#if you ask nicely i can link the 4k version but i figure they look Basically The Same on most displays

[oakstar519]

anyway. here's the render, albeit at a more reasonable size. from left to right: @ichorys's Madevko, @wyeth-draws's Okono, and my Shakka. (also T7. can't forget the best boy.)

[badass-at-fandoming]

Just Little Malkavian Things ~

Malkavians these days can do nothing but de-conceptualize, Dement, eat hot chip, and lie.

Since people seemed to enjoy the #JustLittleVentrueThings VTMB adventure, here's a matching Malkavian one. Though I'm gonna be real with ya here, I had less fun D:

I finally figured out why I have such trouble wrapping my head around depictions of Malkavians in VTM media. Books, Storytellers, and fans say it's like having a mental illness and being linked to a massive group chat. But, listen, I've lived around and with mental illness all my life. I've been in massive group chats. Being Malkavian ain't like that.

It IS like being an early-twenties English major in the midst of an existential crisis, over-worked and cross-faded outta your skull and watching horror movies to Cope(TM)

So it's like drugs. It's like you had too much weed and too much wine and are let loose on Los Angeles. Which. My friends and I have and we, coincidentally, also "fought" a stop sign. The Malkavian PC never really seemed like a character to me: she's like a collection of cliches and dude-bros doing blunts while watching slasher movies. I named her Liotta after the Psychic Shop owner, and I'm sad Liotta didn't really get to be a person.

I wasn't surprised by any of the dialog. It's a pattern. Alliteration, allusion, animal joke. Alliteration, allusion, animal joke. It lost its charm.

Often, I didn't know what the FUCK I was saying. Which is the Malkavian Experience(TM), according to Rosa.

Anyway

Nonsense time

Most characters have an extra paragraph of dialog to Acknowledge That You Are A Malkavian. Some get an extra conversation branch. For example, there's lots of new Bertie dialog and he was all impressed Liotta knows about Gehenna and Thin-bloods <3. The Anarchs characters, especially Skelter, get a lot more. Skelter, Ash, and Liotta totally vibe.

If you sneak around the Santa Monica drug house, they talk about Mercurio?? Hello?? Mercurio, you bent Masquerade by not getting beat up real good.

Zero pretense about Voerman. Yes, I have DID; yes, I am making it your problem.

When Liotta talked to Beckett, he said the DID was "something to look forward to." Goddamnit, Beckett. That's not how the Bane or mental illness works! >:-(

I've never sneaked before!!! Did you know that the Tong AND the American gang downtown have fakes in their suitcases??? Like, Full On, "it's just stuffed with newspapers, brah." They were going to kill each other over newspapers. For some reason the Tong brought the REAL suitcase along too, but I'm so past having VTM make any sort of sense. It's fine.

Accidentally pissed off Nines. I meant farmer (affectionate) and Nines thought I meant farmer (derogatory). :(

The Dementation powers are (a) pretty purple loop-de-loops, (b) not as effective as Dominate (reaaaallyyy missed a good AOE attack), and (c) oddly enough, gave more compassionate dialog choices. I mean. In the pen-and-paper version, Dementation isn't conflict-focused, so the devs had to jigger it to use as attacks. But I was touched when Liotta made Hannah believe she was Paul, so Hannah got to say goodbye. Making Samantha believe Liotta was a pet turtle was funny and spared her the pain of her friend vanishing a second time. Heather thinks her entire experience was a dream and returns to her life, more or less unscathed.

Boris?? Asked Liotta to kill Venus for him???? DUDE, WHAT. I didn't know he could counter-offer!! What happens if you take up his offer? Who controls Confession? Does it close down??

Pro Tip: don't trust the pale woman in a cowboy stripper outfit who comes out of your vent and tells you everything's fine.

I went through an ENTIRE Ventrue playthrough without puking and Liotta ate one (1) unhoused person and blew chunks. I didn't realize Diseased Blood was a threat. What happens if you skip the Plague-bearer quest? Should you just never chomp on the Downtown unhoused community?

Strauss called Liotta "young one" and I was like, sir. You're not Beckett, you can't trick me.

A rat dances in the Downtown sewers and tells Liotta that the grass is greener in someone else's asshole.

And also will take you places.

Do you know what it's like for a Capri Sun to suddenly start speaking and offer taxi services.

