burn. His teeth vibrated and his entirety felt like it was trembling ever so slightly. 

Just before entering the library full of the last survivors, he took a quiet deep breath and forced the painful sensation away. He recanted his invisible touch from the being’s life-force, thus ending the burning sensation in his chest. He couldn’t lose his composure in front of these people. 

He entered the library and almost instantly, everyone’s eyes were on him. He focused on Venable, a smug smile on his lips. He came to a stop next to her, waiting patiently for her to move out of his spot. She met his gaze, putting on a fake friendly smile. 

"My name is Langdon, and I represent the Cooperative. I won't sugarcoat the situation. Humanity is on the brink of failure." His eyes flickered around the room. His voice was powerful and strong. 

Icy blue eyes found the blonde girl sitting between Emily and Andre. She was the girl he had been seeing for the last year and a half. She was sitting right there, right in front of him. His lips parted and he wanted to say something, anything, but he couldn’t think of anything. He couldn’t get his mind to work. 

Her eyes lingered on his for a few heartbeats before she looked down to her hands, her dark eyebrows furrowing together just slightly. 

“Mr. Langdon.” Venable said his name firmly, catching his attention. He turned his head to her, raising his brows just slightly, as if to question why she’d dare say his name. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” He answered smoothly, the facade taking over his features once more. “As I was saying, my arrival here was crucial to the survival of civilized life on Earth. The three other compounds in Syracuse, New York, Beckley, West Virginia, and San Angelo, Texas have been overrun and destroyed. We've had no contact from the six international outposts, but we are assuming that they, too, have been eliminated."

"What happened to the people inside?" Timothy asked.

"Massacred." Michael looked to him. "The same fate that will befall almost all of you."

"Almost all?" Mallory asked. No one said anything to her. Michael eyed her but remained silent. The blonde girl paid close attention to the interaction. Mallory muttered a quiet apology and looked down. 

"In the knowledge that this very moment might occur, we built a fail safe. The Sanctuary."

"The Sanctuary?" Coco squinted her eyes. It sounded like she didn't believe Michael.

"The Sanctuary is unique. It has certain security measures that will prevent overrun."

"Excuse me, sir?" Ms. Mead spoke up. "What measures? Why weren't we given them?"

"That's classified." He put his hand up. There was a shift in his tone for a brief moment, almost like he was irritated. But it immediately disappeared and his calm and collected tone returned. "All that matters is that the Sanctuary will survive, so the people populating it will survive, so humanity will survive."

"Who are the people populating it?" Andre asked.

"Also classified." Michael answered. "However, I've been sent to determine if any of you are worthy and fit to join us."

Quiet murmurs began to fill the room. Michael paused for a brief moment to inspect the Purples, his eyes lingering on the blonde woman. She remained silent but nodded at something that Emily whispered to her.

"The Cooperative has developed a particular and rigorous questioning technique we like to call 'cooperating.' I will then use the information gained to determine if you belong."

"What is this?" Coco furrowed her brow together. "The Hunger Games? This is bullshit. I paid my way in here, and that is the only cooperating I plan on doing."

"You don't have to sit for questioning." Michael shook his head.

"What happens if we choose not to?" Andre looked up from his hands.

"Then you stay here and die." Michael’s answer came out sharp.

"I volunteer to go first." Gallant put his hand up.

"No, you won’t.” His words were smooth. He clasped his hands together behind his back. “I’ve already decided who I want to go first.”

“Who is it?” Emily asked, furrowing her eyebrows together. Michael looked to her and then his eyes flickered to the blonde next to her. 

“You.”

She stiffened up under the man's dark gaze. Her stomach knotted up. She couldn't look away from him.

"The process should only take me a couple of days, so you won't be kept in suspense forever." He reached into his jacket. "For those who don't make the cut, all is not lost. If the worst should happen and feral cannibals come knocking, down one of these. One minute later, you fall asleep and never wake up."

Silence fell around the room.

"I look forward to meeting each and every one of you."

***

She followed a safe distance behind the golden haired man as he led her through the halls of the Outpost. His hands were behind his back. She admired his rings, taking note of the way he brushed the pad of his thumb across his fingertips.

She wanted to ask him why he chose her first but now didn’t seem appropriate. She’d wait until they were in the room he’d be doing the interviews in.

He pushed two large black doors open and stepped aside. He turned to her when she stopped moving. Her bright blue eyes surveyed what they could of the room before flickering up to him. She was cautious, uncertain of him and his motives.

“Go on.” He gestured for her to walk in. Her energy was astounding. She wasn’t a witch or even human. No, she was much more than that.

Silently, she passed him. The smell of her vanilla shampoo filled Michael’s senses. He closed his eyes for a moment, his mind taking him back to the vision he’d had so many times of her. She was gorgeous, he knew that already, but in person her beauty was unparalleled. She was otherworldly.

A buzz of electricity brought him back to his senses, reminding him where he was and what his mission was. He needed to figure out what this creature before him was.

She stopped a few feet inside the study, messing nervously with her hands as she peered around the room out of curiosity. She flinched when the doors closed with a solid thud. Michael smirked just a little. She was jumpy.

He moved to the desk, opting to lean against the front of the desk in front of the chair he wanted her to sit in.

“Tell me your name.” His fingers curled around the edge of the dark oak in anticipation. She sat down in the chair, her posture nearly perfect as she sat with her back straight and her shoulders squared. It didn’t look forced. He assumed perfection was natural for her.

“Eden.” Her voice matched the one from his dreams to a T. It was velvet smooth and sweet.

“Eden.” He hummed, testing the name out on his tongue to see if it fit.

Her eyes fell to her hands as he continued to stare at her like he was searching for a specific puzzle piece among a pile of other pieces. His dark gaze raked down her chest, lingering a little too long on her breasts. The dress she wore was pushing her bosom in and up, causing what wouldn’t fit into the lilac dress to spill over the top just a little.

“Eden.” He repeated her name. “I’ll explain the rules once. I don’t like to repeat myself. Assume that I know everything. Telling the truth will get you farther than lying. I will know if you lie, and the second you lie, this interview is over and you will stay here to rot. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She nodded her head once but never met his gaze.

“What is the worst thing you’ve ever done, Eden?”

Her eyes flickered up to meet his through her dark lashes. She took her bottom lip between white teeth.

“What kind of thing are you looking for?” She quietly asked. “Like.... Like bad thoughts? Or-Or wanting something you can’t have? Someone you can’t have?”

“Have you ever killed anyone, sweet Eden?”

Her eyes widened just slightly and he could sense a shift in her breathing. Her heart began to race quicker.

“No.”

“Ah, but that is a lie, isn’t it?” Michael tsked, raising his brows just slightly. Admittedly, this was difficult. Usually, he could get inside anyone’s head and use their fears and desires against them. But with Eden, with this unusual being, he couldn’t read her mind. He couldn’t see into her soul like he could with everyone else. He could only use what he had from his own visions.

He stepped away from his desk towards her and in the same instant, she stood to her feet.

“I told you that lying would not be tolerated, sweet Eden.” He moved to circle her the same way a lion would stalk its prey. With the flick of his wrist, the chair she’d been sitting in was pushed back. She didn’t see him using telekinesis to do so. She was too busy keeping her eyes on the group of lit candles behind his desk. “Tell me about who you killed.”

“I-I don’t know.” She admitted, her voice falling to a soft whisper. “I can’t remember.”

“What do you mean?” He stopped behind her, inhaling her vanilla scent once more.

“I see it when I close my eyes. There’s blood. So much blood.” Her voice cracked. She turned her head to look at him, tears pooling in her blue eyes. Her dark eyebrows were drawn together. “How do you know about them?”

“I told you, sweet Eden.” He hummed softly, trying not to let it show that her words surprised him. “I know everything.” An idea sprung to the forefront of his mind. He brought his hand up to brush her blonde locks over her shoulder.

The second he even made contact with her hair, his skin began to tingle. Then when his fingertips trailed down the side of her bare neck, the electric feeling intensified. He closed his eyes, a soft groan resonating in the back of his throat.

He could see them, winged beings with white lights pouring from their eyes. The sound of metal clanking and clashing together filled his ears, drowning out any other sounds. And then, the fighting was replaced by a mournful cry, a cry of despair. Eden was on her knees, one hand clutching her shoulder while the other reached out for what looked like a charcoal heap of feathers that lay in front of her, dripping blood. Her cries were pained and hysterical. She was in agony. Her hand that was on her shoulder was clawing at a fresh wound.

Michael was suddenly pulled back to reality when he found himself hitting a wall. Eden stood by his desk, her eyes glowing a vibrant blue. Her nostrils flared as she watched him.

“What are you?” He breathed out.

She gave him no answer. She turned and fled. The chair that separated her from the exit was swatted out of her way like a piece of paper.

Michael was left in shock, confused and bewildered. What had just happened?

**

"Father." Michael finished the pentagram beneath him, sealing the circle with the blood soaking his fingers. "I need your guidance, father."

His brows furrowed together just slightly as he stared down at the blood below him. The liquid bubbled and hissed on the concrete ground. He could sense his father.

"She isn't human, father. Is she one of us?"

"Does she feel like one of us?" A deep voice spoke lowly, echoing in Michael's head.

"No." He shook his head. "What is she?"

"She is of Heaven, bred for divine intervention. She is a solider of God."

"An angel." Michael's lips curled into a snarl at the word. It tasted like poison on his tongue. "But.... I wasn't aware they were real, father."

For a split second, the young and naive boy he truly was slipped through. He was weak and unsure, timid. He didn’t have much knowledge of the supernatural world he was so deeply rooted to. 

"I destroyed most of her kind over two millennia ago in the Great War between Heaven and Hell. There are few angels still lingering on Earth, but Heaven was reduced to ash after God and his angels lost the war."

"What was the war about, father?" Michael lifted his head up. Inky black eyes gazed blankly at the ceiling.

"The Great Father didn't like the idea of me creating demons just as he'd created the humans. He sent a few angels after me but they weren't strong enough to stop me. I slaughtered them easily. This started a war. I won the war, but only because Heaven had a traitor. And for that, she lost her wings."

"Eden." Michael breathed out. She was the traitor. 

"I've searched the Earth for her for centuries. God found a way to make it so that I could not sense her soul. But you, Michael, you've found her."

