#if i ever get a computer that's powerful enough that i can learn 3d modeling i will probably make something if only just models tbh

[soubiapologist]

would you guys ever be interested in crowdfunding some fan merch that's meant to emulate official merch? like a garage kit or some of those rubber character keystraps or manju plushes or something?

[pixelplayground]

PXL'S Anatomy of Screenshots

So you want to take better screenshots? There are multiple factors to consider, and if you don't enjoy tweaking reshade settings for every image, my ultimate method may not be for you. That being said, there are tips and resources in this guide that are applicable to everyone and you can select to explore those that are useful to your specific situation.

Disclaimer: I am not claiming to be an expert, nor am I offering to provide troubleshooting on an individual basis. This is a general guide and if you are unfamiliar with any of the concepts, please use the mighty power of the internet to find tutorials. I promise everything that I have learned over the years has been published and documented a thousand times better than I ever could.

There are five factors to address:

Your computer's inherent capabilities

The game's limitations

The mods you're using

Reshade

Post Processing

Graphics Card Settings & Drivers:

Become familiar with your graphic options. If you don't have a dedicated graphics card (i.e. a desktop or gaming laptop, these features may be unavailable and you should skip.)

I have an AMD Radeon Pro card which is designed for workstation level systems. It's overkill for sims, but useful for 3D rendering and modelling work. I have changed the following settings for DirectX 9 applications:

anti-aliasing - enhance application settings

anisotropic filtering - enabled

anisotropic filtering level - 16x

texture filtering quality - high

surface format optimization - high

Consider overclocking your graphics card to unlock it's full potential. DO NOT pursue this venture unless you are ok with the risk of burning out your card prematurely. I use at present, overclocked Bootcamp Drivers from BootcampDrivers.com obviously, if you're not playing on an intel based mac through Bootcamp, this is irrelevant to you.

None of these settings are useful until you address the default games limitations, which leads nicely into the next factor.

Addressing The Sims 4's Graphic Limitations:

Everyone should be familiar at this point with lighting mods, 4k, textures, disabling ssao, etc. but, I'm still going to spell it out. None of this is new information and has been covered many a time by various players ad nauseum.

remove ugly blue toned lighting in the world by choosing a lighting mod from @softerhaze here

overhaul your graphics.cfg file (i use a custom blend with features specific to me), however @simp4sims has done a ridiculous amount of work in providing a simple to install file that can be found here - read through their tutorials!! they have provided an excellent oversight of exactly what this does and why it matters

improve the indoor lighting for your sims - previously i used @luumia's no blu, no glo - recently i switched to @northernsiberiawinds better in game lighting mod here, though i have tweaked some of the settings to suit my own personal preferences

i don't use the HQ mod, i don't find that it makes enough difference for the amount of effort it requires to convert CAS CC

It should go without saying, but tweaking your graphics config file is absolutely useless if you can't play TS4 at it's maximum in game graphic settings!

The Mods You're Using:

Now that you've put in all this work into getting the game ready to make use of quality mods where do you start? Well, the CC you install matters. Whatever your preference, whether it be maxis-match, alpha or somewhere in between, priority should be given to using items textured in 2k or 4k resolutions, and specific attention should be paid to using wall and flooring textures with bump maps, and or high quality resolutions (this is important later for reshade if you intend to learn about ray tracing).

I will separately post a guide to creators with crispy textures because that is it's own novel.

Reshade:

Phew. Still with me?

There are many many many reshade presets out there, most are alike, but none employ ray tracing, and that is because a) it needs to be manually adjusted for every screenshot, b) they are paid shaders, and c) this requires advanced knowledge of reshade and a decent enough graphics set up that won't overheat - games running native ray tracing recommend a minimum VRAM of 8GB (please note RAM and VRAM are not the same) - i therefore do not recommend pursuing this option if your system does not meet those minimum requirements.

Start here to understand what ray tracing for reshade is. In my opinion, the shaders are well worth the price of $5 for the amount of work that has gone into creating them by the talented Pascal Gilcher. That link is a comprehensive starting point into expanding your knowledge of reshade and it's capabilities.

I have always created my own reshade presets from scratch, and while the core colorization settings I utilize remain largely the same, using ray tracing and re-light means every screenshot needs to be manually adjusted (lights repositioned, bounce and AO factors adjusted, etc) before being captured. @pictureamoebae just published a very timely post discussing the re-light shader and you can read it here.

Post Processing

Reshade does 99.99% of the work that traditionally would be accomplished in a photo editing software like photoshop. Occasionally, I need to adjust exposure manually, add depth of field manually, or color correct. Beyond that I use it to scale images to fit the resolution and file size limits of various platforms. Conceptually this reduces the amount of uncontrolled loss encountered when platforms like tumblr auto compress files that are too large. In reality, tumblr still makes images crappy compared to how they appear in my file folder.

optimize your images for various social media platforms using this guide

fix exposure or colorization issues using a software like photoshop

I hope that this gives you a starting point into expanding your methodologies. My process is continuously evolving and I find this aspect of the game most entertaining. For others who don't enjoy this process, it's probably not worth it!

Thanks for reading ❤ PXL

[trickstarbrave]

listen. digital art is more accessible than ever. you can find a wealth of advanced art programs for free or very affordably. you can pirate software very reliably too if you dont want to pay. you can find and use 3d models or brushes or textures that can be free or extremely low cost. you can sculpt in 3d for free if you fucking want. if you want to you can get a pen for your existing ipad and churn out professional quality artwork. you can buy a drawing tablet for 30 dollars. there really is no need to turn to AI art to make digital art under the guise of "it's more accessible"

"but some people might not HAVE 30 dollars to buy a tablet" okay well. you have to either fork over hundreds of dollars for a powerful enough GPU to run a stable diffusion model locally and deal with the hassle of it (lol ppl dont recommend this for a reason) or fork over for a subscription service to a tech bro who runs his own model and can spit out art for you. or rent gpu if you for some reason are determined to run the model yourself and suffer. and honestly a 30 dollar tablet seems like a much more achievable goal than an intensive gpu or would save you more money in the long run.

"but i dont know how to draw" i am entirely self taught. there is a wealth of information for free online that will give you an easier time to learn than i had. if you save up a little bit more money you can take professional level courses online whenever you want too if being self taught is too daunting of a task.

"but i dont have a computer or an ipad" steal art supplies then and go traditional babey

"but im disabled" i am disabled and chronically ill and i dont mean to speak for every single disabled person ever but. you would be surprised at what you can do if you are willing to work for it. im sure some disabled people cannot draw at all and never will be able to. but the assumption that all artists are high energy, able bodied, and wealthy is a really ridiculous assumption to make. a bunch of us are chronically ill, disabled, and broke.

"but i dont fucking want to learn how to draw i just want art" then it's not an accessibility issue stop trying to moralize you using a diffusion model. you're doing it bc you want to.

[technophili]

AI-Driven Cars Have Transformed from Science Fiction to Street Reality in 2024

Have you ever caught yourself dreaming of driving around town in a self-driving car?Get ready, because this future is right around the corner, and you don't even know it, because the race to build cars is at its peak, and artificial intelligence is the central pillar.But before we dive headlong into this field, I'd like to stop for a moment and think about why anyone would want a self-driving car. Try to imagine this scenario: you're driving along the freeway and suddenly you see a chicken and a sloth playing pickleball on the side of the road (sorry, that's the best I could come up with). In a normal car, you'd probably be concentrating on the road and miss this strange sight (which, let's face it, sucks). But what if you were in a self-driving car? You'd be able to enjoy the show as you please, without fear of finding yourself in oncoming traffic.

The need for autonomous cars

Let's face it, the previous example was the lamest of them all, and it's certainly not the most appropriate. But I'd like you to keep this in mind: around 90% of car accidents in the United States are due to human error, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  Let's face it, we humans are broken drivers. We're (always) distracted, we're tired, we make bad decisions. Why do we behave as if we had 16 at the wheel?It's because of this kind of attitude that AI steps in, and promises to be wise and responsible adults in the car.the AI doesn't get distracted by an incredible song on the radio, or by a discussion about whether that's Ryan Reynolds we've just passed on the street - just the opposite of us. It keeps its eyes (that's a metaphor okay!) on the road at all times.

How does AI power autonomous vehicles?

The question on everyone's mind is how can AI enable a car to drive itself? Well, it's not magic (even if it looks a little like magic, that is). Rather, it's about giving the car a 2.0 version of the five senses, and a brain to make sense of the hubbub.

Key AI Technologies Enabling Self-Driving Cars

The Car's Eyes and Ears

Lidar in Autonomous Driving: Pros, Cons & More dubizzle First of all, we have the car's eyes. They come in the form of cameras, radars and a device called LIDAR (which looks like a radar, but with lasers - in case you didn't know, this technology was used in Avengers Infinity War, the scene where we see Thanos' ship land on a city - it wasn't a photo, a video or even a 3D city). These sensors scan the environment all the time, looking for absolutely everything, whether it's other cars, pedestrians or even the chicken and sloth we mentioned earlier ( Good! I promise this is the last time we'll talk about this stuff)

Vehicle tracking using ultrasonic sensors & joined particle weighting Semantic Scholar  Next, we have the ears. These are ultrasonic sensors that work like bat sonar, bouncing sound waves off nearby targets to estimate their distance. And it's very useful for parking, because, let's be honest, not even the AI wants to parallel park if it can avoid it.then there's the sense of touch, which in this case consists of feeling the car's movements. Accelerometers and gyroscopes track the car's speed and position, a bit like the inner ear does for humans (but without the risk of discomfort in the car, otherwise it would have been weird).The Brains of the Operation

active learning and autonomous-vehicles-cloudfactory.com All this sensory information is fed to the car's brain, a sort of hyper-powerful on-board computer running artificial intelligence algorithms. And this is where the magic happens. The AI will use all this data to build a real-time 3D model of the world around the car. It's a bit like The Matrix, but instead of dodging bullets, it dodges potholes and pedestrians.Machine Learning: Practice Makes Perfect But it's not enough for AI to see the world, it has to understand it. For this, we need machine learning. When it analyzes millions of hours of driving data, AI will learn to recognize what I'll call patterns and make anticipations, or in more appropriate terms, predictions.If a car overtakes, is it likely to change lanes? That pedestrian, is he about to step off the sidewalk? AI simply asks itself these kinds of questions all the time, answering them on a regular basis and far more quickly than a human ever could.Path Planning and Navigation 

Autonomous Driving and the Need For Motion Planning- Realtime Robotics Once the AI has understood what's going on around it, it needs to decide what to do. This is where it really starts to get exciting (and a little philosophical, I'd say). The AI has to be programmed with a set of rules and priorities. Should it prefer the safety of its passengers to that of pedestrians? How should it handle moral situations like the famous cart problem?These are difficult questions, and it's because of situations like these that we're all driving around in self-driving cars.But progress is being made. Companies like Tesla, Waymo and Uber are traveling millions of kilometers in autonomous cars, and they're teaching their AIs how to handle all kinds of situations, from rush-hour traffic to unexpected weather conditions.

Levels of Vehicle Automation 

SAE Levels of Driving Automation™ Refined for Clarity and- SAE international Speaking of progress, let's talk about autonomous driving levels, because if you didn't already know, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has kindly and carefully only determined six levels for us, from 0 to 5Autonomy levels- Level 0 corresponds to grandfather's old pickup truck, with no automation whatsoever. No automation whatsoever. - Level 1 can, and I mean can, have cruise control or lane-keeping assistance. Other than that, zilch. - We're currently seeing a lot of Level 2 cars on the road, which can handle certain driving roles and nothing more, but still need a human to take over at any given moment. - It's at level 3 that we get to caress autonomous driving a little. These cars can handle the majority of driving tasks, and still need WE, the human saviors, to take over. - Level 4 cars can drive themselves in most conditions, but when the going gets tough and the going gets a bit red, like the weather, they gently give way to humans. - And level 5? This is the Holy Grail, the pearl of pearls, a car capable of driving itself, in all conditions, in all situations, without the need for human intervention.Now, I've had some personal experiences with this technology that I'd like to share. I recently test-drove a car with Level 2 autonomy, and let me tell you, it was both exhilarating and terrifying. Watching the steering wheel move on its own as the car navigated a curve was like witnessing magic. But I also found myself constantly hovering my hands over the wheel, ready to take control at a moment's notice. It's a stark reminder that we're still in a transitional phase, where AI driving automation in the automotive industry is impressive but not yet perfect.Technical ChallengesYou may be thinking: all this sounds cool, but when am I going to buy this thing? That's the million-dollar (or multi-billion-dollar) question.The truth is, we're not there yet. While companies like Tesla are still inventing advanced driving assistance systems, truly autonomous vehicles are still a long, long way off - in fact, they're still in the testing phase. Personally, I couldn't care less about autonomous cars, it's not something I'm looking forward to, but if autonomous cars tempt you, some analysts think that by 2030, up to 15% of cars sold could be fully autonomous. It may not sound like much, but in 2010 electric cars accounted for less than 1% of new car sales. Today, they account for almost 10% in many countries. Technology has a way of surprising us.The catch (there is always a catch)As always, and this is starting to get on my nerves, there are challenges to be met. One of the most important is ensuring that these AI drivers are capable of handling unpredictable real-world events. It's one thing to navigate a well-mapped city street, but not the same for a country road that's not on any map, or a construction zone that appears overnight. These are the kinds of scenarios that keep AI engineers up at night.There's also the question of public confidence. There are many who disagree or are afraid of entrusting absolute control to a computer. It's going to take time, time and more time (I don't think the 2030s are still relevant.) and proof of safety, so there's a lot of proof of safety before most of us feel comfortable taking a little nap while our car takes us to work. In any case, if we can be persuaded to implant a neuralinks chip in our brains, this trick will be a piece of cake.And yes! We're already entrusting our lives to artificial intelligence. Every time you board a commercial aircraft, you're trusting the artificial intelligence systems that manage much of the flight. And without lying to us, most of us trust Google Maps more than our own sense of direction.Is it worth fighting for?By the time we get to fully autonomous cars, we'll have traveled a whole long and boring, with plenty of potholes along the way. But if we consider the benefits it could bring, it might just be worth it. Isn't a world where road accidents are drastically reduced, where the elderly and disabled can move around freely, where traffic flows like water because every car communicates with every other car, worth it?Yes! it's worth working for, even if we have to deal with a few bugs along the way. After all, as any programmer will tell you, the first step in fixing a bug is to find it. Not to mention that test vehicles cover millions of miles every year, which could eliminate these bugs at a hell of a rate.So if you happen to be stuck in those pesky traffic jams and think about this article and the day when you'll be able to sit back and let your car do the driving, remember our little secret: that day will come. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not even in the next 10 years. But it's coming. And when it does, it will change the way we travel forever. 