LaCroix: how did Bach find me??? also LaCroix: [names his company after himself] [lives in Ventrue Tower]

Liotta told Beckett that Kindred are a joke and I got extra EXP for being so sneaky.

DMP produced snuff films even before Andrei???!!!! I thought all the blood was from the lil geo-dudes.

Liotta agreed with Andrei that Caine is here and boot-scooting around in his lil Angst Mobile. :D

As bad as Liotta was in group fights, she repeatedly made bosses cower and stand quietly while she beat them to death. Andrei had a full on lay-on-the-floor temper tantrum in his war form and Liotta just. Smacked him until he exploded. She didn't even take damage!

Imalia's computer password is ALSO "cleopatra." Just like Tawni's! Dual reference to the Embrace type

IDK why I never asked this before, but, um, who does Mitnick share the bunk bed with? Barabus..?

I went back to the Empire Hotel Penthouse suite to fetch the educational book and the Russian mob dudes were still there?? Hello, sirs, your leader is dead. You can leave now.

Liotta heard the real thoughts of the Red Dragon hostess...and also some debate about the Dark Father's presence in LA, heehee.

I thought it was fun that one of the "take me away, Cabbie!" taxi replies mentioned riding in a car like father and child. :D

"Why is the Mandarin giggling at me" is a sentence that came out of my face.

With the different dialog options, sometimes it's impossible to be polite to NPCs. For example: Liotta could only call VV "dolly/doll/toy doll" instead of her preferred names; the Chinatown gun seller felt frightened, thinking we were Police or Immigration.

Some great fourth wall breaks in the dialog: "I don't want to get involved either, but tell that to whoever is playing me!" to Beckett after the Giovanni Mansion.

"You can't spell success without whatever the hell my name is."

"If I cannot win with effort, I will cheat my way to victory. I am gone." Funnily enough, this was my first run where I didn't hack in to boost stats.

"I just want it to end. I feel like I've been playing forever."

Some nice wider lore references: "I devour knowledge like the great worm devours the corpse of society" could refer to how Salout, in tapeworm form, is devouring Tremere's body and destabilizing the Clan and/or Kindred night society.

"They should have a channel devoted to you in my head" to Beckett. In his Diary, Beckett witnesses Malkavians devouring Malkav and may or may not join the Cobweb (PS check out this great fanfic where he does).

This made me stare into space for a minute and question my life choices. During the Sabbat massacre, Liotta didn't snack on any of the blood doll ghouls (ya know, the ones with the eyes gouged out). She had such high Inspection + Finance that she had $4k in her wallet and could buy blood. I wanted to test a rumor that if you don't feed on the blood dolls, you get extra EXP. You do. BUT anywAY, right before the Tremere miniboss, Liotta was sword-fighting some goons and the blood doll...attacked him for her? Like. He moved on his own. When the goon was dead, the blood doll asked if Liotta was all right. This might have been a glitch but...the horrific implications that those men are still conscious, still willful, still feeling. ACK. I hope they got out the next morning.

RIP Ming Xiao. Flamethrower right to the tiddies.

I stole @ryttu3k's idea and noclipped through the werewolf section. Liotta still killed the Garou, but I didn't want the stress.

Caine is very Caine. "Don't you get it? We've already been judged!"

Liotta went Anarch because what little backstory I came up for her was she considered Smiling Jack her sire. Nines complimented her ability to murder.

Sheriff got sooooo dizzy that he fell over right onto Liotta's sword 27 times.

Dancing werewolf ending! Seemed fitting. :D

[maleksrami]

gif tutorial ✨🎥

I got a few requests to make a gif tutorial so here it is. hope it helps :) It’s quite long so I’ll put it all under a read more. If you have any questions, feel free to ask or PM me directly for help!

Alright....sooo, I don’t remember the last time I made a gif tutorial on this site, but I figured I would even though I use the same method a lot of gif makers have been using for years. I have never strayed from this process and I’ve been making gifs on this site for a decade. 

There are a couple methods to making gifs. You can import your video directly into photoshop and cut your gif there. OR you can use a separate video player that has a screencapping tool, then import all your frames into photoshop; this is the method I use and it’s how I’ve adapted and perfected my giffing skills over time. 

This post will be long, but I want to be as detailed as I can and explain it step by step. It’s really NOT difficult once you get the hang of it, which is probably why I’ve always done it this way. 