"Where's she been since the war ended?"

"She's been wondering the earth aimlessly, but now she has purpose, my son. She will help you bring about the new world."

The blood ceased to hiss and bubble. His father was gone, leaving Michael with few answers and even more questions than he had when he started.

[anon-luv]

TOSKA -1- (ReaderXBTS)

Genre: Psyche/Mental Institution AU Romance & Angst

Pairing: ReaderXBTS(Taehyung, Jimin, Yoongi)

Summary: “Will you be able to recover and move on, or will your past continue to haunt you?”

Trigger Warning: This Fic will contain explicit language and scenes. It will address controversial topics. We understand psychological illnesses vary from case to case. All contents in the following story are based on fiction. This story will not be suitable for all ages, due to the sensitive topics it will contain. Hope ya’ll enjoy :)

Word Count: 4k+

Collaboration with @riki-leigh-c

Author’s Note:

@anon-luv Hey Guys, I am so excited/nervous to post this fic. I hope you enjoy it as much as we are while writing it. You know I love feedback, so let us know what you think. Feedback, Comments, Reblogs, Likes, and mentions greatly encourage us writers. We are going to leave the final pairing as undecided until we further develop the story. Minor Grammer Mistakes. HOPE YOU LIKE IT!!

@riki-leigh-c : This is my first time writing a fic. Please bare with me, any constructive criticism would be much appreciated. Hope you enjoy!

“Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases, it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level, it grades into ennui, boredom.

 White.

In most cultures, it signifies purity, comfort, holiness, cleansing, a beacon of hope.

For you, white had quite a contradictory meaning. To you, white meant prison, endless appointments, a padded room, the pages of the daily journal you never wrote on, and the shirt stained with red that laid upon his chest as the bullet sealed both of your futures. The future that had ended for him, and the one that had gotten you locked into this place.

The monotonous routine and smell of antibacterial flooded your days, causing a sense of panic. If it wasn’t for your best friends’ every other day visits, you would’ve probably collapsed of boredom.

 PTSD, that is what they said it was, the hallucinations, the ones that kept you up at night. Whatever it is, it was the only way you could see him, as if he was still here beside you. You didn’t want to close your eyes, in case he disappeared. Every morning you dreaded having to leave your room, for you had to pretend you didn’t see him standing nearby or smiling at you.

It was your imagination, you knew it…. but you couldn’t deny that just seeing him was what kept you going throughout the day. Even if reality had taken him away from you, the memory of him had fooled your brain into projecting him into your everyday life.

 It was 12:15……. Hoseok was late….. He was 45 minutes and 30 seconds late. What if he had forgotten to change those overused tires that you had scolded him time and time again to get changed?

Was he okay? Did he get sick? You had seen the rain falling mercilessly from your window pane.

The tapping of your fingers increasing in speed as the door opened again, but your eyes landed on an unfamiliar figure once again. It had been 2 weeks. TWO long weeks in this institution and Hoseok had yet to be late. He was always early or right on time.

The sweat forming in the palm of your hands caused an uncomfortable, sticky sensation which triggered your anxiety slightly more. A loud deep laugh blasted throughout the room, causing you to jump slightly. The same young man that you had seen on several occasions was sitting in front of the same black haired girl. She was constantly talking while he just stared emotionless at the white wall in front of her. He never addressed her back, but she never gave up. His eyes suddenly flicked up to meet yours and another manic laugh exploded from his lips. His gaze moved back to the white wall and the laughter ceased almost as quickly as it began.

You glanced back up at the clock on the wall. Another 2 minutes and 17 seconds had passed. Where was he?  Dark thoughts began to flutter through your mind. What if he’s had enough of you? Or what if something awful has happened to him? What if someone’s murdered him? Your breathing began to quicken, and your hands began to shake as vivid images of all the reasons why Hoseok was not there yet burned themselves into your brain, one by one. You could feel the all too familiar feeling of a full-blown panic attack start to creep its way into your chest. Breath, Y/N you thought to yourself, trying to remember the coping techniques they’d been teaching you in therapy. Gulping down air, you tried to get the attention of a warden. The sound of the door opening and closing drew your attention. Hoseok rushed in, red in the face and panting, doubled over trying to catch his breath. “Y/N” he yelled out across the room, causing more than a few heads to turn your way. He rushed over to you, already being able to see the effects of your panic attack. He put his hands on either side of your face and looked you dead in the eye. “Breath, Y/N. I’m here, I’m fine,” he whispered while using the clichè breathing technique of having you copy him. It worked though. Every time. After a few minutes, your breathing returned to normal and Hoseok patted your hair, whispering sweet nothings in your ear, before getting up abruptly. “Y/N, I’m going to have a chat to one of the staff okay? I’ll be right back. No longer than 5 minutes, you can count them, alright?” You simply nodded in response, still slightly out of it after your latest ‘episode.

 There is a rush of adrenaline when people fall, it makes them feel like their insides bundle up, and make their way towards their throat forming a perfect knot just to come back down, just before they hit the ground. That’s how you felt at that exact moment as you saw Hoseok’s familiar messy mop of dark brown hair exit the room.

The numbness within your fingertips was now fading into slight prickles that you could feel crawling up your extremities. The heaviness in your chest that had felt like a piano had crushed it a few moments ago was being lifted, only leaving in its path a soreness that had begun to dissipate. Your pounding heart still beating loudly in your ears as your eyes traveled amongst the room to analyze the number of witnesses that had obtained a front row seat on your full-blown show. Much to your surprise, everyone was focused on their own task and you had gone under the radar. You assumed people were probably immune to the many spectacles that had taken place within these four walls.

There was only one set of brown eyes staring at you, and those eyes seemed to be more amused with the sudden predicament you had found yourself in, than worried. A small smirk lay upon his plush lips as he swept your body from top to bottom absorbing all your figure in as if you were a piece of fine art, on display in a museum.  A shiver ran down your spine. He made you uneasy. His sporadic, maniacal laughter sounded again as he tilted his head back and closed his eyes. He seemed like the true definition of insane. Just as suddenly as it started, he stopped laughing and went back to staring at you. You felt your heartbeat start to quicken and your palms getting sweaty, the telltale signs of another panic attack. Hoseok made a reappearance right at the moment you had started to feel your chest constricting and your throat getting tight.

“It’s alright (y/n), I’m so sorry I got here late, I got a flat tire on the way over” he said as he sat down on the cold metal chair and scooted his way forward, closer to you. The faint smell of his cologne calmed you down automatically.

The speed of your finger tapping decreased as you examined him from head to toe assuring yourself that he was indeed okay.

“You had me worried, I told you several times to get that thing you call a car checked Hoseok” you said as you grasped his hand “I’m sorry for taking away your lunchtime, you are honestly the only reason I am not in solitary confinement right now, this place is bonkers”.

Hoseok gave you a wide smile as he looked around the area examining the patients surrounding you “Yeah… it does seem pretty crazy huh? It is only for a bit though, Y/N.” Hoseok smiled brightly at you, a smile you always thought looked as bright as the sun, before shifting his chair to sit next to you and gently pushing your head down to rest on his shoulder. “I don’t know about that Hobi,” you sighed deeply, closing your eyes while a montage of memories filtered through your brain at the use of his nickname. You breathed in his comforting scent, already knowing he would smell just like springtime. “I don’t feel like I’m getting better.”

The silence that followed your statement thickened the air that surrounded the both of you. Hoseok looked into your eyes hoping to see the familiar twinkle of hope you used to carry around before that horrible night.

“Well, you know ...Rome wasn’t built in one night. Just promise me you will try, participate in activities and let the counselors in. Please do it for me” he said pouting cutely your way.  You lifted the corner of your mouth in a slight smile, but your heart wasn’t in it when you answered. “I will.”  

The dorm you had been assigned lacked personality. Just like everything else, it was white from top to bottom, with a few accents of a washed out green and mustard yellow. Whoever participated in coordinating the color scheme might’ve been color blind. Despite the general distaste you had for your room’s superficial overall look, it was the only place you felt at ease in. The rock-hard bed was unusually homey, and the fact that there were no windows gave you a sense of safety for some reason. No one would be able to sneak in through your window while you slept. Just the thought of being able to see what the outside world contained while unsupervised up-close gave a chill up your spine.

 The clock in your room showed 9pm, which meant there was a long night ahead and the dosage that had been prescribed for your sleeping medication was shit.  You were tired, but your eyes refused to close. You knew the night that laid ahead of you was going to be long and emotionally tiring. You sat on the edge of the bed trying to practice the exercises you had gone over with your primary psychologist, praying for them to work. The silence within your room was all consuming until you heard deep screams. The words were incomprehensible, but the volume kept rising signifying the person was getting closer and closer to your room. You stood up quickly and slammed your door shut, before peeking out the window, your curiosity getting the best of you.

“Fuck you! Take me back. That fucking bastard, how dare he fucking touch my shit.” a bleach blond man about your age screamed as two male nurses dragged him, one by the arms and the other one by the waist, towards the door opposite yours. He swung his right arm straight at the nurse’s jaw, which the nurse was barely able to dodge. He was putting up a good fight, surprisingly, for his size made you think he would be much weaker. You hid behind your door a bit more, only your eyes visible now. The man screamed more obscenities as he was thrown into the room and onto the bed, and two more nurses entered the room. They held onto his arms wrapping what seemed like cloth on his ankles and wrists. One of them was holding a visible needle, you were assuming it was some kind of medication. The man was no longer screaming, and you could see how his muscles relaxed into the comfort of his bed, and his eyes drooped. A sigh of relief escaping your lips, as you noticed the nurses had finished attaching the remaining restraints on him. You closed your eyes tightly as you walked back to your bed and covered yourself completely with the blanket, the fear of what was right across the hall getting the best of you. The dorm across the hall hailed a dangerous threat in the shape of a blond-haired man, and even though his features looked peaceful and quite charming as he lay immobile upon his bed, his vile words just now meant you knew better.  You felt the first of the night's many quivers in your stomach, letting you know that the horrible memories you tried to keep buried during the day we’re about to be released.

The shadow of the past, conjured now by your broken psyche, sat on your bed staring straight at you.