Conclusion

In the meantime, keep your eyes on the road. And if you happen to see a chicken and a sloth playing pickleball, well ( damn! I promised I wouldn't talk about that thing anymore)... maybe it's time to stop and check if you're dreaming. Or if you've stumbled across a Pixar movie. Either way, it might be best to let a human take the wheel on this particular journey. Read the full article

[auroras-void]

Fuck specialization.

I am incredibly mediocre at like a 1,000 different things but there are no job titles that benefit from being mediocre at lots of things.

I wish I could just like, go to a completely different job every day, just whatever I feel like doing... Monday I do some computer programming, Tuesday I'm patching a roof, Wednesday I'm photographing a wedding, Thursday I'm fixing someone's car, Friday I'm 3d modeling someone's blueprints, Monday I'm an electrician, Tuesday I'm a journalist, Wednesday I'm a video editor, Thursday I'm a math tutor, Friday I'm a logo designer, Monday I'm...

Like these are all literally things I know how to do (to varying degrees), but I'm not good enough at or passionate enough about any of those things to turn (most) of them into a lifelong career, much less a fulfilling one, and many of them are just wildly unrelated, commiting to one closes the door on so many possibilities.

I just wish that my livelihood didn't have to be attached to my job and I could just spend my life finding places I can be an extra set of hands when needed and I didn't have to waste so much of my potential by forcing myself to burn a couple decades getting a degree and then mastering the highest paying skill I can tolerate.

Why can't I just learn everything do everything? Why can't I just spend my life completing sidequests? I'm not good at specializing, my brain just starts to rot the longer I stay doing one thing, I crave novelty. I want to be a part of an anarchist poly friendly commune and just befriend all the experts and show up in their workshops and offices and labs unannounced and start helping out with what I can. I don't want to be the best, I don't want to be an expert. I wanna be the interstitium of society, bringing ideas from distant fields back forth with me as I wander. Showing them to all sorts of people who are smarter than me who can turn them into creations no one else in their field would have ever thought of. Where I can go where I please, and where I don't ever have to worry about burning out and ruining a long career and losing my livelihood.

I don't want 2.5 kids a white picket fence cookie cutter house and a stable white collar job at the business factory. I want an overgrown eclectic apartment in a low-rise walkable neighborhood that looks like no other and an unstable tangle of queer platonic relationships that I can't describe but I know makes me feel like I am loved, where I choose to be productive not because that's what the collective weight of power and wealth and culture and even my survival force are forcing me to be worried about that every waking moment of my like, but instead because I choose to be, because I want to participate in my community, and build something together with them, because I want to learn something new, because I want to engage with the world around me, because that world is worth engaging in.

I'm at a beginning of life crisis right now, I haven't even started and all my options are terrible to me. I wish that it didn't have to be like this. I was not built for this.

I want time to figure myself out explore who I even am, I want the freedom to learn, and to fail, and to grow. The world that we've created scares me so much, it's not friendly to this line of reasoning. I even have the privilege to have a wider margin of error than most, but I still find myself petrified, unable to begin and take control of my life because I know failure has consequences in this world.

I have loving friends and family but I still feel so alone. I have a path forward, and a roof over my head, but it feels so hollow. I... had... a wonderful partner, but I still felt like I was missing so much. Why can't I just let myself be happy? Why can't I accept the reality that's in front of me for what it is?

I'm a mess and I feel so lost, I don't know how I fit into this world. I have to, somewhere, I just... idk...

[quiteanoriginal]

Quick thoughts on AI art

The arguments against AI art are obvious yet worth stating: 1) It's built on stolen labor of thousands of artists who will go uncredited while struggling to earn enough 2) Even if everyone who made the training data were compensated, it will lessen future opportunities to earn money doing art 3) Its work product lacks humanity and cannot generate human-like insights

I took a look at a a rendering of a fictional David Cronenberg movie called Galaxy of Flesh (1985). The image set has a number of problems: ** It regresses to the mean and mixes Cronenberg too liberally with Star Wars (the dusty, computery worlds), Alien (the designs share Geiger's organic bowel-like designs more than what I associated with Cronenberg), and there's even one that has a Terminator-like figure next to a Schwarzenegger-like figure. ** It doesn't accomplish the hard part, the cohesion of the images into a story. There are obviously no main characters or repeated figures. We can't see a development of an idea across it: a character that learns something, a setting that is changed by something, all those things that art actually studies. I'm reminded of Matt Bell's attempt to get AI to generate a blurb which promises a "secret that threatens to tear their world apart." AI will not be able to actually define that secret, not just it can't do anything "novel" (remix is a novelty, for sure), but because it works bottoms-up. It has no vision ** The images are often just bad. Faces are over sharpened or over smoothed. Supposedly solid objects simply fade into backgrounds. Textures don't obey 3D spatial logic in a way that would be filmable. No human designing these images would want to do that.

Mainly, though, my mind goes to my earlier point that AI images lack human-level insights, in particular, the gas masks it puts on some figures. The idea that masks used in the mechanized WWI, which hide the face, can be repurposed as a viscerally frightening symbol in art criqiquing empire or war is such a human insight. I cannot imagine an AI ever coming up with that. Instead, it can only repurpose it from its training data.

Similarly, there's a popular clip going around of Spielberg interviewed about Close Encounters where the interviewer observes that the climax of the film involves making music with computers, while Spielberg's parents were a musician and computer scientist. Spielberg glows at this comment, that somehow, he put something personal and human in the work without being obviously aware of it. AI couldn't do that. Its mind is not a human one, and it will not do what human minds do.

The right thing to do ethically might be to invoke a Luddite ethos, and use whatever powers (legal, publicity, influence) to smash these machines before they take over. The right thing to do aesthetically might be to think about Hayao Miyazaki who, when shown a creepy animation of a creature that AI-learned to walk using its head, told a story about a friend of his who suffered from muscle problems, who could barely move, and used that to say that "whoever creates this stuff has no idea of pain." This, like the gas masks and Close Encounters, shows what art can be when it is made by humans.

The labor concerns are enough that I believe anyone is fair to call it a day on AI art and refuse to participate or indulge it any further.

The aesthetic concerns I don't particularly buy. The fact is: AI art is absolutely still based in humanity. The training data was human. The design of the model was made by humans. We accept all sorts of art which are as tenuous to ties to humanity as AI art. When a natural sunset occurs and a machine's sensors receive data and a printer deposits ink onto a page with those color values, we can still consider that photograph artful. The creepy animation that Miyazaki denigrates was AI-generated, but there are plenty of human-designed animations which are not respective of the pain of Miyazaki's friends yet which no one doubts are artful.

We have been through the 20th century and we understand that computer-assisted art, chance-based art, mechanically reproduced art, and even intentionally anti-human art exists. Much great art (maybe, all great art) is produced in ethically compromised production processes.

Even the criticisms I levied against Galaxy of Flesh are flimsy: ** We love remixes and we don't hold almost any art to the perfect standard of originality ** We accept and praise art that is non-narrative, that has disjointness, which presents without needing to cohere ** We welcome imperfections

To defend AI art is cruel to humanity. It is naïve to pretend that because there exits an interesting and artful way to use AI for art, AI art will be deployed interestingly and artfully. Galaxy of Flesh (1985) is not a good piece of art. It is too long. It is neither coherent nor interesting in its incoherence. It doesn't contain almost any of the beauty and elegance of the human body that Cronenberg places everywhere. The person who posted it on Twitter is acting like a schmuck to anyone who brings up labor concerns and doesn’t deserve good faith the way another artist who dumps raw AI output might.

I still see an imaginative use of those images, though. I feel, underneath many layers of disgust and frustration about living as an artist today, a little inspired by these images. I can see something I would want to create there, and which another artist may want to create. I can imagine an artist who chains together queries with different models, who writes artful prompts, who mixes media between what the AI can do and what else can be done to reach different final works.

I just wouldn't want to pretend that this sugar-high, unnourishing spark would sustain anyone. We deserve better.

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/KQrpbw3 https://twitter.com/mdbell79/status/1610374083883184128 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZspOEa1CP4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc https://twitter.com/keithscho/status/1612991766441111552

[daaziscoolbesties]

i yearn for one(1) thing only, and that is to have a nice, simplistic, cartoonish artstyle. an artstyle that doesnt rely on anatomy, but the "movement" of the drawing, if you get what i mean.

i dont want realistic proportions and traditional colors and basic poses and gradient shading, i want funky lil dudes in funky poses with funky styles littering my sketchbook :( but alas i havent figured out how to develop that kind of style yet, my brain wants anatomy to look nice but also i dont want to draw eyes. i dont want to take time out of my day to learn how to draw lips i want to draw a line that extends past the characters face. i dont want all my characters to have pointy chins with curved cheeks i want their heads to be round and friend-like or full of sharp edges depending on their personalities and styles. i want to give them all not-quite human ears, blob feet, simple faces, but at the same time i want enough detail to convey the story or emotion im trying to tell.

ive spent so much time recently agonizing over how to use 3d model websites, using real-life references and tracing over them for practice, color-picking from real images to try and do realism and failing miserably, but you know whats easier than that? funky little dudes. little dudes who do not care if their legs are too long or their hair is too bouncy. i dont want my characters to look human.

ive spent enough time on the artfight website to realize that most people who classify their characters as "human" have the most basic ass designs (no offense to people who like basic human designs its just not my thing) or its like dnd-medieval style outfits which i cant draw for the life of me (ive tried). again no offense to people who actively enjoy and draw characters like that. i just need my dudes to have that certain,,, off-ness to them. tails are cool. wings are swag (especially if they arent even like,, fully attached,, ), elf ears are so wonderful to me no matter how much theyre overused, horns are so much fun to draw, and colors!! i have no knowledge in the color theory department so this works great for me!! the only thing i really know is dont shade with black, other than that i just colorpick from references usually but i dont want to do that!! i want the colors to hurt people's eyes but in a satisfying way. like the character's design is so nice to look at that you dont mind your eyes hurting a bit. like how im enjoying writing this post even though its 2 am and the brightness on my computer wont go any lower.

and then another thing ive noticed from being on the artfight website is that a lot of people classify their characters that are anthro/have anthro features under humanoids/monsters. like i made a google form to find some people to attack and someone sent me in a character with some sort of animal (wolf? idk) arms and legs. like dude!! peak character design i love her. but me personally? i cant draw that shit, its so hard for me. i tried a while back and its just Not my thing. nothing against furries i just. cant. and i dont want to either.

and i got another submission that i accidentally deleted that was like full anthro/wolf-like like my comrade,,, i cannot draw animals what makes you think i can draw an animal who acts like a human lmao. i can do like. very basic tails, and also animal ears but i cant do the arms and legs and such i just dont know the anatomy, and i know i was talking about how i dont want to care about anatomy but i feel like for anthros you really do need to know at least basic animal anatomy so you know how the limbs look and shit and i dont have that knowledge and dont feel like gaining it.

and then there were some submissions that i absolutely adored. there was one that like, was vaguely human shaped but definitely was not a human. they had a dark-ish lavender colored skin and horns and tusks and like goat ears and a sorta fluffy tail with spikes on it and they had wings and such and they were such a pleasure to draw i love them. and they had a fairly simple outfit too, nothing too complicated. and then i also enjoy object head characters, theyre so neato to me. i got one of those and i really wish i had the motivation to work on it cause it looks so fun.

i want to make funky characters but id have nothing to do with them because the only book i ever tried writing (key word tried - never got past planning it out) had strictly human characters in it, and most of the books i read are humans/humans with powers in situations specific to them so id have no idea what lore to make with the dudes. assuming i have the motivation to make lore and backstory because honestly i just really enjoy character designing its super duper fun.

(side note a song about trucks doing the deed came on just now and its interrupted my flow, apologies).

i only have three actual characters right now. one is an original roleplay oc whos design is literally athletic shorts, an oversized long sleeved grey sweatshirt, long purple hair, and demon horns. the second one is my persona whos design some sorta medival knight outfit kinda thing? but not ugly it looks really cool (idk one of my friends designed it bc i won some contest from him but the drawing was on a super small scale so idrk the details,,,) with a plague doctor mask and crown, and shoulder length wavy brown hair, dyed bright pink at the end. and then my last one im not too comfortable using other places because theyre a character my friend is using in the story hes writing, and thats really the only place theyve been used. but theyre easily my favorite and im already writing a ton so ill talk about them too.

they're a sorta elf species thing from another planet, with pale green skin and pointed ears. they also have a tail, its like,, super thin, but with a feathery bit at the end. probably not the texture of a feather but i dont know how else to describe it. they have short, curly, almost-draco-malfoy-blonde hair that when it gets too long they can put in a man bun. their eyesight is kinda shitty so when they got to earth, they were exploring some supply closets around the airship. drop off area. thing. like airport but for rocketships and also fancier. yeah. they were exploring that area and found a nice big pair of round glasses with grey frames. and they also found a cowboy-style hat and a sharpie so they wrote their name on the underside of the brim of the hat and stole the hat and glasses (but left the sharpie in the supply closet).

yeah theyre my favorite, my absolute beloved, my child, so cool. i want more characters like them but with maybe a bit more snazzier designs. theyre super cool and all but they could have more pizzazz if they werent in a story where its too late to give them more pizzazz. i just want to be able to give my characters thigh-high boots with a bunch of buckles and fluffy hair with tons of accessories crammed in and abnormally large and long ears that can harbor many piercings and horns that can hold rings on them and special little details on their outfits like who knows what but i dont have any characters to do that too, so i have to make them from scratch, which is always hard especially when you have artblock.

and i also have like 17 characters i need to fully draw, line, and maybe color for artfight before august 1st. so i dont know. i have many things to do and plenty of time to do it but instead i spend my time halfway watching repetitive youtube videos that get boring or sleeping all damn day because i stay up too late doing things like this or i just do nothing at all and its tiring and frustrating but i also feel nothing about it like theres no consequence if i dont do it besides you know. not doing it, not gaining that experience, not making something i enjoy.

so i should do it but i dont for whatever reason, i think its called executive dysfunction but im not sure. this post started out very differently than it ended and i said somewhere up there that i was writing this at 2 am but now its almost 3. this is so many words why couldnt i have put this energy into something productive

[comicteaparty]

Webcomic Recommendations

Check out this plethora of webcomic recommendations archived from Comic Tea Party’s Webcomic Recommendations Channel!