Disclaimer: There are three programs I use and I highly suggest you look for reliable links yourself if I’m not able to provide one. I use pretty old versions of KMPlayer and Photoshop (I’ll explain why later), so be careful where you go looking for downloads. There are some photoshop downloads here, but I can’t vouch for them.

Let’s start :)

DOWNLOADING VIDEOS

I use a program called 4k Video Downloader to rip HD videos from Youtube. 1080p is the way to go, but obviously that’s not always possible. It’s ridiculously easy, all you do is click the “Paste Link” button and it’ll download your video. Clicking the “Smart Mode” button will let you set the default quality and the folder you want all your videos to be saved to. 

As you can see, here are all the videos I’ve downloaded recently for my gif posts. You can clear this download history list at any time.

SCREENCAPPING 

After your video is done downloading, I open the video in KMPlayer. Now, I use an OLD version of this program because this was exactly how I learned to do this back in the day. You can find old versions online, I don’t really know exactly which version mine is because I’ve had it forever, but it’s the old school one that looks like this.

When you open the video, it might stretch the player to full screen so I always adjust it by dragging the corner of the player inward so it shrinks to a more medium size. This will also make your screencaps not so GIANT, which will take longer to load into photoshop. 

Anyways, you’re gonna open your video and right click anywhere on the video to select Capture > Frame Extract... (or Ctrl+G on Windows). This window will come up. Make sure all your settings look like this to ensure a really smooth gif.

The first thing you should do is click that little “G” button next to the window size at the bottom. That’ll lock in the dimensions of however big you’ve made your video window, and if you stretch it you’ll see these numbers change. If you start capping without remembering to push that and you make your window smaller/bigger, your caps might be a wacky size or look stretched and you’ll have to go back and do it again. Also note the extracting location at the top. All your caps will go directly to a default folder titled “Capture”.

Once all the settings are ready, go to your desired section of the video, pause it, and hit “Start”. Play the video, pause the video when you’ve got all your caps, then hit “Stop”.

Locate your “Capture” folder and doublecheck you got all the caps you want. This is where I take a moment to delete any caps I don’t want in my gif, that way you don’t bother loading them into photoshop and making it take longer than it needs to. 

MAKING THE GIF

You’re gonna open whatever version of Photoshop you’re using. I hilariously still use CS3 to make gifs because the next script I’m gonna run doesn’t work in the free download that I have of CS5, but that’s what you get sometimes when you don’t pay for stuff. Hopefully whatever more recent version of PS you use, you have no problems.

Go to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack...

This window will come up. 

Hit “Browse” and locate your capture folder. Highlight all your caps and press OK. You’ll see them all come up in a list as shown above. Press OK again. Your caps will start to load into one big stack of layers. This will take a minute or so.

When it’s all loaded in, you’ll see them all stacked in your Layers window (Windows > Layers). You’re gonna open your animations timeline (Windows > Animation) and click the little drop down button in the top right corner of the window and select “Make Frames From Layers”. 

Click that drop down menu again and hit “Reverse Frames”. Click that drop down menu again and hit “Flatten Frames Into Layers” (this is so our sharpening action will work later). Click the drop down menu again and select “Select All Frames”. All your frames will be highlighted. This is where you’ll set your animation speed. Under each frame you’ll see “0 sec.” Click on that and select “Other”. Type in your desired speed. I usually go for 0.04 if it has a lot of frames. For less frames, 0.05 or 0.06. This is honestly entirely up to your preference. I actually made myself a photoshop action doing all these repetitive steps so it saves me a few precious long seconds of clicking around over and over. I just run the action after my caps are loaded. If you make gifs a lot, I recommend it.

Next it cropping. The reason I don’t crop right away after the files are loaded into a stack is because I like to see where the subject in the gif moves before I decide where I need to crop. I don’t want to accidentally cut anything off. The subject might sway in and out of frame or be off center if I crop it blindly before seeing exactly where the object moves around. So I’ll play the gif first to see exactly where to crop.

Anyways, you’re gonna set your desired width x height of your gif. I’m making this a big gif so you can see the details better. 540 px is Tumblr’s width for big horizontal gifs. If you’re making a photoset with two gifs side by side the width for Tumblr is 268 px.

Go ahead and crop your gif. It’ll resize itself as well. Play the gif back so you can see if anything gets cut off or it’s not where you want it. You can undo the crop and do it again until you’re satisfied.

Here is what my gif looks like animated and cropped. 

As you can see, it plays nice and smoothly due to our screencap settings from before in KMPlayer and with our set gif speed (I used 0.05 here).