“It’s not real….it’s not real…..it’s not real” you kept whispering to yourself, but your eyes couldn’t stop staring at his face as he smiled….that smile you used to love  “He is not here…...he is not here…..he is not here……”

  Black circles flourished under your sunken eyes the following morning. It had been a sleepless night, just as you had predicted. The constant itch of checking up on your new dorm neighbor and the hallucination of who you thought would be your forever kept your eyes wandering around your room and sleep at bay. You weren’t due for a visit from Hoseok and only had a psychologist appoint late in the afternoon. You had absolutely no idea how you were going to keep yourself occupied in between. Maybe I’ll ask the nurses for a book or two, you thought to yourself as you changed into your uniform white shirt and pants, with matching slippers. You had just opened the door to step out when you noticed a number of nurses leaving the room across from yours. His room. After the sedative had worn off, the blonde man had screamed obscenities for hours, only worsening your hallucinations. He demanded over and over for the restraints to be removed to no avail. Eventually, he just wailed, long, harrowing cries that frightened you even further. As the last of the nurses exited the room, you caught a quick glance of the blonde man sitting upright on the edge of his bed, looking down and rubbing his wrists, before the nurse shut the door and began to leave.

“Excuse me,” you called after him, shrinking back slightly as he turned to face you. You averted your gaze and asked softly “is there any possibility of getting a few books to read?”

He smiled slightly before nodding, “sure, I’ll scrounge some up and leave them by your door.”

“Thanks,” you replied before indicating for him to leave. There was no way you were walking with your back to him, despite how nice he came across. You waited, back flat against your door, for a few minutes, wanting to give yourself a safe distance from the nurse. Just as you were about head towards the common area, the door across from you flung open, revealing the blonde man. His eyes were narrowed into slits and his rosy lips were positioned in an unfriendly frown. The fear that had gathered within you from the initial shock of his presence was slightly forgotten as your curious eyes traveled along his pale sugary white face. There were noticeable red marks on his wrists that made you unconsciously rub your own.

“Good Morning” you heard a deep voice say, catching you off guard. Your fly or fight system wanted to run away as soon as the words spilled out of his mouth, but your body was betraying you by staying frozen in place. He waited patiently for a response, but after examining your panicked expression he shrugged it off, and took a step forward closer to you “Yoongi’ he said extending his hand towards you.

You looked at his hand as if it was fire ready to burn you into ashes, but for some reason, your hand found his. Your voice though was not cooperating and all you could do was stare at his figure confused at the contrasting personality that radiated from him this morning compared to that displayed last night.

“Y/N?” he asked you as he read the name plaque outside your room. You nodded as you cautiously took a step back away from him. You felt exposed, and you wanted to escape the feeling of nausea that had started stirring in your gut. The white walls around you closing in as the image in front of you started blurring around the edges. The lack of sleep starting to take a toll on you. Your breathing had become visibly more agitated, but before your knees could give out, you felt another presence standing before you. The distorted image of an unfamiliar silver-haired boy came to view as he hummed a tune and encircled your body with his own as if to block you from any unwanted feelings that had lined up to once again drag you to the deepest pits of emotional hell.

“Calm down and try to match your breathing with mine” he whispered softly with a higher pitched voice than that of the blond boy who was still standing nearby, he seemed a bit uncomfortable as he took in the scene unfolding before him.

Your hands were gripping onto the boy’s shirt as if he was the anchor to your sanity. Before you knew it, the heaviness that had settled on your chest had once again faded into nothingness. You quickly stood up and pushed yourself away from the stranger embarrassed at your previous actions.

“Jimin” the silver-haired boy said quickly without any explanation before you could respond Yoongi welcomed himself to introduce you as well as himself.

“I am Yoongi and this is (Y/N), what you just did bro...thank you” Yoongi said awkwardly.

Jimin just nodded to the both of you quickly and then took off as if he was in a hurry. You looked at Yoongi once again, but before he had a chance to speak, you had already started walking off to head towards the common area, taking turns between facing forward and sneaking glances back at him to make sure he wasn’t pulling a stunt behind your back. As you made your way to the end of the hall you noticed his figure had disappeared back into his dorm. The shadow of what had happened still engraved in your mind as you walked into the common area, you just knew this won’t be the only interaction you had with your neighbor and the fear of what will come will more than likely be present throughout the entire day.

 “How is your sleep Ms. Y/N” the doctor asked in a fairly monotone voice. The lack of emotion in his voice aggravating you. His presence was that of a rock, and in all honesty, consulting with a wall would probably have the same effect as this.

“To be honest like shit” you replied trying to be as monotone as he was.

“Anything we can do to aid your sleeping habits?” He said as he scribbled down what seemed more like a doodle than a note on his notepad.

“Memory Foam?  Or one of those water beds. I have always wanted to try one of those.” you replied with fake enthusiasm.

The doctor took that as a queue to stare up at your figure with a serious face “Ms. Y/N, we can’t proceed with treatment without your help. It takes two to tango, so your cooperation is essential for you to improve. Now, I have registered you for some group sessions that I think will be of benefit to your case, and one of those is for patients with insomnia. That one is every night for 45 minutes, you will be learning techniques to clear your mind and be able to get some shut-eye. Also, please start writing in your journal, we find it helps patients significantly.”

You nodded no longer interested in his rant as you grabbed the paper he had placed on the table in front of you. There was a list of 3 different counseling sessions that you were expected to assist other than your 1 on 1 session. You sighed annoyed at your now crowded schedule.

 The green yard in the facility premises was crowded with bodies, some familiar, and some not, ranging from various ages and genders. When you had first arrived, you had felt out of place, but as the days went on you realized you fit in strangely amongst the people that had been locked in here. You had yet to make an acquaintance, but you had already heard a few of the stories, and in all honesty, some made your past look like a fairy tale. There were a few psychos within the bunch, and the rumors that surrounded some of the people were frightening, that is why you had isolated yourself for the duration of your stay. Hoseok had been, for the most part, the only reason you had the courage to step outside of your room. You surveyed the area, making sure not to lock eyes with anyone, nurses, and patients alike. You walked slowly towards an empty seat across the yard, body tense and eyes zipping around your skull, trying to keep an eye on everything all at once. You were monitoring the people on your left when you felt a presence to your right. You stopped dead in your tracks before whipping around, bringing your hands up to your face to defend yourself against whoever had dared to get too close. The first thing you heard was manic laughter, before noticing a semi-familiar pair of brown eyes, creased at the corners, staring back at you. You just about jumped out of your skin in an effort to put some space between the laughter and yourself.  You could feel your chest constricting and your breathing getting shallow. Please, not here. Not in front of all these people, you thought to yourself. You already knew it wouldn’t help. Just as quickly as the laughter started, it was over and the patient behind the laughter was sticking his hand out to introduce himself. Before he had a chance to say anything, Jimin came running over, shoving the laugher out of the way. “Taehyungie, what did I say?” He all but shouted at the guy.

The flourish of activity going on in front of you was causing your panic attack to worsen. Your hands felt like they were dripping with sweat and your throat had begun to feel like it was closing. “Y/N, it’s okay just breath with me again, shhhh,” Jimin said as he grabbed a hold of both of your hands and looked you dead in the eye.

He worked through the same breathing technique that he had done earlier, and you soon began to feel calm.

“Thank you,” you said softly, quickly letting go of his hands and dropping your gaze to the lush green grass you all stood on.

“It’s okay, Y/N, I’m sorry about Taehyung,” he said as he looked down at him, still laying on the grass. He leaned down and offered a hand to Taehyung, pulling him quickly to his feet.

“Taehyung, introduce yourself the way we talked about please,” Jimin looked expectantly at Taehyung, who inclined his head bashfully.

“Hello Y/N,” Taehyung said, dropping his voice significantly in what you can only assume was an effort to keep you calm. “My name is Taehyung.”

“Hello,” you replied, bowing slightly but still not lifting your gaze to meet his eyes. Manic laughter suddenly exploded from Taehyung’s lips, causing you to let out a scream of both shock and fear. You clamped your mouth, placing a hand over your rapidly beating heart and took off running towards the spare seat you had originally been trying to get to.

You took a cautious glance towards where Jimin and Taehyung were still standing, clearly not expecting your escapade. Jimin raised his hand to smack Taehyung in a playful manner behind his head. Taehyung in exchange just hung his head looking a bit disappointed in himself. You averted your eyes before they caught you looking at them, hoping it would give them a clear sign that you were not fond of strange company.

You rubbed your hands against your knees nervously as you inspected your surroundings, hoping that the loud rapid beating in your ears would eventually quiet into nothingness. You took a deep breath as your eyes landed on a red rose bush. Memories of late nights hiding in your neighbor’s yards as you laid upon his chest caused your eyes to tear up. You looked at the figure that sat beside you, a perfect figment of what had been, staring right back at you.

“Jin” you whispered softly as your eyes devoured his familiar features. A pang of pain surging from the last memories you had beside him. His plump lips smiling at you like they had many times before, the temptation of leaning in to feel their warmth taking over, but before the contact was made a voice interrupted you.

“Um…..are you okay?” said a deep familiar voice, snapping you out of the enchantment of your imagination.

[ecommercewebsitecompany]

Exactly how to Develop an Ecommerce Website in 5 Easy Actions

A DETAILED OVERVIEW TO CREATING YOUR E-COMMERCE WEBSITE

Want a quick response? The most effective means to develop an eCommerce website is with Wix. Keep reading to find out how.

Whether you have a traditional service as well as intend to expand online or you're interested in starting a brand-new service from square one, eCommerce can be an advantageous venture.

But before you can start thinking about your revenue margins and marketing items online, you need to create an eCommerce website.

For those of you who have never done this previously, it can look like a challenging job. It's not as hard as you assume. No matter your experience, degree as well as technical knowledge. I will guide you on how to set up your eCommerce site and get it up and running in no time.

The best system for your best eCommerce website

Before you can create your eCommerce site, you need to determine which system you are going to use.

There are plenty of choices in the marketplace today, yet Wix is the clear winner.

Visit Wix

- 14-day cost-free trial

- Drag as well as decrease site contractor

- Integrated repayment handling

- 500+ eCommerce templates

- Try Wix free

We ranked Wix initially on our list of the most effective eCommerce website home builders.

It's the best eCommerce website building contractor as a result of one thing: Simplicity.

You do not need to learn just how to code or have any technological know-how. The system makes it very easy for any person to create a handy and gorgeous eCommerce website from square one in a snap.