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Children of Shadow: Ashes https://spiderforest.com/comics/children-of-shadow-ashes/ Genre: Anthro/Horror/Urban Fantasy Trigger Warnings: Rated Mature for blood, gore, and intense scenes Reasons: Some of the most lovely pencil work I've ever seen, well-rendered animal art and a compelling world!(edited)

Heirs of the Veil https://spiderforest.com/comics/heirs-of-the-veil/ Genre: Drama/Urban Fantasy Trigger Warnings: Rated PG-16+ for transphobia, dysphoria, mental illness, blood, trauma, body horror Reasons: Absolutely gorgeous artwork, really compelling illustrations of the lgbt experience

Aloe https://spiderforest.com/comics/aloe/ Genre: Adventure/Drama/Sci-Fi Trigger Warnings: Rated Teen for violence and blood Reasons: I'm normally not into sci-fi but this comic is so bright and colorful, I really love it a lot. Also the main character is non-binary!

Millennium https://spiderforest.com/comics/millennium/ Genre: Adventure/Fantasy/Sci-fi Trigger Warnings: Rated PG-13 for Mild Violence and Mild Language Reasons: Lovely art, fun characters, and an engaging space world! I love it so so much.

Sombulus https://spiderforest.com/comics/sombulus/ Genre: Adventure/Comedy/Fantast Trigger Warnings: Rated Young Adult, no warnings Reasons: An absolute blast, super fun story and characters, with a nice long archive too!

Arbalest https://spiderforest.com/comics/arbalest/ Genre: Fantasy/Horror Trigger Warnings: Rated Mature for partial nudity, blood/gore, sex, themes of abuse Reasons: A really compelling story in a non-traditional narrative style, and super spooky to boot.

And finally, to top this off, I'll drop in my own comic as well! Court of Roses https://spiderforest.com/comics/court-of-roses/ Genre: Adventure/Fantasy/Comedy Trigger Warnings: Rated Teen, for Fantasy Violence and Alcohol Use Reasons: Because this is my comic and it's my pride and joy and I love my bards a lot. :3

AntiBunny

Dead Winter http://deadwinter.cc/ Genre: Zombie Apocalypse Trigger Warnings: Violent Reasons: Well it's a straightforward zombie survival comic. What's impressive is how well the artist has studied comics as an art form and put thought and purpose into every panel.

HiddenElephant

http://welcome2earth.webcomic.ws/ Snarky alien crashes onto Earth. Not enough people are reading it in my opinion.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R: http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/ Genre: Action, Comedy Trigger Warnings: Blood, Dismemberment Reasons: A recommendation for @Goobatron . It's my comic. The creator is me. Super Galaxy Knights is a story about Mizuki Sato, who goes on adventures through a strange world, making friends along the way. The dialogue is like... 70% banter, 30% total non-sequiturs. The art style uses 3D models, in like a weird cel-shaded style that's meant to be reminiscent of games like Wind Waker and Dragon Ball FighterZ. And there's also a bunch of animated panels/pages. There's also a ton of really strange characters. Like there's a dude whose power is that he always wins knife fights. There's a wizard who shrinks hot dogs and carries them around in capsules. Etc. One warning - the early pages are a bit rough-looking. Some have been redrawn recently, but others haven't yet, so it can be a bit jarring to go back and forth between styles.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Clockwork http://www.clockwork-comic.com/ Genre: Fantasy / Drama CW: Some language and violence Clockwork is a comic about Cog Kleinshmidt, a moody teenager with an uncanny talent for repairing machinery. He feels he’s a nobody, but is swept into the turbulent world of politics, and is forced to learn magic in a world where magic is strictly forbidden. The art in this comic is incredibly polished and lively, and the characters are all instantly endearing. The writing is also top-notch. The first time I read it, I was completely sucked in after only a few pages. It’s currently on hiatus while the creator prepares the next chapter, but it’s well worth the wait.(edited)

Moral_Gutpunch

Micheal Morbius: Freelance Vampire http://freelancevampire.thecomicseries.com/ Genre: Drama, comedy Trigger: mentions of death and violence, talk of abusive relationships, mention of rape. It's all in dialog. Micheal Morbius, from Marvel comics, struggles to adjust to a as normal a life as a vampire can have. He helps a friend get back on her feet, he goes through therapy, and he's visited by Spider-heroes, this time a new one. Meanwhile, a true monster lurks int he shadows. The art isn't good, but the story and dialog are worth it. It's my comic. I hope after I get a few more pages going people will enjoy the story. It's a story I've been wanting to write for ages and I figured I'm not going to write for Marvel anytime soon (yes, I checked copyright law, Marvel allows this). Dedicated to Stan Lee.

Pakky

The Boy Who Fell http://boywhofell.com/ Genre: Drama, Adventure, Action, Comedy TW: Violence, blood, fighting, ptsd, suicide, death Synopsis (from the website): The Boy Who Fell revolves around an innocent, softhearted and almost-spineless boy named Ren who suddenly finds himself in Hell after accidentally falling off a school rooftop. He is then forced to partake in a tournament full of powerful and vicious beings in order to attain his only way of going home: an all-powerful wish from the ruler of Hell himself. As the story progresses, lines between allies and enemies are blurred, dark pasts are revealed, political issues come to light and all the while, Ren slowly realizes that in order to survive this journey, he might have to give up the very things that make him human I love this webcomic and have been following this artist for over 10 years now and recommend their work to anyone who will listen haha! Super long running webcomic with a well developed storyline and world.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

Broken http://broken.spiderforest.com/ Genre: Horror Trigger Warnings: Military, death, monsters Reasons: Broken offers a very interesting twist on the concepts of fairies, presenting you with a fairy general on the battlefield fighting against corrupted abominations. The concepts and worldbuilding here are very interesting and the battle/action scenes are great. Often makes use of animation and some HTML/CSS for extra effect. Of Magic and Muses https://xiicomic.com/magic-and-muses/ Genre: Magical Girls, mystery Trigger Warnings: There's a big monster at some point? Reasons: It's a magical girl story! Except nobody knows what's happening, the powers the girls get are maybe not of a friendly nature and they wear armor? The escalation of events is suberb. It has a large (and growing) cast, but each character has their own unique personality, making them super easy to follow and love. Ghost Junk Sickness https://www.ghostjunksickness.com/ Genre: action, sci-fi Trigger Warnings: violence, limb loss, death Reasons: There's a lot to be said about this comic! I really like the characters, who are deeply flawed and charming and make a lot of mistakes (the main duo having an especially interesting, yet sorta problematic dynamic). The worldbuilding is interesting and quirky to match. The mysterious bounty The Ghost is a looming presence, and apparently we'll be learning more about them soon. Super exciting and fun action scenes too!

Desnik

https://monsterhead.net/ Genre: LGBT+ American rural occult fantasy Trigger Warnings: Animal death, mild body horror Reasons: The author/artist is an OC-loving member of the LGBT+ community, and her work deals with self-love in the face of weird circumstances. Love the colors, Carter is an appealing and relatable main character, and the worldbuilding is something I've never seen before.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

http://www.phantomarine.com/ Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural Trigger Warnings: Death, Mild Body Horror, Mild Violence, Mild Language Reasons: ...This is my comic! (edited)

Phantomarine is a spooky-but-sweet fantasy webcomic about a ghostly princess and her perilous journey across a haunted sea, hoping to save her soul from a devious, shapeshifting death god known as the Red Tide King. Expect all manner of maritime mysteries – monstrous sea creatures, sacred lighthouses, strange afflictions, accursed marauders, feuding gods, grand sea battles, and a heaping helping of humor in-between.

eliushi [Keyspace]

https://tapas.io/series/KEYSPACE-A-Winged-Tale/ https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/keyspace-a-winged-tale/list?title_no=322364 Genre: YA Science Fantasy, LGBT+ Trigger warnings: Mild body horror/violence/monsters, death Reasons: My comic Blurb: Florence thought her idyllic life living with the winged beings would last forever. However, when her mother disappears from a mysterious expedition, she fears for the worst. Through exploring hidden laboratory tunnels beneath the forest, facing Machines from a century-long war against humans, and seeking guidance from the Lost people from a civilization gone by, Flo and her winged friends must piece together the past in order to save all those they love.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

O Sarilho https://www.sarilho.net/en Genre: Post-Apocaliptic/Sci-fi Trigger Warnings: War, military, death Reasons: I make it Short description: A small team goes on a mission to enemy territory to find the remains of an ancient satellite and they end up finding a lot more. There are computers and dams and electricity-worshipping future romans (edited)

GGY

Tile: Over 8 Miles https://tapas.io/episode/859067 Genre: Drama, Comedy, Slice of Life Reasons I make it: Cause its fun and I enjoy sharing the existence of my characters and their life outside my brain

Emma (Friends or Lovers?)

Dreamwalker Felix by KT and TK https://tapas.io/series/Dreamwalker-Felix and https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/dreamwalker-felix/list?title_no=182487 Genre: Fantasy/Supernatural Trigger Warnings: There's some body horror in there Reasons: The art is just beautiful, and it has tons of funny moments Friends or Lovers? by yours truly https://tapas.io/series/friendsorlovers and https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/friends-or-lovers/list?title_no=49520 Genre: Romance/school slice of life Trigger Warnings: Mentions and depictions of bullying Reasons: It's my comic, so I'll just quote a reader: "Your comic is more accurate to real teens in love in high school than most. It's really good stuff"

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Earth in a Pocket http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/ Genre: Retro Sci-fi, Iyashikei Trigger Warnings: none Reasons: This comic posted its final page very recently! It's a relatively short read; very gentle and hopeful without being cavity-causingly sweet. The creator has put together such a heartwarming story that I've been adoring for a while. One of my faves, now complete!

renieplayerone

O Human Star https://ohumanstar.com/ Genre: Scifi, Robots, Drama TW: Dysphoria, Depression Reasons: The characters are so well written and emotional, plus I love the simplistic color palette. They get across the journey of self-discovery in such an interesting way.(edited)

carcarchu

Arcane Flames https://tapas.io/series/Arcane-Flames Genre: Fantasy Trigger Warnings: death? Reasons: I've been following kutty sark for many years now and I've really been looking forward to this comic which I'm pleased to say even exceeded my expectations. Fantastic art and the tone of the story is just lovely, i adore al'vis

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

https://sfeertheory.com/ The art is incredible. Every character, even the background ones, is full of personality. I love a good underdog story, and Luca's speech in chapter three made me scream into my hands and tear up. I can't recommend it highly enough

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

http://secondcrimeanwar.thecomicseries.com/

The Second Crimean War is a powerful and fun story in an alternate 1990s decade in Ukraine. The art is black and white and improves in leaps and bounces as you move on in the story! The story itself draws you in from page one. There's suspense, there's (black) humor, there's atmosphere and adventure. Highly recommended if you like war/action/suspense.

varethane

Have you ever read Nasty Red Dogs? https://nastyreddogs.com/

oh golly, haha

yeah, it's a fun and twisted and surreal little tale, the early parts especially are like walking through a really bizarre dream that if you describe it, it ought to be called a nightmare, but at the moment you're in it, it doesn't FEEL like one lol

the creator also does a comic called Feast For A King, which I think is more well-known but I haven't read yet (will at some point tho): https://feastforaking.com/comic/

kelly-zine

Title: Zyra Slash Genre: Sci-Fi, Comedy, Slice-Of-Life TW: None (for right now at least, it just started!) Reasons: I love Alex and their characters so much! ZS is a project I’ve been following and chatting with them about for a long time and it’s amazing to see it come to fruition. I think you’ll like it too. (Note that it’s on hiatus at the moment!) https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/zyra-slash/list?title_no=373763

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Title: Ark https://www.arkcomic.com/ Genre: Fantasy, Drama, Anthro TW: violence (nothing heavy yet, but my Spider Senses are tingling) Reasons: A 1920s-inspired, extremely believable fantasy setting. Hints of racial tension and a possible war brewing on the horizon. It's pretty early in the story, so hop in and claim the front row seats for this gorgeously illustrated comic! (edited)

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Tamberlane https://www.tamberlanecomic.com/ Genre: slice of life, heartwarming, Anthro It has a cast of colourful characters. Charming story of a clumsy bat named Belfry who adopts a little human. Various animal neighbors to love

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

I found one of the Chinese webcomics I use to follow, is now on Webtoons. They rename the title to: The Emperor's New Body because it's about body swapping and has interesting depth while some silly hijinks https://tapas.io/series/the-emperors-new-body(edited)

trinketfox

May as well rec my first ever favorite webcomic! Warrior U! https://warrior-u-thecomic.tumblr.com/ It's so expressive and funny that I've always wished it would become a show on cartoon network or something. Only the first few pages are still up on this tumblr since the official site is down, but all chapters are on the artist's gumroad!

It's an episodic comedy fantasy that goes from page-long gags to full episodes. Reccomended for it's humor and a really fun art style.

SteffieMusings

Nebula Beings https://tapas.io/series/Nebula-Beings Genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror/Thriller Trigger Warnings: Violence, scary imagery (especially in chapter 7), talks/implied past abuse Reasons: It's a fun series and the two main characters learn to overcome challenges during their travels.(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

http://humoncomics.com/elftaken-1

Very short comic about the fae!