Next is sharpening the gif. I use a sharpening action that can quickly sharpen up to 120 frames. You can download it here. Open the action by going to File > Open and locating the file. It’ll be added to your Actions window. (Window > Actions if you can’t see it.) In order for it to run correctly, you have to have the first frame selected on your animation window, as well as “Frame 1″ in the layers window. Just like this:

Click the play button on the action and wait a few seconds for all the gifs to finish being sharpened. For any gif with less than 120 frames (which I hope is always, good God) a pop-up will come up when it reaches the end of the frames asking you if you want to stop.  Click “Stop”. 

Tip: If you think you want to delete more frames, run the sharpening action before you do it. Otherwise you’ll have to flatten your frames into layers again. The first frame and the “Frame 1″ layer should always be the same (the little eye will appear to the left of the layer to let you know it’s visible when you have that specific frame selected) otherwise the action won’t work. 

Here is what my gif looks like now that it’s sharpened.

COLORING THE GIF

This is where all the fun (or pain) comes in. All your coloring will be done by using Adjustment Layers (Layers > New Adjustment Layer). I usually go in the same order of adjustments, but this is where personal style comes in and you do no have to do it in the same order I do. You can practice with this part all you want and see how you like to do it.

I start with brightening the gif first and fixing the white balance if a scene needs it. I chose this video specifically so you could see this next handy trick that a lot of people don’t even know about. It’s a dark scene and the white balance makes the subject look quite blue. 

I can fix this by starting with a Curves layer. By clicking the third eyedropper tool, you can go and click on a white point in your gif (in this case, I clicked on a white square on his shirt) and bumped up the input number a bit for a little contrast (optional). My curves look like this. Click OK.

My gif now looks like this.

It’s much better, right? The white eyedropper tool will become a lifesaver sometimes, but it’s not always needed. 

Next, I go in with a Levels adjustment to do some more brightening. This is all up to preference, but you can play around with this. I typically like to add more contrast with this layer. I just adjust the sliders until I’m satisfied.

Here is my gif now.

Onto yet another brightening layer. Brightness/Contrast. A couple teeny tiny more positive numbers and I now have this.

Next is Selective Color. I wish I could explain this in a way that makes sense, but this is the layer that takes a bit of practice getting down and boils down to how you like the colors in your gif to look. I personally don’t like a lot of yellow in mine, so I focus a lot on the Yellow and Black sliders in each specific tab. I start in the Reds, then Yellows, Whites, Neutrals, then bump up the Blacks a tiny bit.

Here is my gif now. It’s a bit more cool toned, which is what I like.

Next I’ll go in with a Color Balance layer and play with the Midtones and Shadows. 

Here it is now.

This is usually my last step unless I want to adjust the brightness again (which I do), so I might go back into my Curves and Levels layers to bump it up.

And you can totally stop there, but I would like to mention a few more optional layers to add depending on your gif. If I wanted more saturation, I would add a Hue/Saturation layer at this point, but I think it’s colorful enough so I’m not going to.

Another layer you can use is Gradient Maps. 

Setting a black and white gradient map overtop your gif and setting the layer to Soft Light and lowering the opacity to your heart’s desire (you might need to go to the little drop down menu in your animation timeline and hit “Match Layers Across Frames”) can give your gif a very contrast-y look like this.

Or you can change the black color to something else for a different tone, like a dark blue.

Here is my final gif. 

If you want to add a caption to your gif, you can do so with your font of choice (Arial and Calibri are good) and add Stroke or a Drop Shadow to it by going to Layer > Layer Style. You can make sure the text is perfectly centered by clicking on your top frame layer under all your coloring adjustments, hitting Select > All, then clicking your text layer again and going to Layer > Align Layers To Selection > Horizontal Centers. Then hit Select > Deselect and go to your little drop down menu in your animation timeline and click “Match Layers Across Frames”.

Here is what it looks like with a caption.

SAVING YOUR GIF

Go to File > Save for Web & Devices...

A big window will come up where you can preview your finished gif by pressing the play button on the right hand side. In the bottom left corner will tell you what size your gif is. Tumblr’s gif limit is a whopping 10 MB, so we’re good. 

Your gif settings should look something like this. 