Wix is a top selection for novices. It's a drag-and-drop website contractor that's completely adjustable and SEO-friendly.

What's drag-and-drop? It's a building contractor that permits you to merely use your computer mouse to drag different website components about-- changing them to your specific requirements.

The platform has every little thing you require to start marketing online. Along with the site contractor attributes, you'll have the ability to accept commission-free repayments, take care of end-to-end fulfillment, and establish custom-made delivery guidelines worldwide.

Wix supports multi-channel and also drop shipping sales. It allows you to sell on various other platforms like Facebook and also Instagram.

If you desire the ability to customize your storefront, purchasing cart, product galleries, and extra without composing a solitary line of code, choose Wix. You'll also have the ability to set up attributes like a customer wish list, relevant item galleries, mini-cart, fast add-to-cart buttons, and much more.

You can add promo codes, discount codes, and even let your consumers produce accounts to raise commitment and speed up the checkout procedure with saved billing and shipping details.

The rate for eCommerce abilities begins at $23 per month. It comes with benefit functions like $300 in advertising and marketing coupons and also a cost-free domain name for one year.

As your site expands, you can quickly upgrade your plan to range with you.

How to Build an Ecommerce Website: A Step-by-Step Guide

- Step 1: Sign up and also pick your strategy

- Step 2: Decide exactly how you wish to create your website

- Step 3: Connect your domain

- Step 4: Set up your eCommerce website

- Step 5: Publish your eCommerce website

Comply with these actions with any eCommerce website builder. However, for this write-up, we'll use Wix as an instance.

Action # 1: Sign up as well as pick your strategy

The first thing you need to do is produce an account with Wix. Compared to other systems, the sign-up procedure is about as simple as it obtains-- 10 seconds max. You'll only need to provide an email address and also password to continue.

You can start making use of Wix completely free as soon as possible. The totally free plan doesn't provide you any eCommerce capacities. It's generally an extensive test to experiment with the site home builder.

Navigate to Expend Subscription and make sure to select "Business & eCommerce," as I highlighted in the screenshot below.

Not everyone with a "website" plan has the ability to sell online, which is definitely what you need for your eCommerce website.

Every one of the eCommerce plans come with the capability to accept online settlements, a cost-free SSL certificate, enhanced storage space, unrestricted data transfer, and also a free domain name for one year.

Choose a strategy based on the dimension of your website and also the company. If you're a little company selling a handful of products, you'll be fine with the Basic Business or Business Unlimited plans. More significant internet sites with additional requirements should choose the Business VIP plan or possibly the Enterprise service.

Wix supplies a 14-day money-back warranty. So you can always opt-out or change plans within two weeks if you're not pleased with your choice.

Step # 2: Decide exactly how you wish to develop your website.

Once you sign up, there are two various methods to start. You can utilize the Wix ADI or the Wix Editor to continue.

With the ADI, you'll respond to a series of concerns about your eCommerce website, and the system will automatically design it in mins making use of the expert system. With the editor, you'll start with a design template and also make it on your own.

There's no right or wrong way here. It all depends on your personal preference. Even if you use ADI, you will be able to make changes using the editor in the future.

For newcomers, it may be best to take advantage of AI to build your eCommerce website based on the answers you provide. It will be faster, and you will have an effective site to fix instead of starting from scratch with a layout.

Yet the editor is very easy straightforward as well. It will certainly just be a little bit much more lengthy.

If you make use of the ADI, you'll be asked to choose the sort of eCommerce site you're developing (like an online garments store, precious jewelry shop, etc.), as well as pick your attributes (like an Instagram feed, live conversation, subscribe type, and so on).

For those of you who currently have an online existence, the AI device can import material from your existing website or Google Places.

Next off, you'll be asked to pick a motif as well as pick a layout.

I underwent this entire procedure in less than two mins, and also the platform immediately created an eCommerce site for me. Then it's equally as simple as editing and enhancing the theme with your own content, images, and also anything else you intend to customize.

Step # 3: Connect your domain

After you make an effort to modify everything, you'll need to attach your domain prior to you can release the e-commerce website as well as get it live.

Navigate to the "Setups" food selection on the left side of your dashboard and also click "Domain names.".

You'll locate two choices below. You can either buy a brand-new domain name or attach a domain that you already have.

If you do not have a domain and also you require to purchase a new one, you do not have to do this directly via your eCommerce system.

Instead, you can obtain a domain name from one of the most effective domain name registrars. Once acquired, you can adhere to the steps to connect a domain that you possess. Look into our overview on exactly how to buy a domain name if this is your very first time undergoing this procedure.

Getting a domain name from a domain registrar is commonly the most effective strategy. However, if you wish to maintain it straightforward as well as go directly through your eCommerce system, that's great also.

Step # 4: Establish your eCommerce site.

After the domain name has actually been attached, you need to set up your site's eCommerce performance. These are the elements that will enable you to offer products online.

- Add products.

- Establish delivery areas.

- Select repayment approaches.

I'll offer you a fast summary of each one of these eCommerce website aspects listed below.

Products.

To add an item, browse to your control panel's "Shop Products" area on the left side of the screen. Then click "+ New Item" on the leading right edge of the display.

From here, you'll name the item, add it to a collection, establish the rate, and create your item summary. You can add product images as well as video clips too.

Wix lets you add an item bow (such as "new arrival), mark the product as "for sale," develop a section for points like a return plan or care directions, and manage the tax obligation settings.

You'll likewise have the ability to manage the item size alternatives, color choices, and also inventory monitoring.

Delivery.

Next, you'll have to handle your delivery rules. Identify what areas you're delivering to and how those rates are computed.

For the example website I've been producing in this tutorial, I established cost-free delivery in the US and established a flat price for international orders.

Perhaps you want to market to customers in the United States as well as Canada. Just uncheck the worldwide toggle box on the right side of the display and include a new Canada region.

You'll have great deals of versatility with the shipping prices. You might use complimentary shipping to clients that spend a particular amount of cash per order.

In addition to a flat rate, you can charge shipping by weight, based upon order overall, or USPS calculated prices. You can even take care of taking care of prices and provide your clients with the alternative to grab orders in-store for specific regions.

Payment Approaches.

Before you can earn money, you need to set up your accepted payment techniques. This is very easy to do with Wix's integrated repayment handling system.

For this example, I selected the integrated processor as well as PayPal.

This gives you the capacity to accept all major credit cards like Visa, American Express, Discover, Mastercard, UnionPay, JCB, and Maestro.

Handling rates are 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, which is rather basic in this room. Wix doesn't take any payment.

Action # 5: Release your eCommerce site.

The last action of the procedure is obtaining your website live on the web. To do this, you MUST have a connected domain (explained symphonious # 3).

You additionally have to be on a paid Wix strategy. Technically, you might release your site while on a free plan, but it won't be with your customized LINK. You will not have any of the eCommerce capabilities, either without a paid strategy. If you have not done so currently, make sure you go ahead and complete your registration before proceeding.

Click the release switch in the leading right edge of your editor for the site to go online.

By the way, the sneak peek of the site you see on display was 100% created by the AI remedy we talked about previously. I didn't change the design, including images, or personalize anything yet.

It merely is most likely to show you how straightforward it is to produce an eCommerce site if you go that route.

[robertogreco]

Strict Forms

This is a thread from last month that I've been thinking about ever since, but never got around to posting here. It starts with a series of tweets from Guillermo del Toro:

Tweets on why I am interviewing Michael Mann and George Miller (2 weeks each) about their films this Sabbatical year.

I sometimes feel that great films are made / shown at a pace that does not allow them to "land" in their proper weight or formal / artisitic importance...

As a result, often, these films get discussed in "all aspects" at once. But mostly, plot and character- anecdote and flow, become the point of discussion. Formal appreciation and technique become secondary and the specifics of narrative technique only passingly address[ed]

I would love to commemorate their technical choices and their audiovisual tools. I would love to dissect the narrative importance and impact of color, light, movement, wardrobe and set design. As Mann once put it: "Everything tells you something"

I think we owe it to these (and a handful of filmmakers) to have their formal choices commemorated, the way one can appreciatethe voigour and thickness and precision of a brushtroke when you stand in front of an original painting.

Aaron Stewart-Ahn responds, in particular to the final paragraph above:

Our media literacy about movies tends to prioritize text over subtext, emotion, and sound vision & time, and it has sadly sunk into audiences' minds. I'd say some movies are even worth a handful of shots / sounds they build up to.

To which I added:

Our education system prioritizes text. Deviation from text is discouraged.

“To use the language well, says the voice of literacy, cherish its classic form. Do not choose the offbeat at the cost of clarity.”

“Clarity is a means of subjection, a quality both of official, taught language and of correct writing, two old mates of power; together they flow, together they flower, vertically, to impose an order.”

That comes from “Commitment from the Mirror-Writing Box,” by Trinh T. Minh-Ha in Woman, Native, Other (via):

Nothing could be more normative, more logical, and more authoritarian than, for example, the (politically) revolutionary poetry or prose that speaks of revolution in the form of commands or in the well-behaved, steeped-in-convention-language of “clarity.” (”A wholesome, clear, and direct language” is said to be “the fulcrum to move the mass or to sanctify it.”) Clear expression, often equated with correct expression, has long been the criterion set forth in treatises on rhetoric, whose aim was to order discourse so as to persuade. The language of Taoism and Zen, for example, which is perfectly accessible but rife with paradox does not qualify as “clear” (paradox is “illogical” and “nonsensical” to many Westerners), for its intent lies outside the realm of persuasion. The same holds true for vernacular speech, which is not acquired through institutions — schools, churches, professions, etc. — and therefore not repressed by either grammatical rules, technical terms, or key words. Clarity as a purely rhetorical attribute serves the purpose of a classical feature in language, namely, its instrumentality. To write is to communicate, express, witness, impose, instruct, redeem, or save — at any rate to mean and to send out an unambiguous message. Writing thus reduced to a mere vehicle of thought may be used to orient toward a goal or to sustain an act, but it does not constitute an act in itself. This is how the division between the writer/the intellectual and the activists/the masses becomes possible. To use the language well, says the voice of literacy, cherish its classic form. Do not choose the offbeat at the cost of clarity. Obscurity is an imposition on the reader. True, but beware when you cross railroad tracks for one train may hide another train. Clarity is a means of subjection, a quality both of official, taught language and of correct writing, two old mates of power; together they flow, together they flower, vertically, to impose an order. Let us not forget that writers who advocate the instrumentality of language are often those who cannot or choose not to see the suchness of things — a language as language — and therefore, continue to preach conformity to the norms of well-behaved writing: principles of composition, style, genre, correction, and improvement. To write “clearly,” one must incessantly prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify; in other words, practice what may be called an “ablution of language” (Roland Barthes).