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

For anyone who wants really strong character development/plot/art in general, I’m recommending Heir’s Game https://www.webtoons.com/en/drama/heirs-game/list?title_no=1445 For slapstick humor and characters with strong platonic bonds I give you Waffles and Pancakes https://www.webtoons.com/en/slice-of-life/waffles-and-pancakes/list?title_no=1310 And because why not, and if you like Victorian romance with a cute bickering couple, I give you Miss Abbott and the Doctor https://www.webtoons.com/en/romance/miss-abbott-and-the-doctor/list?title_no=707

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Encephalon Genre: Sci-Fi, Horror Trigger Warnings: Blood, Gore, Strong Language A rescue crew sent to an abandoned space station comes face-to-face with a bio-computer experiment gone horribly wrong. A sci-fi webcomic with body-horror elements. Very creepy stuff! It's just getting started, but after seeing the rest of the story in thumbnail form (my IRL friend is the making it), it's going to AWESOME places. Please check it out! https://encephalon-comic.com/

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

This is: Mirror Mirror for 'Brain' short story contest entry. The 1st ep caught my eye and I'm invested in it https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/mirror-mirror-b/list?title_no=427186(edited)

carcarchu

https://www.lezhin.com/en/comic/freak Genre: fantasy Trigger Warnings: violence? Reasons: sakon's art is brilliant and incredibly consistent. season 1 is now available to read for free!

sagaholmgaard

Genre: Supernatural, urban fantasy, slice of life Trigger Warnings: Maybe abusive parents? idk i feel like it will be explored in the future Reasons: I love the art style and the latest chapter have some CHAOTIC ENERGY and im living for it!! https://tapas.io/series/bygonesbe

GGY

Just got back from hiatus! If y’all are interested in some slice of life + comedy drama I’d like to share my webcomic Over 8 Miles: https://tapas.io/series/O8M/ep39

carcarchu

Veni Vidi Vici https://vevivi.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-1.html Genre: slice of life, comedy Reasons: reading this comic feels so comfy and it reminds me of being in roman studies class again. you can really see the love and care that Ruby has put into this comic and her passion for ancient rome is really on full display in this work

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

This is the comic books for Cafe Suada I used to read way back. It's a fun slice of life about a teahouse shop keeper rivals with a coffee shop manager https://tapas.io/series/Cafe-Suada The artist used some traditonal tea staining for the textures. The story inspired me to draw my own slice of life series(edited)

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

The Strange Tale of Oscar Zahn https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/the-strange-tales-of-oscar-zahn/list?title_no=685&page=1 Genre: Paranatural Investigation with just a dash of Cosmic Horror Kinda spooky, some light/fantasy violence From the website: Follow the journey of the world's greatest paranormal investigator - Oscar Zahn. Friend to lost souls, enemy of evil, he may lack a body but that doesn't mean he's missing a heart! The art is INCREDIBLE, the tone is really fun with some neat Hellboy vibes, it's complete and it's a good binge read. I really enjoyed it!

carcarchu

Short story about a cat, make sure you've got tissues ready https://akimiya.tumblr.com/post/129049384624

boogeymadam

just caught up with wychwood and it's such a huge treat!! there's some amazingly fun worldbuilding, a lot of intrigue about how the protagonists came to have the powers they do, and the motives behind the things that made the world the way it is * _ * it's also got soooo many pretty derelict environments, cool creature design and fun training montages! http://wychwood.sevensmith.net/comic/1

Yung Skrimp (Carefree)

I started reading Cloven Hearth, it’s interesting and has a really cool art style

https://twitter.com/ruinationcomics/status/1254126660007399425?s=21(edited)

carcarchu

Hana and Mr. Arrogant https://www.ciayo.com/en/comic/hana-mr-arrogant Genre: romance Reasons: Easy breezy read, with nice art and a super likeable heroine! Nothing we've never seen before, but delivered with genuine heart that makes it stand out

LabsZach

This one esp, with the greenery shifting into dirt, roots, and mushrooms, and how it compliments the figures on it is just aces. https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/cloven-hearth/touch-of-the-divine/viewer?title_no=396780&episode_no=14

boogeymadam

recently binged malverav's comic Love and War and it is sooo satisfying, about 2 competitors in a medieval tournament involving jousting, archery and more! The banter between Svanhildur and Marinelle had me grinning a lot. Also, it's a wlw rivals-to-lovers romance aka a GREAT kinda love story!! (my favorite kind ) it's on tapas https://tapas.io/series/Love-and-War/info

carcarchu

cronaj's sports comment got me thinking about this and how damn good it is https://tapas.io/episode/968762 Genre: Sports, drama Reasons: it's insanely creative and the art is so intense, i found it extremely memorable and powerful to read(edited)

carcarchu

Came across this stunning webtoon today. It was originally published on taiwanese webtoon and the author has decided to tl into english to share with a wider audience https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/intertidal/list?title_no=371176 Really gorgeous traditionally drawn comic and a lovely poetic writing style

carcarchu

the winner of this year's eisners awards for best webcomic. definitely worth checking out! https://friedricecomic.com/

[kosmokhaos]

Does your sims 3 run fast with a lot cc? If so teach us some tricks & tips🙇‍♀️

I probably have about 26gb of CC in my game which is the normal for me lol My game does run pretty well. No mass lagging or jerky jittery movements and most of my saves take about 10-15 to load the first time I open them and a little bit less time if I closed them and reopened them again. To keep your game running smoothly the best way is to simply have a computer with enough processing and graphical power to run a game like TS3. When EA made TS4 they downgraded the graphics which is why most people can run it on their old cheap community computers so well. And before I am asked these are my specs:

Manufacturer: ToshibaModel: Satellite P750Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM CPU 2.20GHzRAM: 8GBOperating System: Windows 7 64bitGraphic Cards:Intel® HD Graphics Family (Integrated Graphics) Nvidia GeForce GT 540M (Stand Alone Card) 

My laptop is actually about 7 years old now lmao I’m looking to get a new one simply to upgrade and have more space but I still have no problems running TS3 on here.

My number one suggestion for smooth running of CC would be 

ORGANIZATION!!!

People have a habit of just DLing things and chucking it into their games with no kind of organization involved so when something they put into the game breaks it they don’t even know where to start to fix it. I do merge my CC both with CCMagic and less often, with S3PE but I keep backups of ALL my single files. Then I organize those files by the type and category of CC that they fall in. For example I have Folder for Makeup, Clothing, Accessories, Objects, Hair, Skin, Sliders, CoreMods, and 3D Replacement Mods. And yes that applies to when I stick it into CC Magic too lol You don’t have to organize your CC the exact same way I do but its best to do some kind of organization that you can understand is the best way to go about things.

Another suggestion

COMPRESS AND MERGE YOUR CC!!!

Run it through the Compressurizer even before you dump it into CCMagic! I have no idea how people just dump things in their mods folder nowadays unless they operate on the bare minimum of CC. I love my CC so I’m always trying to find a way to make it run even smoother.

Lastly

PLEASE READ THINGS BEFORE YOU DL THEM

Some people have a hard time doing this and end up with easily avoidable problems. Whenever you’re DLing a new Mod that changes anything about the gameplay of you sims game, READ WHAT ITS COMPATIBLE WITH. Make sure it matches the patch level you’re at and make sure that it doesn’t conflict with any other kinds of mods you may already have. 

Its a slight learning curve to playing the sims with CC but its not rocket science (most of the time lol). But the Sims 3 community is still kicking so if you ever need clarification for things, just ask. :)

[obfuscobble]

SO I got my hands on the Japan Animator Expo 2015 collection and I thought it a good time to rate each short because I have some very concise opinions.

1. Dragon Dentist 4/5 Girl volunteers to be a dragon's dentist in the midst of a war. Inventive, compelling, beautiful.  Works incredibly well as a short, managing to tell a story far longer than its timeframe without leaving us wondering what happened or what will happen.  A very strong start to the collection.

2. Hill Climb Girl 3/5 Girl wants to be a great bicyclist, and the first step is beating her friend up the hill to school. Pretty good for cel-shaded computer modelling.  If you like Yowamushi Pedal, you'll like this.  Not stand-out but it's an endearing.

3. ME!ME!ME! 4/5 Boy gets dunked on by his own objectification of women. A truly stand out music video not just for this collection but within the genre.  That said, you do have to rewatch it closely to glean its themes and true place as a condemnation of misogyny as seen through the self empowerment male fantasies used by the boy to combat his own misogynistic fear of female desire and deep shame over his otaku life.  And there is quite a lot of female objectification in his life.

4. Carnage 3/5 Gunslinging girl seeks revenge for her family and her arm. Great attention paid to the one armed gunslinging.  The conclusion openly and somberly lays out what will happen next as this old town must pay for its sins, even if it perpetuates the cycle of girls losing those they love.

5. Gundam key animation 1/5 Literally the key animation drawings from Gundam shown side to side with the classic footage. Pretty cool for animation nerds and gundam fans but otherwise not really compelling as a storytelling vehicle.  I have to take off points on that account, but it is really worth a watch to see the keys.

6. 20 min from Nishi Ogikubo Station 0/5 not actually 20 min long. Just kidding! 4/5 woman turns into a cockroach, much to man's dismay. The sketchy art style, soft colouring, and jittery movement add perfectly to the piece's theme, making them obviously intentional choices.  The piece is still fluidly put together, with inventive plays on human/cockroach interaction and the how's of being so small.  The woman as cockroach is envisioned naked, but I feel that this is presented in a naturalistic (ie she just shrunk out of her clothes) and not at all prurient way.  Didn't think I was going to like it as much as I did!

7. until You come to me 1/5 Oh Shinji boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. Shinji silently misses Kaworu or five minutes. I mean I don't blame him but... Nothing happens, and if one has no inkling about Evangelion, this short has absolutely NO meaning.

8. Tomorrow from There 3/5 Woman avoids responsibilities, calls from her mom, and the creeping sense of adult dread, until she reconnects with her inner sense of joy. A wonderful counterpoint to ME!ME!ME! that focuses on universal human fears and dilemmas, without objectifying women.  Uplifting with a powerul backing song.  But I have to be honest and say that its visuals aren't going to stick with me as powerfully.

9. Electronic Superhuman Gridman 3/5 You are a human with the capacity for joy and wonder, so you will appreciate this heartfelt ode to super sentai live action and robot anime. Comes complete with character design details to reflect the rubber suits and even the tiny screw to hold on the back of a model's head.  Has nice internal logic about the Gridman.exe who fights monsters with the power of the electrical grid, such as circuit power ups and smashing a tv screen to get at the enemy.  Even for those unfamiliar with the tropes, it's just a fun 6 minutes.

10. Yamadeloid 3/5 An ode to historical fighter anime with neat brush-line visuals and fitting soundtrack. But it just didn't grab me by my heart's cockles like Gridman did, probably coming entirely down to what shows I grew up on.  It was also a lot more fourth wall breaking, which is entirely subjective for one's enjoyment, even from one short to another as you'll see.  So I'd like to give it a 2, but I know that nostalgia was the only thing inflating Gridman to a 3, so I'll be fair.

11. Power Plant No 33 2/5 What if we just... turned off our millenial facebook phones... and really lived.... yanno? The instantly gripping visuals of a society powered by a beast that creates electricity, which must then go on to fight a space robot, are immediately undermined by the totes not subtle digs against modern technology.  I get it, technology is literally a destructive beast.  I get it, we should unplug and learn to live freely.  The animation was great but the moral was giving me the feeling that I should get off a luddite's lawn.

12. Evangelion Another Impact Confidential 2/5 Tall woman looks for her daughter, finds hostile wasteland. But what a woman!

13. Kanón 3/5 A Japanese take on a Slavic philosophic parody of Jewish folk mythology, or, "On Solipsism." Actually fascinating as a piece.  It moves very very quickly though, leaving little time for the jokes and philosophy to set in, but I feel the frantic pace was meant to reinforce the confused, overworked, utterly helpless feelings that the main character was experiencing.  The fourth wall break right at the end completely charmed me and even elevated the piece.  Loses points for the inherent misogyny of the novel it was based on, but otherwise worth a watch for the curious, and one of the most interesting Japanese takes on Judaeo-Christian tradition I've seen.

14. Sex & Violence with Machspeed 0/5 Just because you admit that you're being gross for gross' sake doesn't mean you're not gross. Look I could get into it, but I just hated this one.  If you liked Panty and Stocking, maybe give it a try.

15. Obake-chan 3/5 A series of charming shorts about a girl who wants to be a spoopy ghost.

16. Tokio of the Moon's Shadow 4/5 Boy who has, I goddamn assure you, THE. SHINIEST. eyes in the universe saves earth and his radio penpal from a space creature. Come for the innovative mix of animation styles, stay for the dance sequence.  Just watch it.

17. Three Fallen Witnesses 2/5 Ambition: the Anime. Like seriously, this is the 3d animation equivalent of the Ambition games.  It's also a very ambitious premise, based on prosecuting attorneys using "DNA time travel" to gain evidence on a murder case.  Alas, I really feel it should have had longer to play in its world and the case itself.

18. The Diary of Ochibi 3/5 Edible stop motion is here!

19. I Can Friday by Day! 5/5 Tiny space squirrels fight tiny space rabbits, each piloting robot teenagers. Highly creative, wondrously fun, and yet with a good plot and even characterisation to hold it together past the visuals.  I'd love to see this as a short series, as I feel the premise, world, and character sketches could easily be filled out into a humourous and yet compelling larger narrative.

20a. ME!ME!ME! Chronic 1/5 Basically a remix.  Lacking the narrative of the original hurts it because then its just boobs and yonic symbolism and the guns that shoot them.  Still good music.

20b. The Making of Evangelion Another Impact Confidential 1/5 Interesting if you want to see how the short was designed and technically compiled.

21. Iconic Field 2/5 Never try to fit 13 episodes into 6 minutes. This is obviously angling to become a longer syndicated series but not only did they rush too many of their ideas and subplots into it, but they obviously ran out of money and production time.  Some shots are replaced with concept sketches, and there was no voice acting when clearly it was intended to be present.  It's creative in its character and mecha design, but the plot is another riff on the seeded earth hypothesis whose unanimated conclusion you can still see a mile away.