We always want to keep all colors at 256 (the highest). Lowering this number will make our gif file size smaller, but also decrease the quality of the gif itself. If your file size is more than 10 MB, I recommend going back and deleting some frames or making some more curve adjustments. Some users also like to set their gif to “Adaptive” instead of “Selective”. This is up to you.

Click Save and you’re done!

[aliciavikander]

Hi Szabina! I wanted to ask you a somewhat technical gifmaking question but it's totally okay if you don't want to answer, i simply don't know if you answer these kinda questions or not.

You are one of the few gifmakers I follow who has really quality edits --regardless of color settings etc, which is sth personal i think. I really like gifs that similarly look like when we're watching that scene, sharp but like smooth sharp. Like a 4k quality of tumblr idk.

I'm new to gifmaking game, and i've found some people kindly sharing tutorials, and i've been experimenting on ps too. But i haven't quite figured out that 'smoothly sharp' thing. I had a 4k video, and it looked really shitty --like pixels-- when i sharpened it so edited it without sharpening settings but it still didn't look the way i hoped, and i'm not sure if it's about coloring or contrast etc either. And at this point i guess adding grain woulf make it even worse? Idk

So I was wondering if you could have any advice on that or perhaps you know some people here who have tutorials on that kind of details. I'm constantly trying stuff myself but i'm one of those people who best learn with some guidance so i thought i just asked.

Thank you for yor time in any case ✌🏻

Hi! Thank you for your nice words, and let me start by saying I'm really bad at explaining stuff, so I apologize if I say something confusing and feel free to send me an ask again if that happens <3

First, there are a few questions that popped in to my head: which version of PS are you using? (i have cs5) Do you use clips or frames? And how do you normally sharpen your gifs?

You usually don't really have to sharpen 4K clips a lot since it's already pretty sharp and clear. But when I do work with them I just sharpen them with my regular sharpen settings (put it under the cut) and then I adjust the opacity if it's too sharp.

What I've noticed over the years that the more adjustment layers you use the more "grainy" or "lossy" your gif will be. It could be that you have a lot of adjustment layers? Idk if you use brightness/contrast layer but too much of that will also have a negative effect on your gif. I usually use exposure or levels instead.

Since I don't see your gif it's pretty hard to tell the root of your problem tbh. If you want to, you can come off anon and send me a link/screenshot to it or something (I will answer to your privately and I promise I won't judge or anything <3).

[neojeno]

I really wouldn't mind you aiding me with some tutorials love

giffing tutorial/resources

hi anon! sorry it took me so long to answer. i figured this might be helpful for others out there who have asked me similar questions, so i’ve compiled a pretty comprehensive list of tutorials/resources. idk about others but when i was new to giffing, it took me a lot of painful effort to go around and look for resources, so i’m putting it all here to make it a little easier!

i download videos using 4k video downloader. it will download very good quality 1080p videos in .mp4 format. if you’re downloading a 4k video, make sure to change the setting option to .mkv so that you get 4k and not 1080p—for obvious reasons since you want the highest quality.

i rely on kpopexciting to get .ts files — which are basically raw, very high quality video files for live performances. they are much less grainy than .mp4 versions of live performances—which are the ones you’ll see uploaded to youtube. i’ve found that 4k videos (in .mkv) are just as good quality as .ts, but obviously you will rarely see live performances in 4k, so get .ts when you can!! you can also try to find .ts files on twitter, but you may have to do a lot of digging. i wish i could recommend you twitter accounts, but the ones i used to go to have been very inactive/taken down all their drives :( but this website is really nice and updated frequently so i would recommend it!

vapoursynth links + download. the reason you would use vapoursynth is to resize your gif, while maintaining the optimal quality of the gif. if you gif without vapoursynth (.ie only using photoshop), it will still be fine, but the image quality may be grainier. also, you will definitely need vapoursynth to gif .ts files —more will be explained in the tutorial i’ve linked below. i would recommend that you have a high processing/lots of ram/newer desktop or laptop to use vapoursynth so that 1, your computer isn’t fried and 2, your vapoursynth process will go a lot faster. i am using a 2017 macbook pro for all my work, and it runs pretty well, but my laptop still gets pretty hot so just make sure you’re not running a million things in the background while using adobe products and vapoursynth lol. i used a pretty old and beat up 2011 model macbook air back then, and i will say that yes vapoursynth worked and ran on it, but it took much longer, and basically fried the laptop’s battery (aka i had to get the battery changed twice and the laptop would die randomly) but issok it was a school borrowed laptop so i didn’t feel too bad lol. im just saying this as a precaution, to preserve the health of your electronic devices!! but don’t be afraid to use vapoursynth! you should still try it at least once.