See also Keguro Macharia on strict academic forms (and various other posts on linearity and academia):

Proposals for radical ideas in strict academic forms. Radical thinking requires radical forms. It’s an elementary lesson. Perhaps more academically inclined people should co-edit with poets. Figure out why form matters. I am most blocked when I resist the forms ideas need to emerge.

Update [7 January 2018]: To go with the above, I think it makes sense to add this passage from Ryan Brown’s “Fred Moten: A look at Duke's preeminent poet”:

As for how he thinks of his own writing, Moten explained to the literary journal Callaloo that he doesn’t see poems as neatly wrapped ideas or images. Instead, he believes that “poetry is what happens… on the outskirts of sense.” What do you think?

This unorthodox approach to writing extends beyond Moten’s own projects, spilling over into his teaching philosophy. In a Fred Moten English class, a standard essay on a piece of literature might be replaced by a sound collage or a piece of creative writing reacting to the reading. It’s an attempt, he said, to get his students to write like they actually want to write—not the way they think they need to for a class. What do you think?

“School makes it so that you write to show evidence of having done some work, so that you can be properly evaluated and tracked,” he said. “To me that degrades writing, so I’m trying to figure out how to detach the importance of writing from these structures of evaluation.” What do you think?

Second year English Ph.D student Damien Adia-Marassa said this means that Moten’s classes are never the same. Last Spring, Marassa worked as a “teaching apprentice” in one of Moten’s undergraduate courses, “Experimental Black Poetry,” for which he said there was never a fixed syllabus. What do you think?

“He just told us the texts he wanted to study and invited us all to participate in thinking about how we might study them,” Marassa said. What do you think?

But is Professor Moten ever worried that students will take advantage of his flexibility with structure and content? What do you think?

Actually, he said, he doesn’t care if students take his courses because they think they will be easy. What do you think?

“I think it’s good to find things in your life that are easy for you,” he said. “If someone signs up for my class because they think it will come naturally to them and it won’t be something they have to agonize over, those are all good things in my book.” What do you think?

In the Spring, Moten will switch gears as a professor, teaching his first creative writing course since arriving at Duke—Introduction to Writing Poetry. But whatever the course title may imply, he won’t be trying to teach his students how to write, he said. Instead, he hops they’ll come away from his class better at noticing the world around them. What do you think?

And he hopes to teach them to that, in order to write, you first have to fiercely love to read. That’s a skill he learned a long time ago, out in the flat Nevada desert, when he first picked up a book of poems and started to read, not knowing where it would take him.

Update [23 February 2018]: Here come several more passages that fit with this theme of breaking forms.

First, Fanta Sylla on “Metrograph Celebrates the Inventive Truth-Telling of St. Clair Bourne”:

Let the Church is so free of form and spirit that, presented without context, it could easily be seen as a fictional piece. It is not clear how much the scenes are staged, or, indeed, whether they are staged at all. Right from the first interaction, in which what seems to be a religious teacher laboriously explains the purpose of a sermon, there is a distance with the people filmed (broken on occasion by extreme zooming and direct address), as well as a writtenness and theatricality in the dialogue that can be delightfully confusing. What one learns while watching Bourne is that there are many ways to enter a subject, and one mustn’t refrain from exploring them, especially not in the name of nonfiction convention.

And now “Hilton Als on Writing,” in an interview with T. Cole Rachel:

T. Cole Rachel: Your essays frequently defy traditional genre. You play around with the notions of what an essay can be, what criticism can be, or how we are supposed to think and write about our own lives.

Hilton Als: You don’t have to do it any one way. You can just invent a way. Also, who’s to tell you how to write anything? It’s like that wonderful thing Virginia Woolf said. She was just writing one day and she said, “I can write anything.” And you really can. It’s such a remarkable thing to remind yourself of. If you’re listening to any other voice than your own, then you’re doing it wrong. And don’t.

The way that I write is because of the way my brain works. I couldn’t fit it into fiction; I couldn’t fit it into non-fiction. I just had to kind of mix up the genres because of who I was. I myself was a mixture of things, too. Right? I just never had those partitions in my brain, and I think I would’ve been a much more fiscally successful person if could do it that way. But I don’t know how to do it any other way, so I’m not a fiscally successful person. [laughs]

[…]

I believe that one reason I began writing essays—a form without a form, until you make it—was this: you didn’t have to borrow from an emotionally and visually upsetting past, as one did in fiction, apparently, to write your story. In an essay, your story could include your actual story and even more stories; you could collapse time and chronology and introduce other voices. In short, the essay is not about the empirical “I” but about the collective—all the voices that made your “I.”

From a profile of Lorna Simpson, by Dodie Kazanjian:

Lorna graduated early from SVA and was doing graphic-design work for a travel company when she met Carrie Mae Weems, a graduate art student at the University of California, San Diego. Weems suggested she come out to graduate school in California. “It was a rainy, icy New York evening, and that sounded really good to me,” Simpson says. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into.” She knew she’d had enough of documentary street photography. Conceptual art ruled at UCSD, and in her two years there, from 1983 to 1985, Lorna found her signature voice, combining photographs and text to address issues that confront African American women. “I loved writing poetry and stories, but at school, that was a separate activity from photography,” she says. “I thought, Why not merge those two things?”

Arthur Chiaravalli in “It’s Time We Hold Accountability Accountable”:

Author and writing professor John Warner points out how this kind of accountability, standardization, and routinization short-circuits students’ pursuit of forms “defined by the rhetorical situation” and values “rooted in audience needs.”

What we are measuring when we are accountable, then, is something other than the core values of writing. Ironically, the very act of accounting for student progress in writing almost guarantees that we will receive only a poor counterfeit, one emptied of its essence.

“How to Teach Art to Kids, According to Mark Rothko”:

“Unconscious of any difficulties, they chop their way and surmount obstacles that might turn an adult grey, and presto!” Rothko describes. “Soon their ideas become visible in a clearly intelligent form.” With this flexibility, his students developed their own unique artistic styles, from the detail-oriented to the wildly expressive. And for Rothko, the ability to channel one’s interior world into art was much more valuable than the mastery of academic techniques. “There is no such thing as good painting about nothing,” he once wrote.

Update [10 July 2018]: Here’s a great thread from Dr. Lucia Lorenzi on form in academia, but also on the value of silence and pause.

I have two academic articles currently under consideration, and hope that they'll be accepted. I'm proud of them. But after those two, I am not going to write for academic journals anymore. I feel this visceral, skin-splitting need to write differently about my research.

It just doesn't FEEL right. When I think about the projects I'm interested in (and I have things I want desperately to write about), but I think about writing them for an academic journal, I feel anxious and trapped. I've published academic work. It's not a matter of capability.

I think I've interpreted my building anxiety as some sort of "maybe I can't really do it, I'm not good at this" kind of impostor syndrome. But I know in my bones it's not that, because I'm a very capable academic writer. I know how to do that work. I've been trained to do it.

This is a question of form. It is a question of audience, too. The "what" and the "why" of my research has always been clear to me. The "how," the "where," and the "who," much less so. Or at the very least, I've been pushing aside the how/where/who I think best honours the work.

In my SSHRC proposal, I even said that I wanted to write for publications like The Walrus or The Atlantic or GUTS Magazine, etc. because this work feels like it needs to be very public-facing right now, so that's what I'm going to do. No more academic journal articles for now.

With all the immobilizing anxiety I've felt about "zomg my CV! zomg academic cred!" do you know how many stories I could have pitched in the past year alone? SO MANY. How much research and thinking I could have distilled into creative non-fiction or long-form journalistic pieces?

It's not like I haven't also been very clear about the fact that I probably won't continue in academia, so why spend the last year of my postdoc doing the MOST and feeling the WORST doing my research in a certain way just for what...a job I might not get or even want? Nah.

Whew. I feel better having typed all that out, and also for having made the decision to do the work in the way I originally wanted to do it, because I have been struggling so much that every single day for months I've wanted to just quit the postdoc entirely. Just up and leave.

In the end, I don't think my work will shift THAT much, you know? And I've learned and am learning SO much from fellow academics who are doing and thinking and writing differently. But I think that "no more scholarly journal submissions" is a big step for me.

I also feel like this might actually make me feel less terrified of reading academic work. Not wanting to WRITE academic articles/books has made me equally afraid of reading them, which, uh, isn't helpful. But now I can read them and just write in my own way.

I don't want to not have the great joy of sitting down and reading brilliant work because I'm so caught up in my own fears of my response having to replicate or mirror those forms. That ain't a conversation. I'm not listening if I'm already lost in thinking about how to answer.

That's what's so shitty about thinking as a process that is taught in academia. We teach everyone to be so hyper-focused on what they have to say that we don't let people just sit back and listen for a goddamn moment without feeling like they need to produce a certain response.

And we wonder why our students get anxious about their assignments? The idea that the only valid form of learning is having something to say in response, and in this way that is so limited, and so performative, is, quite frankly, coercive and gross.

As John Cage said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it." When it comes to academic publications, I am saying that no longer have anything to say. I do, however, have things to say in other places to say them.

My dissertation was on silence. In the conclusion, I pointed out that the text didn't necessarily show all the silences/gaps I had in my years of thinking. I'd wanted to put in lots of blank space between paragraphs, sections, to make those silences visible, audible.

According to the formatting standards for theses at UBC, you cannot have any blank pages in your dissertation. You cannot just breathe or pause. Our C.V.s are also meant not to have any breaths or pauses in them, no turns away, no changes in course.

I am making a course change!