22. On a Gloomy Night Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! 1/5 Never try to fit 13 episodes into 6 minutes using Auld Lang Syne as your backing track.

23. Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen 1/5 Honestly not sure how to classify this one.  It's about a sex worker, it's presented with a quite effective animation style, but in the end it's all about the sex worker accepting abuse from another as her tragic role in the world. Ehn.

24. Rapid Rouge 4/5 In the world of the techno-daimyo, there is only loss. BRILLIANT use of a limited colour palette.  Loses one point due to not fully delivering on the emotional character-sacrifice punch it wanted and for being unartfully open ended.  If it delivers on a second episode like it promises, I might amend my opinion.  It was so close to being perfect, yet didn't manage to get me to care enough about its characters in its short run time, unlike...

25. Hammerhead 5/5 Highly violent, yes, but emotionally impactful to the extreme; I cried both times I've watched it. Update: three times. Wonderful traditional animation, powerful emotional centre, and perhaps the best animation I've ever seen to portray a human's physical demeanour in deep emotional distress.  I absolutely recommend watching this.

26. Conte Hitman 3/5 Manzai routine with clever twists and turns.  Porque no los dos, the sketch.

[foxgambling694]

Unity With Python

⚡️ A very fast, simple, and general inter-process communication example between Unity3D C# and Python, using ZeroMQ.

PS. It looks slow in the GIF above because I put a delay of one second between each message so that you can see itworking.

Python for Unity facilitates Unity's interaction with various media and entertainment industry applications and ensures that you can integrate Unity into a broader production pipeline seamlessly. Potential benefits of using Python in your Unity project include: Automating scene and sequence assembly in the context of using Unity as a real-time.

The other neat part is that Unity3D can produce binaries for all major platforms. This includes Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android, iOS, and otherx. So not only does this add 3D capabilities to Python, but it also includes multi-platform support. The build process itself is simple and directed by the game engine itself.

Core Pillars

very fast — ZeroMQ is a networking library that allows you to send huge amount of data from server to client in a short period of time. I’m talking about casually sending/receiving 10,000 requests per second.

simple — You don’t have to explicitly open and bind a socket or know anything about low-level networking.

general — You can use this to send/receive any kind of data request. You can send image, video, text, JSON, file, or whatever you want. In this example, we are sending text.

inter-process — The communication is done inside the same machine. Which means very low-latency.

Introduction

Have you ever tried to communicate C# code in Unity3D with Python before but could not find a satisfying solution?

Have you ever tried implementing communication protocol using file read/write and found out that it’s a stupid approach?

Have you ever tried communicating using Web HTTP request and found out that it’s stupidly slow and high latency?

Have you ever tried communicating using socket/TCP/UDP stuff, but it feels like you are reinventing the wheel and youare becoming a network engineer?

Have you ever tried to communicate by emulating a serial port, and found out that it’s not how cool guys do work?

Have you ever tried to send Unity input to python and do some scientific work (maybe even machine learning task)and return the output to Unity?

Have you ever tried to build a .dll from python or even rewrite everything in C# because you don’t know how tocommunicate between python and C# processes?

Have you ever tried to embed IronPython or Python.NET inside Unity but it doesn’t allow you to install youramazing external python libraries? (And its minimal power is pretty ridiculous compared to your external python)

Have you ever tried to export a TensorFlow Protobuf Graph (Deep learning model) and use TensorFlowSharp orOpenCVForUnity to import the graph inside Unity because you want to use the model to predict stuff in Unity, but itdoesn’t allow you to use/utilize your new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080Ti, and it’s also hard to code?

Tried MLAgents, anyone?

If you answer Yes to any of these questions but it seems you have found no solutions,then this repository is definitely for you!(If you answered Yes to all questions, you and me are brothers! 😏)

A complex calculation (based on the data received from Unity) is performed in python and it produces a result (action); The result (action) is sent back via TCP to Unity. The character performs the action corresponding to the result. Steps 1-4 are repeated until infinity (unless the client or server stops). I used Keras in Python to design a neural network calculating something like a noise-reducing-function. It works pretty good so far, and now I want to use this network to clean the data inside a Unity-Project of mine. I would not have thought that this could be so difficult.

I’ve tried a lot. With a lot of searching on the internet, I’ve found no solutions that is simple, fast, and generalenough that I can apply to any kind of communication between Python and Unity3D. All I’ve done in the past were simplya hack to either get my scientific computation work in Unity instead of python, or communicate between the processes painfully.

Until I found ZeroMQ approach from this repository(and some head scratching).

Solution Explanation

I’ve built a request-reply pattern of ZeroMQ where Python (server) replies whenever Unity (client) requestsa service from Python.

https://foxgambling694.tumblr.com/post/658010901333606400/visual-studio-c-programming. The idea is to create a separate thread inside Unity that will send a request to python, receive a reply and log the replyto the console.

Getting Started

Clone this repository using git clone https://github.com/off99555/Unity3D-Python-Communication.git command.

Open UnityProject (its dll files are targeting .NET 4.x version) and run Assets/NetMQExample/Scenes/SampleScene.

Run python file PythonFiles/server.py using command python server.py on a command prompt.

You should start seeing messages being logged inside Unity and the command prompt.

Specifically, Unity will send request with a message Hello 10 times, and Python will simply reply World 10 times.There is a one second sleep between each reply on the server (to simulate long processing time of the request).

Please read the comments inside PythonFiles/server.py and UnityProject/Assets/NetMQExample/Scripts/ and you willunderstand everything more deeply.

The most important thing is that you should follow the 4 getting started steps first. Don’t skip it! ❣️

After you’ve understood most of the stuff but it’s not advanced enough, you should consult the officialØMQ - The Guide.

Requirements

PyZMQ is the Python bindings for ZeroMQ. You can install it usingpip install pyzmq command or see more installation options here orhere.

NetMQ is a native C# port of ZeroMQ. Normally you need to install this usingNuGet package manager inside Visual Studio when you want to build a .NET application, or you could install using.NET CLI. But for this repository here, you don’t need to do any of the installation because we’ve already includedAsyncIO.dll and NetMQ.dll for you inside UnityProject/Assets/NetMQExample/Plugins/ directory.If you want to build your own dll files, please take a look atthis issue.

Known Issues

Based on this issue, the NetMQ implementation is not working nicely with Unity. If you create more than one ZeroMQ client in Unity, the Unity editor will freeze.

Troubleshooting

While both server and client are running and communicating fine, I kill the server process, restart the server, then both server and client seem to not be communicating anymore. Why don’t they continue communicating? Is this a bug?

No, this is the expected behavior of ZeroMQ because of the simplicity of the code. It’s mentioned in the guidehere. If you want to make the code better, which is notthe focus of this example, you can learn more about ZeroMQ as suggested in the screenshot below.

The problem is that when you restart the server, the server won’t reconnect to the old client anymore. You have to restart the client also.

Disclaimer

This repository is designed to be a minimal learning resource for getting started. It’s not a fully working high-level package.After you understand the example, my job is done.

Most of the code are just copies from the official ZeroMQ tutorial. I try to make this as simple to grasp as possible,so I only log the message to the console and nothing fancy. This is to minimize the unnecessary learning curve.

TODO

Add a complicated example of how to use it for real

Show how to do this with SocketIO. SocketIO is another approach I found very viable and stable. I use BestHTTP package in Unity for SocketIO client and use python-socketio as SocketIO server. And it does not have the issue of making Unity editor freezes.

Download GitHub for Unity 1.4.0

Our latest release, install manually

Download from Unity Asset Store

Download and install via Unity

By downloading, you agree to the Terms and Conditions.

Free and open source

Is onenote good on ipad. The extension is completely open source. Fix or report bugs. Build the features you need. Be a part of future GitHub for Unity releases.

Ditch the command line

View your project history, experiment in branches, craft a commit from your changes, and push your code to GitHub without leaving Unity.

Stay in sync with your team

Collaborate with other developers, pull down recent changes, and lock files to avoid troublesome merge conflicts.

Authentication and Initialization with GitHub

GitHub authentication is embedded in Unity, including 2FA. And with a click of a button, you can quickly initialize your game’s repository.

Use the GitHub for Unity Extension

Get off of the command line and work exclusively within Unity by downloading and installing the GitHub package!

Download

Unity With Python

Reach out to the GitHub for Unity team

Do you have questions? Feature ideas? Just want to chat with the team? Reach out to us on GitHub by opening a new issue, or by joining one of the chats listed in the project README. You can also email us at unity@github.com, or tweet at @GitHubUnity

Discuss

Python Unity3d

Code the GitHub for Unity Extension

Contribute to this open source project by reporting or resolving issues or forking the repository to add your own features!

Contribute

[radramblog]

School Clubs

I’m sitting here amongst a club full of #gamers wondering where it all went wrong. Not really, but Its been a few years since I was an actual part of this place and I’m here now so its on the brain.

Been in a lot of school-based clubs over time, never really stuck to one. I wonder why that is.

Back in primary school I was in the Chess Club. At a fancy private school. As if there was any doubt I was ever not a nerd. I’m pretty sure I got into chess because of Lego Chess, the gorgeous and silly old PC game that no-one remembers but is the absolute pinnacle of pre-liscencing Lego games. But I think actually having learned a lot of how to play the game (and by that I mean, the rules) from that was like, the only reason I was any good at it back then.

Of course, I wasn’t at said fancy private school for especially long. Moving countries to somewhere that didn’t have much for after-school clubs put a damper on the whole thing. A second move, though, and that cleared itself up. My international school had clubs-a-plenty, though, and I did make use of that. I don’t think chess was on the table though, so I looked elsewhere. Ended up joining the student council, though the responsibilities of such in a middle school were pretty limited. Not the kind of thing you’d see in an anime where they’re completely all-powerful, no, we did like fundraising and sold candygrams and shit. Also joined the local Model United Nations, MYMUN, and that was a huge mistake. I didn’t have the attention span to actually learn about what I was talking about, but I didn’t quit, so I spent like a full day and a half sitting in a desk bored out of my mind. I think I spent half that time taking apart and putting back together the pen we got for participating. I also briefly joined the Soccer club, since that second school everyone played at lunch and I thought I was…OK? Did a couple little league sports actually, none of them stuck- turns out I was just awful at like, all of them. It was probably pretty telling how relieved I felt whenever a game got cancelled due to a thunderstorm (which happened more often than you’d think. Kuala Lumpur, baby).

Moving back to Perth and hey look theres a chess club again let’s go babyyyyy. Except everyone there actually knew what the fuck they were doing and I didn’t anymore. I was never going to compare, considering we had the best high-school-level player in the state in my year group. I went to one competition, scrubbed the fuck out and left the club soon after. Didn’t stay in many after that- when your commute is like an hour and you already get in way too early you don’t tend to want to stick around too long. Beyond that, there was the point at the start of Senior Year where they implemented a program such that one period a week would be school-sponsored clubs, and the headmaster, in the one good thing she ever did, walked passed my friend group playing Magic and was like hey we can get a club for that set up if you have enough people. And we did, especially considering the non-playing parts of the friend group joined just to hang out and the teacher at the head didn’t actually have to do anything. I’m curious as to how that club lasted after the first year, since there weren’t many kids younger than us in there and we all graduated.

And so, University. I joined the tabletop and computer clubs first year, then barely attended either. I don’t spend a lot of time at uni, turns out, when I don’t have to- my commute is still really long! Dropped both memberships after second year since I never used either facility and didn’t want to pay for em. It’s a shame, since they are clearly the best funded around and have a lot to offer. And now I’ve rejoined the comp club again for access to the 3D printer. Sold my soul for some shaped plastic, that’s how it be. Does this mean I’ll spend more time on campus? Probably not lmao

[alexbrockart]

Gargoyle Process

This painting started from a sketch in 2015 that I didn't touch for a bout a year, then came back to after ruminating on it on and off over that lapse. It's loosely centered around this legend of the walled city of Agartha, and the guarding demons and djinn that would keep the unworthy from entering. 

Here I sketched out the environment surrounding the figure and arranged the composition a bit. I wanted the environment to have a sort of Mediterranean feel to it, almost classical ancient Greek/Roman with a little hint of tropical. I ended up changing the perspective quite a bit because I wanted to paint in a lot of texture in the landscape of the background, and also wanted to drive home a feeling of the figure standing on a really high wall far above the ground below. So I raised the horizon line almost to the top of the canvas and redid a lot of the figure to fit in with a more top down perspective.

Here you can see the new perspective and wings, and my attempt at dumping colors all over the place that I felt gave off the feeling I wanted for the piece, which was a sort of bright and sunny warm day in the afternoon, soon approaching the golden hour.

Here's some images that I felt captured the mood and lighting I wanted to portray

Let the render fest begin! As I was painting the torso my power supply for my computer started crapping out and it was pretty terrifying to paint for fear of losing work. I had finished just about the entire torso and arms when it crashed when I tried to save it, and had to do it over, about 5 hours of work. The second version definitely came out better though. I threw in a crazy weird mandala-lever-table-mechanism I thought would be interesting but ended up chucking it for the sake of time and it threw off the composition a bit. It's inspired by this talk I listened to about the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and his therapy sessions with C. G. Jung. From what I remember, through deep trance or in a dream, Pauli saw this mandala that represented perfect rationality and other dimensions or concepts like increments of time integrated into each other. The idea was to sort of have the Gargoyle in control of one of the levers, hinting that your perception of reality may be manipulated or something along those lines. I mostly wanted an excuse to make a shiny 3D object and render it so that I could have perfect shiny reflection in the painting. I got my jollies in that regard with the mace that I replaced this mandala with. 

Here's the talk and a picture of the mandala: 

Here's some of the references for the skin and torso. In the old master painting with the man pointing toward the sky I really liked the way their skin looked really pale in some parts and very tan or oily/dirty in others and tried to replicate that effect on the figure with a sort of red-grayish green and a more yellow green. I imagine there being less callous spots that would be lighter and more "juicy" like when the skin is stretched it'll lighten up in those areas, kind of like when some plastic bends it gets lighter in those spots that are really stretched out. It's sort of an effect or look that produces a sensation that I wanted to portray and think looks cool and not much more. 