thank you to @realstraykids for this super detailed, really nice tutorial! it includes how and where to download videos, how to gif using vapoursynth, using photoshop, comparisons, coloring, and pretty much all you need to know. 10/10 would recommend

thank you to @dreamcolouring for this lifesaver!!! the best and easiest way to blur out unwanted captions/objects in your gifs. i recommend doing this step after converting your frames to video timeline and before you do sharpening and coloring. another tip i’ll add is to feather the selection you’ve made right before you click on “add vector mask” —this will make sense once you’ve read through the tutorial. feathering it will make the blurred spot less noticeable and more subtle.

i use this generator to create gradient colored captions! copy and paste your text, then select the colors you want. generate the code, and copy it. change the settings of the text editor on your post to HTML. paste the code, preview, and voila! add elements <blockquote>,<b>,<i>, etc as needed. see more on colored captions in this tutorial by @kylos​ --i believe op mentioned a different and better color generator but for some reason it won’t work for me :( hopefully it works for u! basically same idea as the previous generator i mentioned.

my own mini tutorial/workflow process of making gifs. this includes working with a .ts file, vapoursynth, photoshop, coloring, watermarking, etc. and a few of my own tips below:

if you are working with an .mp4, you do not have to make any changes to the preprocessor/denoise filters/sharpening in the resizing part of vapoursynth—it doesn’t make that big of a difference if you do. but if you are working with a .ts file, definitely do make those changes,, that’s the whole reason you have vapoursynth. with an .mp4, i like to use vapoursynth to just resize, but i don’t add any additional settings. i use smart sharpen in photoshop to sharpen it, which is pretty good on it’s own (at least in photoshop 2020!).

my rule of thumb is to do add .02 seconds when i am setting frame delay. so if when you first import the frames, they are at 0.04 seconds, i usually change them to 0.06. of course, this is my personal taste—you can make all your gifs faster or slower depending on how you want em to look.

if you are on a mac, you can screen record by pressing Command+Shift+5 (it’s a shortcut to quicktime screen recording). I only screen record for things like the beyond live concert or other live streamed events. the image quality of the screen recording, in my experience, is actually pretty good. when you gif the screen recording however, you may notice that it adds extra frames that you don’t need. by that i mean duplicate frames. you could keep the duplicate frames but that just means the size of your gif is going to be much bigger (keep in mind the limit is 8mb). in order to remove those duplicates, my only solution has been to remove them manually (by holding Command while selecting), or when you are importing the video to frames, select the option to “limit to every 2 frames”—but this method will be less precise and still not as good as manually removing frames. if you remove the duplicate frames, this means you will need to set the frame delay even slower, to make up for lost frames. in my experience, fps(frames per second) and frame delay work in conjunction. so for example, if i delete every other frame because they are duplicates,  but the starting frame delay is 0.02, i am now going to change it to something like 0.05 (so i added 0.03 seconds rather than my usual 0.02). if the duration length and the image dimensions of the gif are short/small, feel free to keep the duplicate frames in—i only delete duplicate frames in order to keep my gif under the 8mb limit. then, if you keep the duplicate frames in, continue with your standard frame delay preferences.  now that i’m writing this im realizing this might not make a lot of sense lol.. but don’t worry about it for now and if you run into trouble w screen recorded gifs then you can come back to this for reference. again, this is only my experience recording on a mac—it may be a lot different if you use a screen recording program or are on a pc.

i don’t really use .psd templates because i like to give every gif/gifset it’s own unique coloring—so i remake the coloring every time, but if you get into a rhythm it’s pretty easy. there are a lot of nice coloring tutorials out there, too! my personal coloring adjustments in order: levels, exposure, color balance, selective color (if needed), vibrance, photo filter (if needed), color lookup (i use 2strip most often and i put it on ‘color’ blending mode). don’t forget to adjust the opacities and fills of the ‘color lookup’ adjustment layer in case it’s too strong. go back to correct each adjustment layer as needed. then, when you’re done and satisfied, group all those layers, copy the group (you can do an easy command+c), and paste it onto the next gif you’re working on for easy workflow.

if for some reason you can’t see the frames when you import your layers/video, it’s likely because your ‘timeline’ window isn’t showing up. just go to the window menu on photoshop, go to the bottom and you’ll see ‘timeline.’ make sure it has a check next to it.