Update [7 March 2019]: Maya Weeks makes this point on Twitter:

i'm so over the fetishization of language!!!! not every1 is ~good~ at formulating thoughts thru words & we need systems that reflect ppls' various strengths! prioritizing work done in words (rather than literally any other action, like dance, or organizing) is elitist as hell!!!

u might think i'm kidding about this but i'm a professional writer with 2 degrees in language (linguistics & creative writing); i have been thinking about this for 12 years

[potterzachary]

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[kindlecomparedinfo]

How ‘The Mandalorian’ and ILM invisibly reinvented film and TV production

“The Mandalorian” was a pretty good show. On that most people seem to agree. But while a successful live-action Star Wars TV series is important in its own right, the way this particular show was made represents a far greater change, perhaps the most important since the green screen. The cutting edge tech (literally) behind “The Mandalorian” creates a new standard and paradigm for media — and the audience will none the wiser.

What is this magical new technology? It’s an evolution of a technique that’s been in use for nearly a century in one form or another: displaying a live image behind the actors. But the advance is not in the idea but the execution: a confluence of technologies that redefines “virtual production” and will empower a new generation of creators.

As detailed in an extensive report in American Cinematographer Magazine (I’ve been chasing this story for some time but suspected this venerable trade publication would get the drop on me), the production process of “The Mandalorian” is completely unlike any before, and it’s hard to imagine any major film production not using the technology going forward.

“So what the hell is it?” I hear you asking.

Meet “The Volume.”

Formally called Stagecraft, it’s 20 feet tall, 270 degrees around, and 75 feet across — the largest and most sophisticated virtual filmmaking environment yet made. ILM just today publicly released a behind-the-scenes video of the system in use as well as a number of new details about it.

It’s not easy being green

In filmmaking terms, a “volume” generally refers to a space where motion capture and compositing take place. Some volumes are big and built into sets, as you might have seen in behind-the-scenes footage of Marvel or Star Wars movies. Some are smaller, plainer affairs where the motions of the actors behind CG characters play out their roles.

But they generally have one thing in common: They’re static. Giant, bright green, blank expanses.

Does that look like fun to shoot in?

One of the most difficult things for an actor in modern filmmaking is getting into character while surrounded by green walls, foam blocks indicating obstacles to be painted in later, and people with mocap dots on their face and suits with ping-pong balls attached. Not to mention everything has green reflections that need to be lit or colored out.

Advances some time ago (think prequels-era Star Wars) enabled cameras to display a rough pre-visualization of what the final film would look like, instantly substituting CG backgrounds and characters onto monitors. Sure, that helps with composition and camera movement, but the world of the film isn’t there, the way it is with practical sets and on-site shoots.

Practical effects were a deliberate choice for “The Child” (AKA Baby Yoda) as well.

What’s more, because of the limitations in rendering CG content, the movements of the camera are often restricted to a dolly track or a few pre-selected shots for which the content (and lighting, as we’ll see) has been prepared.

This particular volume, called Stagecraft by ILM, the company that put it together, is not static. The background is a set of enormous LED screens such as you might have seen on stage at conferences and concerts. The Stagecraft volume is bigger than any of those — but more importantly, it’s smarter.

See, it’s not enough to just show an image behind the actors. Filmmakers have been doing that with projected backgrounds since the silent era! And that’s fine if you just want to have a fake view out of a studio window or fake a location behind a static shot. The problem arises when you want to do anything more fancy than that, like move the camera. Because when the camera moves, it immediately becomes clear that the background is a flat image.

The innovation in Stagecraft and other, smaller LED walls (the more general term for these backgrounds) is not only that the image shown is generated live in photorealistic 3D by powerful GPUs, but that 3D scene is directly affected by the movements and settings of the camera. If the camera moves to the right, the image alters just as if it was a real scene.

This is remarkably hard to achieve. In order for it to work the camera must send its real-time position and orientation to, essentially, a beast of a gaming PC, since this and other setups like it generally run on the Unreal engine. This must take that movement and render it exactly in the 3D environment, with attendant changes to perspective, lighting, distortion, depth of field and so on — all fast enough so that those changes can be shown on the giant wall a fraction of a second later. After all, if the movement lagged even by a few frames it would be noticeable to even the most naive viewer.

Yet fully half of the scenes in The Mandalorian were shot within Stagecraft, and my guess is no one had any idea. Interior, exterior, alien worlds or spaceship cockpits, all used this giant volume for one purpose or another.

[gallery ids="1949115,1949123,1949122,1949124"]

There are innumerable technological advances that have contributed to this; The Mandalorian could not have been made as it was five years ago. The walls weren’t ready; The rendering tech wasn’t ready; The tracking wasn’t ready — nothing was ready. But it’s ready now.

It must be mentioned that Jon Favreau has been a driving force behind this filmmaking method for years now; Films like remake of The Lion King were in some ways tech tryouts for The Mandalorian. Combined with advances made by James Cameron in virtual filmmaking and of course the indefatigable Andy Serkis’s work in motion capture, this kind of production is only just now becoming realistic due to a confluence of circumstances.

Not just for SFX

Of course Stagecraft is probably also the most expensive and complex production environments ever used. But what it adds in technological overhead (and there’s a lot) it more than pays back in all kinds of benefits.

For one thing, it nearly eliminates on-location shooting, which is phenomenally expensive and time-consuming. Instead of going to Tunisia to get those wide-open desert shots, you can build a sandy set and put a photorealistic desert behind the actors. You can even combine these ideas for the best of both worlds: Send a team to scout locations in Tunisia and capture them in high-definition 3D to be used as a virtual background.

This last option produces an amazing secondary benefit: Reshoots are way easier. If you filmed at a bar in Santa Monica and changes to the dialogue mean you have to shoot the scene over again, no need to wrangle permits and painstakingly light the bar again. Instead, the first time you’re there, you carefully capture the whole scene with the exact lighting and props you had there the first time and use that as a virtual background for the reshoots.

The fact that many effects and backgrounds can be rendered ahead of time and shot in-camera rather than composited in later saves a lot of time and money. It also streamlines the creative process, with decisions able to be made on the spot by the filmmakers and actors, since the volume is reactive to their needs, not vice versa.

Lighting is another thing that is vastly simplified, in some ways at least, by something like Stagecraft. The bright LED wall can provide a ton of illumination, and because it actually represents the scene, that illumination is accurate to the needs of that scene. A red-lit interior of a space station, and the usual falling sparks and so on, shows red on the faces and of course the highly reflective helmet of the Mandalorian himself. Yet the team can also tweak it, for instance sticking a bright white line high on the LED wall out of sight of the camera but which creates a pleasing highlight on the helmet.

Naturally there are some trade-offs. At 20 feet tall, the volume is large but not so large that wide shots won’t capture the top of it, above which you’d see cameras and a different type of LED (the ceiling is also a display, though not as powerful). This necessitates some rotoscoping and post-production, or limits the angles and lenses one can shoot with — but that’s true of any soundstage or volume.

A shot like this would need a little massaging in post, obviously.

The size of the LEDs, that is of the pixels themselves, also limits how close the camera can get to them, and of course you can’t zoom in on an object for closer inspection. If you’re not careful you’ll end up with Moiré patterns, those stripes you often see on images of screens.

Stagecraft is not the first application of LED walls — they’ve been used for years at smaller scales — but it is certainly by far the most high-profile and The Mandalorian is the first real demonstration of what’s possible using this technology. And believe me, it’s not a one-off.

I’ve been told that nearly every production house is building or experimenting with LED walls of various sizes and types — the benefits are that obvious. TV productions can save money but look just as good. Movies can be shot on more flexible schedules. Actors who hate working in front of green screens may find this more palatable. And you better believe commercials are going to find a way to use these as well.

In short, a few years from now it’s going to be uncommon to find a production that doesn’t use an LED wall in some form or another. This is the new standard.

This is only a general overview of the technology that ILM, Disney, and their many partners and suppliers are working on. In a follow-up article I’ll be sharing more detailed technical information directly from the production team and technologists who created Stagecraft and its attendant systems.

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[un-enfant-immature]

How ‘The Mandalorian’ and ILM invisibly reinvented film and TV production

“The Mandalorian” was a pretty good show. On that most people seem to agree. But while a successful live-action Star Wars TV series is important in its own right, the way this particular show was made represents a far greater change, perhaps the most important since the green screen. The cutting edge tech (literally) behind “The Mandalorian” creates a new standard and paradigm for media — and the audience will none the wiser.

What is this magical new technology? It’s an evolution of a technique that’s been in use for nearly a century in one form or another: displaying a live image behind the actors. But the advance is not in the idea but the execution: a confluence of technologies that redefines “virtual production” and will empower a new generation of creators.

As detailed in an extensive report in American Cinematographer Magazine (I’ve been chasing this story for some time but suspected this venerable trade publication would get the drop on me), the production process of “The Mandalorian” is completely unlike any before, and it’s hard to imagine any major film production not using the technology going forward.

“So what the hell is it?” I hear you asking.

Meet “The Volume.”

Formally called Stagecraft, it’s 20 feet tall, 270 degrees around, and 75 feet across — the largest and most sophisticated virtual filmmaking environment yet made. ILM just today publicly released a behind-the-scenes video of the system in use as well as a number of new details about it.

It’s not easy being green

In filmmaking terms, a “volume” generally refers to a space where motion capture and compositing take place. Some volumes are big and built into sets, as you might have seen in behind-the-scenes footage of Marvel or Star Wars movies. Some are smaller, plainer affairs where the motions of the actors behind CG characters play out their roles.

But they generally have one thing in common: They’re static. Giant, bright green, blank expanses.

Does that look like fun to shoot in?

One of the most difficult things for an actor in modern filmmaking is getting into character while surrounded by green walls, foam blocks indicating obstacles to be painted in later, and people with mocap dots on their face and suits with ping-pong balls attached. Not to mention everything has green reflections that need to be lit or colored out.

Advances some time ago (think prequels-era Star Wars) enabled cameras to display a rough pre-visualization of what the final film would look like, instantly substituting CG backgrounds and characters onto monitors. Sure, that helps with composition and camera movement, but the world of the film isn’t there, the way it is with practical sets and on-site shoots.

Practical effects were a deliberate choice for “The Child” (AKA Baby Yoda) as well.

What’s more, because of the limitations in rendering CG content, the movements of the camera are often restricted to a dolly track or a few pre-selected shots for which the content (and lighting, as we’ll see) has been prepared.

This particular volume, called Stagecraft by ILM, the company that put it together, is not static. The background is a set of enormous LED screens such as you might have seen on stage at conferences and concerts. The Stagecraft volume is bigger than any of those — but more importantly, it’s smarter.