Here's about where I had gotten before I lost my file to the dark lords of psd corruption. Lots of rendering and minute fiddling, pulling and pushing forms and moving around muscles underneath the skin. Reference is a lifesaver when it comes to anatomy, or anything really, but especially anatomy because of how complex it is and how easy it is for people (who all have bodies) to recognize when something is off. I remember this is where I really felt like I was going somewhere with the painting and it had some potential. 

Got the rest of the human parts nailed down. I almost went fully Egyptian with his undergarments but decided against it. I found out the name for this type of clothing though, "shendyt" if you ever need to know that. Lots of challenging but enjoyable intricacies worked out here. If I could give a tip on picking color it would be to learn how to really feel it out. If you try to do this with only your intellect and calculate every aspect of surface color and lighting and reflection you mostly end up getting in your own way (not that this isn't important). If you can grab a color that feels ok and run with it you're better off than being indecisive and worrying that the color isn't perfectly accurate.  Make a choice and observe the result. What happens when you lay that color next to the others, how does it feel deep down in your gut and heart. What does it need more of? It's like tasting pudding, when you put it on your tongue and smack it around in your mouth how does it taste? What would make it taste more like the most perfect pudding you can imagine? You also have to have good taste to make things that taste good. 

Focused heavily on the wings and tree here. I took a big leap with the dappled lighting and just went for it. I knew it would be really hard to make it look realistic and it kind of became abstracted, but I learned a lot. After having finished it I've seen multiple images that would have been much better reference for the dappled lighting than what I used, but such is life. In place of accurate lighting effects I had fun making cool shapes and swirlies. I tried to create an effect similar to some sort of vectoring of light blobs where their outer edge sort of merges with the nearby blobs, similar to when you squint your eyes and look at lights out of focus. On the upper/outer edges of the wings I tried to pull of the effect of something being in shadow on a sunny day and heavily reflecting the blue of the sky. Since that surface isn't being blown out by sunlight you can really see other ambient light sources reflecting on it. 

I darkened the shindyt loin cloth by plopping a multiply layer over it and touching it up a bit. I though the lightness of the previous color was attracting a little too much attention and contrast. But when I look at it now I almost like it better.

I also tried to get down some of the awesome patterning on eucalyptus trees that I see here around town. They're some of the coolest looking trees in my opinion and really wanted to capture that dramatic contrast of values and colors they have on them along with the smooth swirly lumps. This tree was extremely difficult and I redid it at least once. I still don't think I pulled off the look I was going for with it but I like it in it's own right. 

Here's the bottom before and after the redo. I really wanted to pull off a section of surface that's lit evenly but has two different values/surface materials and have it look cohesive. This was a pain but I'm starting to come around to the idea of doing stuff over even if it's really close to what you want or it feels like too much work. It almost always comes out better.

I also had a friend help out and do a paintover to try and tie up the values which explains the darkened corner on the ground. Much more moody and dramatic. He also taught me this technique to strategically adjust the levels with brush strokes using a mask.

Create a levels adjustment layer. Depending on how you want to adjust the levels (lights, darks or midtones) move the sliders around to a spot you like, and this is the awesome part is it doesn't have to affect the whole image, so you can pick an area you want to change the levels of, adjust accordingly, and target that spot. To do this click on the blank white square (red X) and paint bucket it fully black, then go back to the levels adjustments (click on the layer name or graph square) and start painting or lassoing in white in the spot that you wanted changed. This helps a TON.

More progress! I started experiment with texture in the background by making some brushes and messing with them. I was really inspired by the way Craig Mullins can pull off seemingly intricate detail with abstract shapes and textures and wanted to try something similar. Maybe next time lol. I was also inspired by Dean Cornwell and looking at his work for the texture on the ground, trying to make nice big juicy blobs of paint that almost look like clumps of mud or stones. I also really had fun with trying to make a compelling pattern that was still in perspective. For the background I was looking at the Walter Everett painting above a lot, trying to get a beautiful harmony of really light values and colors, having forms be defined with only hue and not much value change at all. It's really hard to pull off. 

I went nuts on the background. I replaced the original idea of a golden glittering canyon with a more earthy and gradient filled landscape. I also tweaked the values much brighter, which I think I darkened back down later. I was heavily inspired by Whit Brachna and had at least one of his paintings open the entire time I was working on the background. 

These are some of my all time favorite paintings. Just look at them, gotdang. 

3D mace! Mostly inspired by spiky black metal aesthetic. I made a very rough (but that's really all I needed) model of the mace in Cinema 4D. The most tedious part was obviously all the spikes. There's probably a way you could pull them out of the sphere in 2 seconds but I'm not versed enough to avoid tediously scooting each individual spike one at a time. I then took it into ZBrush and just scrubbed it over with a cool texture brush that gave it a bunch of amazing details that you can't even see in the painting. I tried to set up a scenario in C4D that was as close to the painting as I could muster to get the lighting right. I copied a bunch of disc tubes to try and replicate leaves and branches. Since the figures hand, and most of his upper body was cast in shadow I tried to strategically place some "leaves" over the top half of the mace. 

I messed with a bunch of different surface materials and render settings and ended up going with the shiniest one, heh. 

Here it is before and after being painted on, very minute adjustments. 

I'd say the rest is pretty straightforward and can't really think of any extraordinary advice except maybe doing more quick studies of your weak spots. I'm realizing I could get a lot of benefit from doing a higher quantity of less elaborate stuff to really improve more. 

  I really hoped this helped and if there's anything you'd like me to elaborate on or that you felt was left out please don't hesitate to ask!

Here's some meaty juice for you. I made a 2000px tall resolution gif of all the process images which is included in the .zip, containing over 30 of the aforementioned 2000px res process pics, some full resolution (8000px) crops of the final image, and a few other random in progress shots. And finally here's the full resolution (8000px) final .jpg, the final .psd file (2000px), and my brush presets. Enjoy!

I'm not sure how to export your presets as new brushes and you may already need the .abr file for the presets to work, so if you have any tips on that let me know. Most of the brushes I use are straight from other sets or slightly tweaked and saved as a preset. 

Anyway, I think this will conclude this massive post. I truly hope it's helpful, or at the very least mildly interesting. Thanks for reading!

[josephlrushing]

An Interview with Asher Dowson, House of Worship Segment Manager at D&B Audiotechnik

D&b is known throughout the professional audio community for its groundbreaking Soundscape technology; at NAMM, we had a chance to visit with Asher Dowson, the House of Worship segment manager at d&b audiotechnik. He was the one to fill us in on the concept of d&b’s belief that “everyone should experience the same impeccable quality of sound, regardless of their position in the audience.”

Say “hi” to Asher, everyone!

Judie Stanford: So, tell us what you are most excited about for this show?

Asher Dowson: Well, we just opened our new Los Angeles facility in Signal Hill. We’re celebrating the launch of our new subwoofer; it’s part of our KSL system, which is a huge step forward in the way that it sounds is reproduced for audiences. We’re also bringing a new development with our Soundscape system, so a totally new way of bringing natural experienced sound. So, usually, it may sound a bit like over here and over here [gesturing away]. Because if it’s here, you want to hear it from where they are. Your brain with two ears, those calculations in there that are based on how sound arrives sooner hear, louder over there. Sound hasn’t been reproduced in that way, ever. It’s always been like I can see you, but I can hear you (like it’s out of sync); your brain gets distracted. It’s exciting.

So, we’re releasing the KSL subwoofer; it’s part of our obsession with getting the sound where it should be and not firing it into neighbors or backstage. So, it’s got one speaker that faces backward, two speakers that face forward. It basically gets like 85% of the energy that’s going forward canceled by this one facing here. The soundwave travels, and one of the ones that opposite cancels it out, so, that’d be a great one for productions; it would be great for theaters, house of worship, that kind of thing. But super high power, super portable and it fits with the newer line that we released last year.

Judie Stanford: So, this Soundscape that you all have created, when did that come out? Is this something that you all introduced in the last few years? I’m not familiar with the concept yet, beyond what we were shown last night.

Asher Dowson: Well, it became like a product, let’s say three years ago. ISE is a similar trade show to [NAMM], with early live technology in Amsterdam. But it’s kind of been in the brain of the guy who was just sitting here, Ralph Zuleeg [Head of Sales Services and Application Engineering at d&b audiotechnik] for probably 25 years, just processing and computing power and the ability to model how that would actually work in real life, and what was available. So, we’ve kind of come to this point now where you’ve got the amount of processing we need to make it actually happen. We’ve got all the nuts and bolts when it comes to our workflows. It’s kind of like a software portfolio that runs like end to end from planning to performance optimization.

Judie Stanford: So, somebody that was sitting in the audience might think that it was somebody running a soundboard and that they were connecting different speakers to different areas trying to get the sound to come out to where it appears 3D, but instead, it’s all computer-processed, it’s all software related?

Asher Dowson: Yeah, it’s all software related now. No, it’s not like automatic mixing, there is auto-mixing. But we kind of push that. It’s more of that when they put all that content together, right? It all layers up. Usually, if you imagine you’ve got this bottleneck, right? So, I’ve got a voice in there, I’ve got a drum kit, I got to kind of put different beats out of it. Because I have “this” to work in. Well, if I’ve got 17 of those, or I’ve got five of those, then everything can kind of be represented a bit more naturally. So, what happened to sound is, if I move closer to you, you feel and hear that lower frequency. That excites people’s emotions because it resonates with their nervous system. So, you get excited by that frequency. So, old PA’s can’t really do that. They couldn’t hit that frequency without making loads of feedback as soon as that energy hits the microphone. So, what I guess Soundscape and SL series does is, it means that it can bring that experience close to people. You can make it a lot more intimate. And that’s the thing that excites people, right? If you feel like, if I feel like I’m 100 feet away from the show, and it’s all of that, it doesn’t move me as much. If I can feel like I’m a part of it, it’s an immersive term, which is kind of bringing you right into the experience of connecting to like, there’s no barrier between the heart and me. It’s kind of all around me. It’s within me.

Judie Stanford: So, anywhere that you’re standing in that concert hall, in the general area, that’s been mapped for, of course, it’ll sound like it should?

Asher Dowson: Yeah. So, this is a software controller that basically, you can either use tracking tools, like a stage tracker and stuff like that, to track the objects that move around. So, if I was at a corporate event and I was speaking, hardware —two metal tags… So, I’m walking to the stage, the sound would be distributed across multiple speakers as if it would be heard, so exactly how a normal soundwave works. Everyone who is seeing the speaker on the stage, wherever they’re sitting, will be able to look at the person and hear the sound exactly as it tracks to the person while they are moving. It’s never been possible before.

Judie Stanford: So, they’re wearing an actual tracker?

Asher Dowson: Yeah.

Judie Stanford: Would a musician wear the same?

Asher Dowson: Yeah. Stick it on your guitar, and the tracking will work, for example. Yeah, exactly. So, we did this with Imogen Heap where it’s a control protocol called OSC. So, she had these OSC gloves, and with her fingers, she was moving her vocal around, it sends the OSC command to our signal processor, picks it up and moves in automation. Or you can preprogram it, or you can have just like an RF tracker, just a radiofrequency device that syncs and moves around the object as that person moves.

Judie Stanford: So, there’s no real learning curve there for the person who’s performing or speaking. Because they just put it on and they just do what they’re going to do.

Asher Dowson: Exactly.

Helena Stone: How big is this thing that they’re putting on?

Asher Dowson: Probably the size of that [he points to a small black piece of plastic]. You can put it in your pocket, you can put them on your shoulders.

Helena Stone: What size of audiences is this best suited for it?

Asher Dowson: Well, it’s scalable, like everything we have we got, you know, stuff that would work in a boardroom for 20, 30 people, or this could go up to… We’ve done applications of 10-20,000 people with this stuff. But the point where I think it reaches its limit is when localizing within your field of view. So, if I’ve got speakers and the whole of the music is coming from speakers in front of me. Then when I’m close to it, it’s easier. If I’m a thousand meters back, I’m localizing this. So at that point, I’d say when it gets to within like 15% of the field of view [because the person or group on stage is so far away from you], then it’s not making much of an exciting experience

Judie Stanford: That makes sense. What about when you have something like a Jumbotron, does that sync up the Soundscape experience and make it work better in a larger area? I get that what you’re talking about is when you see someone on the stage, but they’re so far away, but the music is as loud here [where you’re standing], it creates a weird distortion in your mind. But if you have something like a jumbotron and you were hearing the music, would it recreate the experience of actually being in front of that person? Or not so much?

Asher Dowson: Yes, absolutely. We did it at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville for the Predators — they put in Soundscape because they wanted to have this experience where they could do whatever they wanted to do and everyone would be able to immediately localize. That’s the thing. In an arena, if someone makes an announcement on a microphone, you’re looking around for 30 or 40 seconds [trying to figure out where the sound is coming from and who to look at], and that’s 30, 40 seconds where you disengage from the experience, your mind is distracted and you’re not connected.

Judie Stanford: Where with a proper soundstage,  you could hear the sound and it would direct you to the right area to look?

Asher Dowson: Precisely locate.

Judie Stanford: Wow. Okay.

Asher Dowson: So, when it comes to what I do, it’s mostly is with houses of worship; listening fatigue can be really difficult because you’ve people listening for 20, 30, 40 minutes. And if someone’s not fun and entertaining and charming, then it’s a challenge already. But if your brain is getting tired from concentrating on trying to track sound with the person or people on stage… We have our moments where like, my attention’s kind of social, you know? I’ve got to be engaged. So, this is a tool for the modern era, and the experience actually brings engagement back to the level where it’s natural; I can have a conversation with people for an hour, but I can’t listen to someone speak for five minutes.

Helena Stone: So this is good for corporate events, right?

Asher Dowson: Exactly. Yeah, big stadium, corporate events or even like little talking head stuff. But the musical thing is where it gets really full of flavor.

Helena Stone: Are there genres that you’d say that it does well or does better with than others?