i recommend watermarking your gifs because a lot of people like to repost tings these days 😠 - so make sure u got your brand on it! i keep my watermark saved to my ‘libraries’ in photoshop so it’s ready when i need it. i use the blending mode ‘overlay’ and adjust the opacity, but if you don’t want to do that you can also add a stroke/shadow to your watermark/do all sorts.

tag #nctinc for your nct creations and #jenonet for your jeno creations!!

here’s my own mini tutorial (well not much of a tutorial ig more like a work process vid?): took about ten minutes including the time to search and download the video (but i didn’t record that part i trust yall know how to do that), vapoursynth, and exporting. i hope this helps somewhat! feel free to ask more questions whenever :)

keep in mind that giffing takes a lot of patience, energy, and experience—so don’t worry if it takes you a bit to figure things out or if your gifs don’t turn out the way you want them to the first time around. we all start at the same place and all run into problems. i know giffing can sound intimidating and seem like a lot of work, but i promise, once you get into a routine, giffing is going to happen in minutes—and you’ll get beautiful gifs. have fun! 😊

[usefulstuffmouzon]

Rebuilding My Web

I'm finally biting the bullet and rebuilding all my websites in @rapidweaver. I used Apple's iWeb until they stopped supporting it about a decade ago. After much agonizing, I went with Sandvox, which was similar but better on several counts. But now they're out of business.

Learning any new app takes time, this thread will be "notes to self" for the next site I build because things that take a week to figure out can often be explained in a minute or two, so hopefully others will find this thread useful.

A few things about my web presence: 1. I do as little coding as possible because I don't build sites for a living. My solution must have a WYSIWYG interface. 2. I have several sites, so any solution that charges by the site and month won't work for me.

The newest version of RapidWeaver does a great job with responsive web design on a range of devices, automatically serving up images scaled to those devices without me having to create all those image sizes for each one, like other web-building apps require. A huge timesaver.

I strongly considered Wordpress but the learning curve was just too steep to get the look & feel I wanted in a reasonable amount of time. But the Stacks on which Rapidweaver sites are built remind me a lot of the new Wordpress Gutenberg systems of blocks.

Wordpress is the world's #1 site builder & has a huge following so it should last a long time. But the Wordpress ecosystem is a notorious hacker target since it's so big. My RapidWeaver sites are built on my Mac and hosted by my webhost. And the RapidWeaver community is big.

To get started with @rapidweaver: 1. Buy the app at realmacsoftware.com. Stacks are the essential building blocks, which you can get from @YourHeadSupport. Next you'll need a robust framework of components. The two top candidates are Foundry & Foundation by @weaversspace.

I started with Foundry but then went to Foundation once I discovered they play well with Hoefler web fonts, which I've used for years. weavers.space has a bunch of other great stacks built on Foundation, and a robust user community.

I initially bought Font Pro with the intention of using it with Foundry, but couldn't get my web fonts working so decided to get Foundation to replace Foundry hoping they would play nice together, both being part of the weavers.space ecosystem.

I struggled for a couple more days getting my web fonts to work. Finally, I asked myself whether it might be because I hadn't published the site yet. To that point, I'd just been building the basics on my Mac. So I published. Nothing happened at first. But then I noticed this at the bottom of the Hoefler Font Family Setup box: "In order to preview your fonts, you must add "127.0.0.1" to your domain list in Hoefler (RW7 only)". I'm on RW8.7 but thought I'd give it a try. It worked! Not sure which fixed it, as I did one right after the other and it might have taken a minute for the publishing to trigger something in my Hoefler account, but I don't really care since it’s working now.

weavers.space developer @joeworkman has lots of tutorial videos which are really helpful but it took me awhile to realize he's developing stuff so fast that many of the videos are from previous versions. For example, he talks a lot about swatches but I couldn't find anything that said "swatch" in Site Styles, which is the nerve center of Foundation. That's because since the video was posted, swatches have matured into Font & Text, General, and Component swatches. Once I realized that, things got much easier.

I have Font & Text swatches for my text style, link style, and heading styles from h1 to h6. I have General swatches for background colors and for margins. You can use swatches as a "class," which you can apply to almost any stack on a page by tagging it with the class name.

You can also apply swatches to a long list of stack types. Doing this means you don't need to tag them with the class, but it affects all such objects on the page. As a result, I do mostly class swatches. I have two Component swatches: Top Bar Styles & Menu Styles.