See, it’s not enough to just show an image behind the actors. Filmmakers have been doing that with projected backgrounds since the silent era! And that’s fine if you just want to have a fake view out of a studio window or fake a location behind a static shot. The problem arises when you want to do anything more fancy than that, like move the camera. Because when the camera moves, it immediately becomes clear that the background is a flat image.

The innovation in Stagecraft and other, smaller LED walls (the more general term for these backgrounds) is not only that the image shown is generated live in photorealistic 3D by powerful GPUs, but that 3D scene is directly affected by the movements and settings of the camera. If the camera moves to the right, the image alters just as if it was a real scene.

This is remarkably hard to achieve. In order for it to work the camera must send its real-time position and orientation to, essentially, a beast of a gaming PC, since this and other setups like it generally run on the Unreal engine. This must take that movement and render it exactly in the 3D environment, with attendant changes to perspective, lighting, distortion, depth of field and so on — all fast enough so that those changes can be shown on the giant wall a fraction of a second later. After all, if the movement lagged even by a few frames it would be noticeable to even the most naive viewer.

Yet fully half of the scenes in The Mandalorian were shot within Stagecraft, and my guess is no one had any idea. Interior, exterior, alien worlds or spaceship cockpits, all used this giant volume for one purpose or another.

[gallery ids="1949115,1949123,1949122,1949124"]

There are innumerable technological advances that have contributed to this; The Mandalorian could not have been made as it was five years ago. The walls weren’t ready; The rendering tech wasn’t ready; The tracking wasn’t ready — nothing was ready. But it’s ready now.

It must be mentioned that Jon Favreau has been a driving force behind this filmmaking method for years now; Films like remake of The Lion King were in some ways tech tryouts for The Mandalorian. Combined with advances made by James Cameron in virtual filmmaking and of course the indefatigable Andy Serkis’s work in motion capture, this kind of production is only just now becoming realistic due to a confluence of circumstances.

Not just for SFX

Of course Stagecraft is probably also the most expensive and complex production environments ever used. But what it adds in technological overhead (and there’s a lot) it more than pays back in all kinds of benefits.

For one thing, it nearly eliminates on-location shooting, which is phenomenally expensive and time-consuming. Instead of going to Tunisia to get those wide-open desert shots, you can build a sandy set and put a photorealistic desert behind the actors. You can even combine these ideas for the best of both worlds: Send a team to scout locations in Tunisia and capture them in high-definition 3D to be used as a virtual background.

This last option produces an amazing secondary benefit: Reshoots are way easier. If you filmed at a bar in Santa Monica and changes to the dialogue mean you have to shoot the scene over again, no need to wrangle permits and painstakingly light the bar again. Instead, the first time you’re there, you carefully capture the whole scene with the exact lighting and props you had there the first time and use that as a virtual background for the reshoots.

The fact that many effects and backgrounds can be rendered ahead of time and shot in-camera rather than composited in later saves a lot of time and money. It also streamlines the creative process, with decisions able to be made on the spot by the filmmakers and actors, since the volume is reactive to their needs, not vice versa.

Lighting is another thing that is vastly simplified, in some ways at least, by something like Stagecraft. The bright LED wall can provide a ton of illumination, and because it actually represents the scene, that illumination is accurate to the needs of that scene. A red-lit interior of a space station, and the usual falling sparks and so on, shows red on the faces and of course the highly reflective helmet of the Mandalorian himself. Yet the team can also tweak it, for instance sticking a bright white line high on the LED wall out of sight of the camera but which creates a pleasing highlight on the helmet.

Naturally there are some trade-offs. At 20 feet tall, the volume is large but not so large that wide shots won’t capture the top of it, above which you’d see cameras and a different type of LED (the ceiling is also a display, though not as powerful). This necessitates some rotoscoping and post-production, or limits the angles and lenses one can shoot with — but that’s true of any soundstage or volume.

A shot like this would need a little massaging in post, obviously.

The size of the LEDs, that is of the pixels themselves, also limits how close the camera can get to them, and of course you can’t zoom in on an object for closer inspection. If you’re not careful you’ll end up with Moiré patterns, those stripes you often see on images of screens.

Stagecraft is not the first application of LED walls — they’ve been used for years at smaller scales — but it is certainly by far the most high-profile and The Mandalorian is the first real demonstration of what’s possible using this technology. And believe me, it’s not a one-off.

I’ve been told that nearly every production house is building or experimenting with LED walls of various sizes and types — the benefits are that obvious. TV productions can save money but look just as good. Movies can be shot on more flexible schedules. Actors who hate working in front of green screens may find this more palatable. And you better believe commercials are going to find a way to use these as well.

In short, a few years from now it’s going to be uncommon to find a production that doesn’t use an LED wall in some form or another. This is the new standard.

This is only a general overview of the technology that ILM, Disney, and their many partners and suppliers are working on. In a follow-up article I’ll be sharing more detailed technical information directly from the production team and technologists who created Stagecraft and its attendant systems.

[christian-photoinlondon]

WEEK 2

José Luis Venegas: Fajardo-Duarte wedding, Tijuana, 1972

Why did you choose this work?

This was my favorite piece out of the whole gallery. I chose to focus on this photograph because of not only the vibrancy of the colors and the harsh contrasts but also the vibrancy of the emotions and excitement that is being had by the subjects in the photo.

What do you think the artist is trying to say with this work?

The artist was going against traditional portrait photography that was common of the time to create wedding photography that embodied emotion and gave a sense of group identity to the higher social classes in Tijuana.

Identify and describe two compositional aspects or photographic attributes

The use of a bright flash captures each subject with hard artificial light from eye-level positioning which makes the image very clear and easy to understand the emotions of. The motion of this photography appears as a moment frozen in time and space without any blur.

Explain how you think these choices influence the meaning of the photograph

I believe this style of photography was very effective in delivering the intended modern life documentary portraits that the artist wanted for his clients. This use of light captures many different individuals at the wedding clearly and freezes this moment in history.

What is the photograph of? What is the photograph about? Are these different?

I believe the meaning and the what the actual photograph depicts are the same but with a higher meaning of purpose to the artist. Venegas was pushing away from traditional portrait documentary photography and was expanding towards this modern style of event photography that his clients liked and saw being used in the U.S.

Armando Cristeto: PolyMarchs, Party Nights series, Mexico City, 1985

Why did you choose this work?

I liked the more conceptual nature of this photograph compared to the other very literal photos that I chose to focus on and enjoyed viewing the vibrancy that it has with selected colors.

What do you think the artist is trying to say with this work?

The artist liked studying the act of and participating in parting as he notes that he knew few who “partied as I did, because I was interested in it for itself.” This work embodies dancing and nightlife and lets the artist understand the components of night life in itself.

Identify and describe two compositional aspects or photographic attributes

The selected use of color of the yellow and pink that is added on post-print with other overlaying shapes and shades. The use of a bright flash captures each subject from the chest down which makes the dancing very clear and frozen in time.

Explain how you think these choices influence the meaning of the photograph

The chosen colors that are added post-print draw the viewer’s attention to those areas to widen the photo and create a sense of jumbled confusion such as one might experience on a night out. This feeling is counteracted with the frozen in time type of lighting and short shutter speed which shows no blur.

What is the photograph of? What is the photograph about? Are these different?

The photograph is of people dancing and having fun on a night out. However, the photo is about the act of partying and what it means to party in particular. They are different and this creates meaning behind the series that Cristeto has photographed.

Pedro Valtierra: Teachers Being Beaten, Mexico, 1987

Why did you choose this work?

I chose this work because it caught my attention with its emotional and violent nature and made me want to understand what was happening.

What do you think the artist is trying to say with this work?

The artist was documenting the violence that was happening to indigenous teachers in the Oaxaca region that created a movement more open to diversity and increasingly critical to federal educational policies.

Identify and describe two compositional aspects or photographic attributes

The motion captured in this photograph with some blurred figures in the background as well as the point of view where the photographer is viewing the act of violence.

Explain how you think these choices influence the meaning of the photograph

By positioning himself in front of the teacher that is being beaten, the viewer sees the reaction on the teachers face while the policeman does not see this. It is an unfiltered and raw emotional take on what exactly was happening. The use of the blurred figures in the background create a sense of chaos with nondescript movements. 

What is the photograph of? What is the photograph about? Are these different?

I believe the meaning and the what the actual photograph depicts are the same as this was a documentation of the brutalities that the teachers were facing when creating a movement for more diversity and questioning of federal educational policies.

PHOTO DISCUSSED IN CLASS:

List ten details that you see in the photograph. What else do you see?

The large weather balloon, the snow on the ground, the raw iron red fence, the barren trees, the monochromatic sky, the clouds, the wires holding down the weather balloon, the patch work on the balloon, the evergreen trees at the bottom of the mountains and hills, and the curve of the wires on the left side indicating the wind.

Where is your eye drawn? Describe the pattern, shapes, and colours. Look away and then look at the photograph again. What caught your eye first?  Why does that stand out?

The large white weather balloon is what my eyes are first drawn to. All of the colors are very muted and the photograph gives a flat feeling because of those colors. The raw iron red fence also stands out to me because it is the only color that is very different from all the others in the photograph.

Find the pattern of light and shadow. What does the lighting draw your attention to? Describe what is in focus.

The lighting is very dispersed with no clear direction because of the cloudy day it was taken. There are no harsh shadows in the photograph as well making the large weather ballon confusing at first because of its unknown and nondescript purpose. Everything is in focus but the bottom of the balloon has no shadows possibly due to the reflecting nature of the snow bouncing light up from underneath.

What other photographic techniques do you notice? What is the photographer’s point of view (where is the camera in relation to the subject)?

The photographer took this photo from a point of view eye level on top of this mountain top. It gives the feeling that it is angled up towards the balloon but also captures the swooping valley and surrounding mountains. The other photographic technique that is being used is the way in which these two angles are caught and conveyed through this single photograph.

What is the subject of the photograph? What questions do you have about the subject?

I was confused at first when first seeing this photograph, but then once I saw the strings I understood the subject was a weather balloon. I would like to better understand what scientific purpose does this weather ballon serve and what data it collects.

Use an adjective to describe the style of the photograph. Can you guess what genre this photograph represents? What makes you say that?