Asher Dowson: It’s really flexible. We’ve done it with classical music, we’ve done it with EDM, we’ve done it with Imogen Heap, Bjork has been on tour with it. I guess the flexibility of it kind of means that as long as you’ve got content that has got enough inputs that you can spread around to make it interesting, it’s like a solo acoustic guitar. Like, let’s say, Lewis Capaldi, right? He’s using an ASL system right now. And if he used Soundscape, It’d be great, but it would only really be like a couple of inputs. Since it’s just kind of him and his vocals. So, everyone could localize where he is. But there’s only one focal point, and that wouldn’t be that difficult to do. But when there are effects and things that will move around people, then you’re not just getting the sound from all the way over there [points off in the distance].

Helena Stone: So, what do you call this 360-experience?

Asher Dowson: We call it all-immersive. If it’s just coming from the front — the left and right, that’s called a 180; it’s just in that plane. We call it 360 if it’s in the surrounds.

Judie Stanford: So like last night, the DJ we saw, that was obviously 360.

Asher Dowson: That was in 360. And the object-based mixing, so thinking less about like putting information from different frequency bands together and kind of stacking it up. So many things you have to do to mitigate; I mean, you have how dynamic the source is, how to kind of keep it in its little box, which almost makes it sound boring, but this is what we have to do. It kind of unlocks all of that if you’ve got the freedom to let your mix really breathe. And there’s another element which, we call it convolution reverb. So, we’ve taken models from some of the best concert halls in Europe, and you can put that concert hall in any room that you’re mixing in.

Judie Stanford: Wait, you can recreate that concert hall’s sound landscape pretty much anywhere?

Asher Dowson: The reverb time, yes. So, that happens. The signature that concert pianists, or cellists, or violinists will be used to playing it. And if you think about that, how reverbs don’t right now… If we were in a big hall, and I clapped my hands, modern music says that reverb comes after my hands touch, directly from it. That’s not how the reverb works. It comes from around you because the reflection hits the wall. So, this brings back reverberations, how it’s supposed to work and how it’s variable. So, if you’ve got a church speech moment, you want to be quite dry, really straightforward, just the words — and then you go to music performance, maybe the choir —so, if it changes the terms of flexibility for events that need more than one room, but they can only physically be in one room that can change and adapt that to change it during the performance.

Judie Stanford: So, that’s how you can put a house of worship with a decent soundscape into an old theater, a strip mall, or something like that. You just totally make it work, even if that space wasn’t originally intended to serve the kind of sound that’s now being produced?

Asher Dowson: Any room, anywhere. That’s kind of where it’s been going. So, I think it’s cool, but I’m biased, you know?

Judie Stanford: No, it’s crazy because it’s the stuff that people take for granted. You go in and you hear a fantastic concert that sounds great and sounds are coming from everywhere. You don’t give it a second thought about what went into producing that. Which means you all are doing your job. But at the same time, it’s like nobody has an understanding, or appreciation really, for what you do.

Asher Dowson: The subwoofer is the new element of what we’re doing in terms of demoing Soundscape as a whole new set of content because this is something that has usually been in the hands of technicians, right? That’s it. Now in the hands of creatives, these people like Bjork and Imogen Heap, they’re expanding the concept of what this can do, and they’re kind of learning together about how we can create experiences.

Judie Stanford: Well, yeah, I can see them like completely writing music, knowing that this will be what they’re able to achieve when they’re in concert. So, let’s go ahead and do the sound that pops over here and these other things we might not have even bothered with before today just be a muddy mess.

Asher Dowson: Yeah, exactly. So, it kind of gives them a whole new environment to create music in. And it’s not just like… here, it’s everywhere they want it to be.

Judie Stanford: So, in that environment, the new subwoofer, what’s different about it than a subwoofer that anybody else could put out? What exactly sets you apart?

Asher Dowson: We have a patent on the audio technology that we implement in our subwoofers. So, for that rear-facing speaker, it encapsulates the energy behind the driver. So, with releasing our KSL system, that’s the first really useful, fully cardioid system that cancels the sound down. It’s like exactly where it needs to be if you’re in a park, if you’re doing a huge concert, your neighbors behind are not getting pummeled by 500 Hz and their windows are shaking. We can be friends with them now because it’s pretty quiet back there, but the audience is still getting the right experience.

Helena Stone: I hate to paraphrase, but it sounds like you’re allowing people at a concert to listen to music as the artists intended without disturbing anyone who isn’t at the show?

Asher Dowson: That’s right; let’s get to what it should be, and will do all of the technical innovation, all of the hard — they call it German Voodoo Math over here [pointing at some of the d&b engineers nearby] — so those guys plus the crazy, intelligent musician equal magic.

Judie Stanford: So, you’re putting the sound where it needs to be, not spilling out where it shouldn’t be? And you’re giving the best experience to those listening.

Helena Stone:  And you said you are working on reducing noise in an urban environment?

Judie Stanford: They’re putting sound wave where it’s supposed to be. Like, whenever you’re having a concert, instead of it like spilling over into the neighborhood, it’s in the venue where it needs to be. And that’s it?

Asher Dowson: Well, think about where it goes now… Think about like Austin City Limits, for example. or, there’s a big one in Miami, the big EDM ultra festival, Ultra Festival, right? Very expensive apartments are all through in Miami. So, how does the city authorize the festival? They guarantee the noise that goes with it.  So everyone can have fun where the fun is happening, but these people who’ve paid $20 million for their apartment; they do not want that loud sound in their area. So, d&b has this pretty unique software. One thing that is crazy special is this thing called NoizCalc.

Judie Stanford: What’s a noise calc? Wait? Noise Calculation?

Asher Dowson: Right, NoizCalc. So, you take the system that you’ve designed for the room and you overlay it off of Google Maps, and it will show you where that energy will go and you can predict the offsite noise.

Judie Stanford: Whaaaat?!

Asher Dowson: And it will take into account buildings, it will take into account water, wherever it needs to be. They then take it to a 3D overlay and Google Maps will tell you exactly how much noise it is going to be, so you can guarantee noise levels. No other company can do this. We can guarantee that whoever puts on the event, this will be the level.

Judie Stanford: Wow. And how long have you all been able to do that specifically?

Asher Dowson: Noise Calc? It’s been out on the market for about two years. So that’s kind of… we talk about urban environments, kind of having music in the heart of the city is certainly more of a challenge. You don’t want to add to the noise pollution, you want everyone to have a good time without disrupting other people’s lives.

Judie Stanford: Does this allow you to get around like the 10:30 pm cut off and things like that, like Stubb’s in Austin does since it’s in the middle of the city…?

Asher Dowson: Not always, but yeah, it definitely improves our case. Because when we’ve got a report that we can submit to the people who are organizing the event or festival, to say, “hey — this is going to be the most neighborhood-friendly concert you can possibly do. I was at church on Sunday, in Tulsa, at a 5000 seat arena they’ve got. And it’s like 150 feet behind the stage, that’s a residential area. So they’re getting complaints, that it’s too loud, so when you can use our system to cut the noise down by 20dB, and they no longer get complaints …

Judie Stanford: Yeah.

Asher Dowson: We can be friendly with your neighbors, that kind of thing, you know? So yeah, that’s what we’re excited about which is… it’s a different approach.

Judie Stanford: So, back to the subwoofer for one second; the only people who are going to be buying this are going to be people who are buying for a commercial system. Is this like a turnkey situation? You all come in and you discuss what they can afford and what they need, and then you all come in and do it all for them, or do they hire someone else to do it?

Asher Dowson: So, we as the manufacturer prescribe the audio solution; maybe it’s a rental company, maybe it’s an install company doing installing. So, we would work with them to make sure that the vision and the needs of the customers are met. With the level of training that we offer for free, and the workshops it’s incredibly advanced, but it’s inspired by simplicity. You don’t want a headache when you’re loading into an arena. You want to feel like, “I know how this room is going to work. Let’s go.” So, we make it as simple as possible. And there are so many hidden layers of like crazy rules on what is useful, like the cables, right? That’s copper and that’s a resistive material, so the capacitance of the copper is going to affect how much you drop the power so you measure the cables and the software. But it does a cable compensation. It’s like, if you haven’t thought of it yet, they’ve thought of it, you know? And it’s all that stuff working in the background to make a show great.

Judie Stanford: Yeah. It’s a lot.

Helena Stone: It is a lot. Are there any arenas or big concert venues that we may have heard of that are already utilizing Soundscape?

Asher Dowson: Sony Hall has it installed. The Bjork show that I was talking about — that was set up in the O2 Arena in London. That was one of our first real large scale applications of Soundscape in an arena that size.

Helena Stone: But in like a smaller venue, maybe like a church, you’re setting it up in the church?

Asher Dowson: Yeah.

Judie Stanford: And it stays.

Asher Dowson: Yeah, and we’ve done plenty of those. It’s exciting to get this out there; it’s kind of like we are releasing our baby into the wild, and the response has been great!

Judie Stanford: So nobody else is doing anything quite like this?

Asher Dowson: Some people are going into the immersive space, but there is no one else who’s doing it with the two things that you all use to process sound which is level at time. So, it’s the arrival time of my voice to your left ear … and you hear me on the left side. No one else is doing that, and definitely not with the level of integration we have. Yeah. It’s kind of a lot is going on with it, and of course, d&b tour wise — Coldplay uses it, Gorillaz, Kraftwerk, Green Day, Chvrches … they aren’t all using Soundscape, but they are using d&b.

I’ve sold some audio stuff to Snoop Dogg, you know? That was an experience, but it’s off the record …

[I promptly turn off my recorder and we got to hear a great Snoop Dogg story.]

Helena Stone: Where are your biggest sales? Is it music? Is it churches?

Asher Dowson: So, we kind of classify our segments, like our customer groups, into mobile applications. So, like touring, corporate events, and installations. Touring has always been big at d&b; it’s where we have our pedigree. But more recently, we’ve been investing heavily into stuff that’s more install friendly. Because if I’m not taking it up and down every week, I don’t need handles on it. Different amplifiers don’t need to be shockproof to go into a truck. So, I say our biggest area of growth is in installations — not that touring’s not growing, it’s growing fast — but as far as growth, it’s installations.

Judie Stanford: So the church stuff is right under the touring stuff?

Asher Dowson: Oh yeah, yeah. Just you know, we have some great focus segments. We do stadiums, theaters, nightclubs, live performance venues, and churches. Those are kind of our main install segments. Were also very popular on cruise ships because we do this saltwater resistance, so our stuff is friendly to them. We can customize things to make them look like they’re rusted or covered in 24K gold  — or whatever it needs to be.

Judie Stanford: Covered in 24K gold … as one does!

A nearby exec: I actually had somebody order that!

Judie Stanford: I believe it — probably a sultan in Dubai.

Asher Dowson: [laughing] Exactly.

Judie Stanford: So, what was the most challenging install that you all have done?

Asher Dowson: I think as a company, the most challenging install that we’ve completed was the Royal Albert Hall; we’ve got the permanent loudspeaker system in there, and it’s the largest single room loudspeaker system in the world — 465 speakers! Now, that room has just been an acoustic nightmare for like, you know, 200 years. So, we kind of say that’s the sound system 200 years in the making, and it’s detailed to the point where every single seating box has speakers in the surround, everyone, wherever you go, it is an incredibly reverberant space, very, very sensitive in terms of say, stuff that gets in the way of the show. It has now got something that’s deserving of its iconic stance. We’re quite happy about that. That was completed at just the end of 2018. For me, I like the challenge of a cathedral. I like a big space; it’s great to work with and put smiles on the people’s faces. I want people to listen and go, “yeah, this is what I came for.” That’s a very good feeling for me.

You can learn more about d&b audiotechnik here.

      Bonus video from d&b audiotechnik’s opening in Signal Hill, California; Helena and I were there! See how many times you can spot us.

https://youtu.be/B5TjKv4g4WE

from Joseph Rushing https://geardiary.com/2020/02/01/an-interview-with-asher-dowson-house-of-worship-segment-manager-at-db-audiotechnik/

[jamesstrotherbct]

Bloom - Statements

Contextual Statement

‘Bloom’ is a project about telling time using a three-dimensional (3D) form, the concept of telling time has been around since 1500 BC (Foer, 2008) and finding different ways to tell the time has always been an interesting idea to me. This project is about the idea of nature and how it exists everywhere and combining it with a man-made concept about telling time. Using a 3D flower to observe the change over a certain period of time could be an interesting way of observing the subtle passing of time around you. The flower is supposed to represent a rather vague sense of passing time because the audience will view this exhibition differently than how they track time use clocks and other devices.

People use clocks and other devices to tell time everyday and it has become a major need for humanity in general, but in certain situations observing time can get stressful (Belsky, 2016). This project is designed to help observe time in a different way so people aren’t counting each second the hand moves on a clock, but rather waiting for a flower to fully bloom and show it’s beauty.

There are many projects similar to this one in the way that people observe time without using clocks. The first example is the ‘Aluna Project’, “...an illuminated forty-meter-wide glass-and-steel lunar clock powered by the tides of the Thames.” (Foer, 2008) which was built in London before the summer Olympics. Another example is the seasonal clock called ‘The Present’, which is an annual clock based on the seasons (Campbell-Dollaghan, 2017). One more example is a giant hourglass called the ‘Time Wheel’ which was built in Budapest, and is also an annual clock which is reset every year (News, Fegyó, Kovács, Lajtai-Szabó & Béni, 2014). The ‘Time Wheel’ is a great example similar to my project where the artefact is observed over time, which provides a different perspective when observed.

This exhibition is not designed to be viewed once or twice, it’s designed for it to be present in everyone’s day to day life to be observed and acknowledged by the audience. The reason I chose a flower to represent time is because flowers always had the natural sense of time ever since they existed (Godley, 1979). This flower is based off the Lotus flower because of multiple reasons, the main one being that it’s considered one of the most beautiful, and not just because it’s a flower but since it grows in shallow ponds (Ravenscroft, 2011). According to Ravenscroft “...has special significance in Hinduism, where its meaning is strongly associated with Laxmi and Brahma.” (2011).

This project is considered a Creative Technologies project because of it’s association with technology and using it to create a physical form from digital form for a significant purpose, which is to be in the real world and observed as part of our reality. As far as space is concerned it currently doesn’t take up much space but certainly creates an atmosphere in the space, due to it’s slow movements it creates a calming experience for the viewers.