Overpowering and confusing. The genre could be documentary or conceptual as the photo is of a scientific device but also the way it is taken is very ambiguous so it makes the viewer confused and draws them in to look deeper into the meaning behind it.

How does the photograph make you feel? What does the photograph make you think of? Why do you think the photographer made these artistic choices? What do you think the photograph is saying?

At first it makes me feel confused, but then once knowing what is being photographed I feel a sense of power as the view is positioned on top of a mountain overlooking the valleys. This photograph makes me think of when I go skiing and the bliss of solitude that I feel when up on top of the mountain. I think the photographer made these choices to make the viewer feel the way I did as well as make a commentary on nature vs industry.

Look once more at the photograph and find something you haven’t described yet. What is your reaction to this exercise? Did anything surprise you?

The red iron fence was something that I initially did not put much thought into, but once going back I am surprised to see how significantly different the color is compared with every other thing in the photograph. It draws importance as being now a focal piece that directs the view of the viewer up to the large weather balloon. 

What areas were difficult to answer? Photographic attributes and technique? Composition? Content? Style or genre? Meaning?

The meaning was hard to understand because there was not much explanation to pull from and it was up to the viewer to understand what this object was in the photograph. After closer look it can be easier to understand with an open and detailed mind.

[ja-acabou-jessica]

Seven Secrets to an ideal Car Wrap

Car wraps and the custom car visual have been growing at an extremely fast pace in the past few years. Because of this many existing printing shops want to profit from the development by offering vehicle wraps with their customers.

However, car wraps aren't like business credit cards, flyers or brochures where in fact the printing press does the work. Click here to find out more advice

Top-quality car wraps require experience and knowledge in many different fields including;

Design

Material

Production

Preparation

Facility

Installation

Post Installation

Let's check out each one of these categories:

Design

To design a company card you just get the template to add your logo design, your contact information and done, you have designed your own business credit card...

The global world is not flat, neither is the top of an automobile. The designer will need to have considerable experience and the right tools like the latest vehicle templates to make a car cover design that will fit a particular vehicle properly with no the image or the message distorted or sliced up into pieces.

Every angle, space, the curve of the automobile must be studied into consideration when making a wrap. Ignoring these elements will lead to a car cover design that's not easy on the eye nor is simple to learn and understand. It will have a poor impact on your business image.

Material

There are numerous high and poor vinyl manufacturers away there. Top brands that have been with us for years and provide the best car cover vinyl fabric include 3M, Avery, Arlon and oracal.

Like everything else just, with car wraps you truly get what you purchase. If you value quality and longevity of the cover then you want to ensure that cover shop is utilizing a high-quality vinyl fabric.

Additionally, you need to bear in mind that simply stating a 3M vinyl has been used it generally does not imply that particular vinyl is a good choice for assembling your project. 3M and all the manufacturers offer many types of vinyl fabric from high-quality, high-cost Solid Vinyl to lessen performance, cheaper Calendared Vinyl fabric.

The mixture of the vinyl and the overlaminate is also extremely important. Many shops use a 3M Ensemble vinyl but use a Calendared or cheaper Laminate to lessen the cost. Solid laminates are around three times the price of the calendar. Although a straight a trained vision can not inform the difference between your two initially after a while the calendared laminate will begin to fade considerably faster than a solid. Also, a calendared laminate is not made to be utilized in vehicle curves and it'll bubble and pop out of its position within the first couple of months.

So as you can view materials play an essential role in a car wrap, you could have the best design and the best installer but with the incorrect materials, your cover won't last.

Production

Suppose you have the perfect design and chosen the suitable material for the work. Now is time for you to print your design on the vinyl fabric. Unfortunately utilizing a wide format digital printing device is much less simple as utilizing an HP or Sibling printing device that people all use at the office or home. There is much more involved with order to make a razor-sharp and lively image when printing a car wrap.

Each manufacturer's vinyl fabric has a unique printing profile. Exactly what is a printing profile you may ask?

To put it simply it's a code specifically designed for that one vinyl which tells the printer how much ink to lay on the vinyl to be able to get the best results.

Many print shops don't work with this task and have a tendency to use one profile for all those media. This total results in boring, over or under saturated images that just don't look right.

Preparation

Let's take this a step further, you have the perfect car cover design, the best materials, and great printing. Now you have to really get your vehicle readied for the setup.

The most frustrating part of wrapping a car is the prep process. That's where the installer must review every in . of your car's surface as well as under the elements trims, splits, fenders to ensure they're 100% clean & wax free.

The car must be washed the day before & needs to be dry. The special solution is utilized to wipe the automobile down completely to ensure any wax residue has been removed. Again then, using alcohol the automobile needs to be wiped down to ensure the perfect solution is that was used to eliminate the wax has been removed (normally it will impact the adhesive of the vinyl fabric). car cleaning cartoon

The smallest dirt and grime left out could lead to the vinyl's adhesive to fail and after a short while, lift off the top. A little lift allows drinking water to get under the cover and finally cause the whole cover to fail.

Since this is actually the most frustrating area of the cover additionally it is the minimal favorite area of the job for an installer and for that reason most overlooked.

Facility

You've come to a long-way now, you have your perfect design, the perfect material, a great print, and your vehicle has been flawlessly prepped... now you will need a Car Cover Service

The question now could be where will the actual installation happen? Outdoors or indoor? Will the indoor service be dirt free and also have the right heat required by the vinyl fabric manufacturer during set up?

In case your wrap has been installed outdoor, well you're off to an awful start. There is no means of avoiding large and small dirt contaminants from the top of your vehicle. The results can be observed immediately because even the tiniest dirt particle will show through the cover and having a large number of them under your cover will look just like a coating of fine sand was deposit prior to the wrapping of the automobile.

This not only appears terrible but large enough particles might lead to holes and rips in the cover and invite water to leak under leading to the cover to fail.

If your automobile has been wrapped indoors, well that's great, however, the indoor facility must be super clean with some form of dust control and it must be at the right temperature.

Setting up a cover at a higher temperature may cause it to overextend and fail in the long-term.

Installing in a minimal temperature may cause the vinyl fabric to shrink and finally fail when it's subjected to high temperatures.

So an ardent installation facility is really important to ensure the ultimate outcome of the cover is superb.

Installation

This is actually the last however, not the minimal important step of an automobile wrap.

You have your perfect design, great material, superb print quality, your vehicle has been prepped properly and the facility is specifically created for a vehicle wraps.

Many of these factors could be totally destroyed if a skilled and unmotivated installer will the cover.

Everyone appears to think that is simple to set up a wrap, in the end, it is merely a huge sticker...Wrong. It requires hours and hours and lots of lost materials and money to learn the best way to install a cover.

Different materials behave differently and therefore the installer must have intensive experience with various media. Many installers develop their own tools for performing, plus some even get trademarked and used by other experts on the market.

Even though actual installing the wrap is very hard, the ultimate trimming of the wrap is even more difficult.

You could have the flawlessly installed wrap if the extra material is not trimmed and tucked properly the ultimate outcome can look terrible.

Trimming the cover requires a stable hand, a complete great deal of persistence and technique. This is what sets a great installer apart from a good installer. Making the cover to appear to be a color job is exactly what it's about.

Post Installation

Now it might seem well we're done, the wrap has perfectly been installed and trimmed, I am prepared to enjoy my car... wrong again.

This is actually the step that is most overlooked by installers since it is the most frustrating & most boring area of the install.

The installer, now utilizing a Heat-Gun (not really a torch), must review the regions of the wrap that is on the recessed or curved area, using a digital thermometer to ensure every inch of the areas reaches a certain level as required by the product manufacturer. (Solid color cover must reach a 45 to 50 levels Celsius and the imprinted press must reach 85 to 90 levels Celsius).

The reason behind it is because all wrap vinyl has PVC within their ingredients. PVC allows the vinyl fabric to truly have a memory space, so when is overstretched and warmed it'll get back to its original form.

That is clearly a great feature, however after the cover is installed you don't want the vinyl fabric to return to its original form, this implies it'll shrink and drawback again.

The only path to over-ride the PVC memory is to ensure the areas that are stretched or under great pressure reach that specific temperature. This will ensure the vinyl fabric will keep its form.

We are done now, well almost done... suppose all the above factors were fulfilled and performed properly, what goes on if you've still got problems with your cover? Customer support is the thing you depends on, so choosing an established cover shop becomes the most crucial part of your decision-making process.

[dancing-crow]

Bench notes are the notes on experiments that I take to remind myself of the steps I took, and what I was thinking, and what I thought the next steps would be. These excursions start when I see a piece of artwork or a scrap of something and my head spins with ideas about how I might translate that to fabric, and whether it would be interesting if I did. This batch started with the images below.

I saw pictures from Guo Pei’s Fall 2019 collection, and I was struck by the construction of the garments. I mean, one model is straight-up wearing a bathtub filled with flowers, which has to be strenuous, while a conjoined dress for two women looks like it could sow dissension between even the best of friends. But the fabrics are amazing, the techniques bear close examination, and these two constructions made a huge impression on me:

The dress on the left, and the sleeves on the right seem to be made from hundreds of fine pieces of silk sewn vertically onto the base garment. The silhouette on the left, in particular, is created almost completely with the shape of the vertical pieces. The idea of sewing something that densely was intriguing.

To begin, I used some pieces of silk dupioni, sliced in wavy lines, and stitched onto straight vertical lines.

Color changes depending on light and orientation. I like the way the edges echo across the piece, like overlapping waves. I forgot that sewing a convex curve to a straight line made the outside edge too short, bending the base fabric. I think the silk needs to be cut more on the bias, to prevent unraveling, and also to add ease to the outside edges.

For a first test, I think I can see some ways to go on the next experiment. Next step:

make the stitched edge straight

This makes everything lie flatter, and I miss the movement of the concave edges stitched down with the longer edges ruffling and standing off the page. When I stand the page on edge, instead of flat on the table, the shapes become more interesting.

Some possible next steps then:

bias cut

make the outside edges more unified – more regular

change the weight of the silk? dupioni is fairly stiff, find something more drapey

sew in the folded center of a piece? 2x the edges for each seam…

I’ve ordered more silk so I have more raw material to work with!

Bench Notes Bench notes are the notes on experiments that I take to remind myself of the steps I took, and what I was thinking, and what I thought the next steps would be.