The methodology for this project involved a quantitative approach in the second half of the semester once there were some physical parts to work with. Simulations and research was conducted over the first half of the semester to ensure it would be able to work with Arduino once it was 3D printed. After the mid-semester break an experimental approach was taken which is not ordinary with 3D printing because you would have to reprint it if anything was wrong. Having something 3D printed early on in the year helped with making the second print.

In the future, this project can be used in many different possible ways to fit particular users, or it can be a large exhibition somewhere where people can observe it throughout the day, like in Aotea Square for example. Either way this project has potential to become something more than just a 3D printed moving object, whether it be a new type of alarm clock or a sculpture somewhere. An example of another use could be to set reminders for when the flower fully bloomed, according to Tresca (2013) stress can be related to poor time management.

The base of this project could be used in other Creative Technologies projects by making an interactive part to the flower, like using sound to open it or light. Having sensors and other activators could provide some interesting ideas for this project using a quantitative methodology.

Conceptual Statement

What really strived me to create this exhibition was that everyone is so concerned with the current time it can actually cause stress (Lang, 1992). There is always a need to just relax and forget about time specifically, like when you have the day off and stay at home to relax or when you’re ill and need to rest. With this flower people can set reminders for when the flower fully bloomed, according to Tresca (2013) stress can be related to poor time management. I believe that the telling of time shouldn’t be feared or stressful and the aim for this project wasn’t to change that but give the option to rely on something beautiful to observe and forget about the minutes and seconds that tick away.

In terms of a learning experience I had to take the experimental approach because I didn’t really know how the flower would be able to move in terms of weight, friction and space. After I made the prototype it was quite difficult to assemble all the parts because there were so many things I didn’t think about when working on it digitally, like how the connectors needed to be in a fixed position and not actually be able to move at all while the petals actually needed more space to fit once I found out that I needed some plastic to reduce the friction because the material is quite rough.

After doing some research I decided to try and re-model everything on Fusion 360, which was quite risky because of time constraints but after learning I can 3D print everything together I thought that was the best course of action. There were plenty of risks involved with doing it this way, such as the tolerance between the joints being quite small causing it to not move. However, the risk to benefit ratio made me realise that doing it this way could mean I’d have a working flower and focus more on the overall aesthetic.

The most challenging part of this project was putting everything together physically because once it was printed it was basically glued stuck and wouldn’t move at all. After actually getting it free which was much more difficult than I thought and did involve actually breaking off some bits of the object to free it up. Heaps of constraints and roadblocks popped up as time passed and it only got more challenging but using the quantitative methodology I was able to finally find a way to get the flower to actually open and close by itself. Getting the servo motor to work wasn’t very hard because i had some help and there were heaps of examples on the internet that helped as well.

What went well was the time it took to actually model and print the parts, as well as that I’m more experiences working on the computer to make the parts. The parts developed very nicely and I’m glad I was able to learn the basics of Fusion 360 in time to print the final prototype.

Next time I want to make sure I have explored every possibility when it comes to printing parts because I didn’t actually know that I could print everything at once until around week 11. I also would model the flower to look like and actual flower rather than just basing the petal design only on a flower, because I needed to make the base of the petals around a ring rather that connected from a stem. This project currently has quite a few design flaws such as the lever extending past the base so I had to glue some blocks underneath to give the lever some room to move. Another flaw is the print itself, all the joints were glued and there was no way to remove them other than cutting the limbs themselves. Next time I would make these improvements so it can just be printed and require much little clean-up by making the joints be clipped on and off.

One major problem I haven’t really been able to fix is the starting position of the lever seems to change which causes the lever to either not lift high enough or lift the flower too high and get stuck, the only work around I can think of is to update the code and then once it’s on it must stay on, which could be a problem after a long period of time.

Overall I really enjoyed making this flower and I believe pretty much everyone can get some use out of it and even learn something. Personally I have learned heaps, I have never 3D printed something that I had personally made and then actually got it to move mechanically. I would definitely do this project again.

References:

Scott, D. 1960: Seasonal behaviour in some montane plant species. N.Z. Journal of Science 3: 694-9.

E. J. Godley (1979) Flower biology in New Zealand, New Zealand Journal of Botany, 17:4, 441-466, DOI: 10.1080/0028825X.1979.10432564

Foer, J. (2008). A Minor History Of / Time without Clocks. Retrieved October 2, 2017, from http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/29/foer.php

Tresca, A. (2013). Understanding Stress Related to Time Management. Retrieved October 3, 2017, from http://stress.lovetoknow.com/Stress_Related_to_Time_Management

Ravenscroft, D. (2011). Lotus Flower Meaning and Symbolisms. Retrieved October 1, 2017, from https://www.lotusflowermeaning.net/

Belsky, G. (2016, February 29). Staying Calm and Getting Back to Sleep. Retrieved October 5, 2017, from http://www.health.com/health/condition-article/0,,20188536,00.html

Campbell-Dollaghan, K. (2017, May 02). The Present, A Clock That Tells Time By Season, Is Finally For Sale. Retrieved August 03, 2017, from https://www.fastcodesign.com/1671516/the-present-a-clock-that-tells-time-by-season-is-finally-for-sale

News, D., Fegyó, K., Kovács, Z., Lajtai-Szabó, G., & Béni, A. (2014, March 31). The Biggest Hourglass Of The World in Budapest. Retrieved August 02, 2017, from https://dailynewshungary.com/the-biggest-hourglass-of-the-world-in-budapest/

Dorothy Lang (1992) Preventing short-term strain through time-management coping, Work & Stress, 6:2, 169-176, DOI: 10.1080/02678379208260351.

[akelun-blogs]

SUNDAY NEWS #1 - My story with graphic tablets (Cintiq pro 16 review)

Inspired by this article, from David Revoy: http://www.davidrevoy.com/article332/tablet-history-log

As I decided that I’ll try to post a weekly article on my tumblr each sunday with the intention to share you some news as a form of self-motivation and as I didn’t have anything constructive to tell you today, I got the idea to tell you my story with graphic tablets when I read the article linked above from David Revoy, a great French artist who’s using only open-source software in Linux OS.

Also, one thing that can be interesting is that I got in April a new Cintiq model from Wacom: The Wacom Cintiq Pro 16, which, I think, doesn’t have a lot of review yet and you could learn here that this tablet is really terrible, in the good sense of the term, but also have some terrible... choices that we can reproach Wacom, in my point of view.

As I intend to tell you about my tablets in a chronological order, this review will be left at the end of this article.

SUMMARY:

- Genius G-Pen M712 (2009 - Windows XP and Seven)

- Wacom Cintiq 12wx (December 2010 - Windows 7 and 8.1 and Linux Debian-based)

- Wacom bamboo pen & touch (2012-2013 - Windows 7)

- Wacom Cintiq 13hd (December 2016 and January 2017 - Windows 8.1)

- Wacom Cintiq pro 16 (April 2017 - Windows 8.1)

Genius G-Pen M712 - Bought in 2009, used between 2009 and December 2010 - tested in Windows XP and 7

(I was too inexperienced to judge the stylus pressure)

PRO: A big amount of shortcuts buttons, usable for left-handed and right-handed persons (probably too much I’d even say): 34 shortcuts buttons, 2 scrolls with 1 button in the middle of each scroll and 5 buttons to edit some parameters for the tablet. A good format to draw (A4). Love the design.

CON: The stylus needs battery, on the contrary of the Wacom stylus. Though, I never changed it even after 1 year of frequent use. No eraser on the stylus.

Initial price: around 120 - 140 € if I remember well.

Still in my possession and still working (didn’t try it on my latest computer in Windows 8.1 though).

Wacom Cintiq 12wx - Bought in December 2010, used between December 2010 and April 2017 - tested in Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Linux Debian-based (Ubuntu, Crunchbang (RIP), Debian, Mint)

PRO: This is a monitor tablet. The screen is really strong, in high quality and soft enough to avoid the nib of the stylus to get worn out (I didn’t change the nib even after 6 years of use and there’s no scratch on the screen). 5 shortcut buttons and a scroll bar on the left and on the right of the tablet (for left-handed and right-handed persons). Tablet of high quality with a high life expectancy (6 YEARS!). Plinth very useful to put the tablet in a tablet position OR in a screen position. Eraser on the stylus. No battery needed for the stylus.

CON: Screen too small and in a too small resolution. Screen too dark, it is impossible to color calibrate it correctly. Cables very bulky (with a big box to change the screen parameters). The frame around the screen is very large.

Initial price: ~ 900 €

Still in my possession and ready to be plugged in and used.

Wacom Bamboo Pen&Touch - Bought between the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, used only at my 3D arts school or when I travel - tested in Windows 7

PRO: Very light and easy to carry when I’m traveling. 4 shortcut buttons. Love the design. Pen & Touch functions. Eraser on the stylus. No battery needed for the stylus.

CON: A bit too small to draw (A5 format). The nib is worn out really fast compared to the ones used on Cintiq tablets (had to change it after 6 months of use).

Initial price: 80 or 90 €

Still in my possession.

Wacom Cintiq 13hd - First one bought in December 2016 and Second one in January 2017, used less than 1 month each and sent back - tested in Windows 8.1

PRO: This is a monitor tablet. Light. 1080p resolution. Cables not bulky at all. 9 shortcuts buttons. Eraser on the stylus. No battery needed for the stylus. Love the design.

PRO and CON (in-between): Still a bit small, but it’s clearly better than the Cintiq 12wx screen size. The plinth propose 3 position, in addition of the flat position, but the most vertical position is not vertical enough to allow us to use the tablet as a second screen when we’re not drawing, on the contrary of the Cintiq 12wx screen. Plus, the plinth is made in a plastic material which looks and sounds... really not strong.

CON: 2 tablets bought, 2 tablets received with a problem of white light escaping from the low part of the screen. Damn! I sent the 2 tablets back almost immediatly. The screen feels more granular than the screen of the Cintiq 12wx, which made me worried to have to change the nib of the stylus as regularly as with the Bamboo pen&touch to avoid to get some scratches on my screen with the time.

Initial price: ~ 900 €

Sent it back almost immediatly (x 2)

Wacom Cintiq Pro 16 - Bought in April 2017, used once received and once I bought a cable Mini-display port <-> Display port and still used - tested in Windows 8.1

PRO: This is a monitor tablet. Perfect screen size to draw and work on a normal desk. 1440p (used in 1080p though because I prefere). Parallax problem resolved: I didn’t have to calibrate the stylus on the screen, on the contrary of the Cintiq 12wx and 13hd. It’s still possible to do it if for you the problem is not resolved enough, but I didn’t feel the need to. Screen really strong and soft (not granular as the Cintiq 13hd). Pen & touch function. Perfect screen quality. Eraser on the stylus. No battery needed for the stylus. Love the simplicity of the design.

CON: No more shortcut buttons. The plinth now allows us only to draw with the tablet in a flat position, or in a lightly slanting position only (though, it definitely looks stronger than the cintiq 13hd’s plinth). To use it as a second screen when I’m not drawing, I have to use a book holder, which is not very... practical.

BIG MISTAKE: In the French amazon store, they made the mistake to add this line: “The wacom expresskey remote allows you to[...]”. Oh really? What a shame this remote is not included and costs around 100 € then. Especially that it makes us think that it’s not a problem then if there is no more shortcut buttons on the tablet. At least, we’ll have the remote. LOL! ... Unless we don’t have the remote when we pay the tablet in the wacom website 1612 € but that we get it when we pay the same tablet in amazon fr 1507 € instead of 1600 €. o.O (Well, OK, we have the “contents of the box” discretely written below, but though, this is still misleading.)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: You bought your computer some years ago? It’s a bit old, but still young enough and it’s extremely powerful? Oh, and you thought about buying this model of Cintiq? Well, you can. You’ll just have to add 15 € for the cable mini-display port <-> display port + 65 € for the adapter display port <-> HDMI Wacom recommends you and you have to cross the fingers to hope that the adapter will work because... not all the adapters are working, or not always correctly. After all, we all know it. The HDMI is definitely done. One year before, everyone was using this but now, in 2017, it’s so old-fashioned! ... No, seriously, wacom, there, I don’t understand this choice. For Mac users, there should be no problems apparently. There is a special port for Mac. But for PC users, there is just ONE port for the screen! And this is not a HDMI one. This is a mini-display port. A port which is all fresh and almost unused. I mean... WHY? When I talked by phone with one of the Wacom staff about it, I really thought to myself: “But this is crazy! What a stupid choice! This tablet is awesome and I’m sure that this choice will disappoint A LOT of customers.” And I was definitely right. That’s simple, on the French amazon store, there are 4 reviews. 1 is rated 5/5 (the person noticed however a problem with the fan in the tablet if you work in Windows 10, but it can be solved in the control panel). 1 is rated 4/5 (it’s me). And the 2 others... Well, they all say that this tablet is, I quote, “extremely disappointing” and “should not be recommended”. For both of them, the problem is due to this port choice. Soooooo... maybe I wasn’t this wrong when I felt that this choice could have some bad consequences...

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: I am not really good in term of hardware / electronic / informatic knowledges yet. But recently, I was wondering: Wacom did a HUGE improvement with the parallax problem with this Cintiq Pro 16. I ever heard from an artist on YouTube (probably one of the first persons whom let a review about this model) that this Cintiq is the first one in that case. True or not, I can’t say that the difference is not huge and enjoyable. But WHAT IF this improvement was the price to force Wacom to stop using the HDMI port and use instead the new ones, to know the “mini-display” port. Of course, it’s just an hypothesis and it still needs an answer from Wacom services to be confirmed or not, but... in my point of view, that could be an explanation which could explain the choice of Wacom.

Initial price: ~ 1600 €

Favorite tablet I am using actually (Happily, I have a recent computer from March 2016)

And you? What kind of tablets did you get / are you using? What do you think about them?

Don’t hesitate to share your opinion and story... and to share them with David Revoy in his article I linked above as well, because he was the first to ask and my article is heavily inspired from his one.

Kind regards.

Akelun