Speaking of Top Bar & Menus, I'm rebuilding all my sites with a black background (more on that later). Some devices are small enough that the menu wraps to more than one line, and the leftover space was a light grey, which looks bad.

I worked for a couple days trying dozens of options before figuring out a hack. At the top of Site Styles, there are Component Colors and Text Colors. The latter is easy, but I don't know what the Component Colors do because they haven't shown up on anything I'm doing yet.

Exasperated, I did a screen shot of the grey leftover wrapped menu area and drug it around the screen, trying to see if it matched anything. One color is called light grey & looked like a perfect match. I changed it to black, and that solved the problem.

Knowing all that stuff now, I can probably set up my next site in a few minutes instead of a couple weeks. Hope this helps someone else. In any case, the rest of this thread will be about my new site design system.

I'm doing black background design for several reasons. In 1984, Macs brought computers out of the DOS black-screen world into the light of black letters on a white background, like real life. But now black-screen design is cool, including on apple.com.

Black-screen design also uses less energy, which might not be much on one computer, but is a big deal on many. And since http://originalgreen.org is about green building and living, it makes good sense. Plus, I use a lot of black in other places as well, so it's consistent.

I started studying the best new sites in late November, and noticed several things: With responsive design being essential today so you don't get dinged by the search engines, designs with many small pics are out, as is clutter, including the page-top banner.

The top of my page has a simple SVG (scalable vector graphic) logo on the left and a menu bar on the right. Below that is a big, beautiful image. I save a 4K (3840 x 2160) version of my best work for presentations & a 1920 x 1080 for tweets and other social media posts. The great thing about RapidWeaver is that I can use the 4K version of my images and RW will automatically serve up the right sizes to each device, including Retina devices. And by using 4K versions, they'll still be good when sites get to 3840 pixels wide (mine are 1280 now).

Below the title image is my page title and text. @joeworkman has moved Foundation to markdown text, which I've never worked with before. I really like it because you can switch between text & header styles with just basic keystrokes all in the same text box using no HTML.

On long blog posts, I'll definitely intersperse images with text throughout the post as I've always done, but those images will all be full-width cinema-proportion 16:9 images so they're big and beautiful.

Something else I noticed about the best new design is that sidebars are mostly out today. The best sites take the clutter that would have been in a sidebar and put it in a box at the bottom of the page, so the user experience is just beautiful images & text.

My footer box includes a Google site search bar, links to where you can buy my book, email links on speaking & ideas to write about, a subscribe box, social share buttons & follow buttons, a Facebook Comments box on most pages & a sitemap of the 1st & 2nd tier tabs.

originalgreen.org has hundreds of pages, and the Facebook Comments box requires the URL of the page it's on. I'm building the new site at dev.originalgreen.org but when the site goes live, I'll have to fix the comments box on every page.

Also, all the inter-site links I'm building right now will have to be re-done once the site goes live. So I have a radical thought: I don't currently sell anything direct from any of my sites, so I'm wondering about just building the new site on originalgreen.org.

Another great thing about RapidWeaver is that I can make URLs pretty much whatever I want, including the identical URL of the old page. So there's no need for redirects, which are a huge task on a big site.

Building a site live at the permanent URL means that if someone comes to a new part of the site, they'll only see the part that's currently built, but if they have a link to an old page, then they can still see it right up until the day the page is rebuilt.

Does anyone know why this strategy wouldn't work? I feel like I'm standing at a point of no return on this. What am I missing? Develop on dev.originalgreen.org or right on originalgreen.org? All thoughts appreciated; if I'm gonna do this, I need to start now.

[gffa]

@writegowrite mentioned that she would be interested in reading Avengers fic and I pretty much shot my hand up and went, “Ooh!  Pick me!  Pick me!” at the barest reference to maybe wanting some recs of the Gen or Stucky or Thorki variety.  I am here for that, okay, this is my time! I chose the fics I thought would work best as a starter pack, for those who weren’t deep into the fandom, who were mostly familiar with canon only (rather than a lot of fandom trends), and who leaned towards more serious fics.  I think Thor/Loki especially will hit some of the same Obi-Wan/Anakin buttons, if you’re potentially into that pairing (if not, you’re going to want to pass this post by!) and I’m putting here, rather than my MCU blog because this is all stuff they’ll have seen before.  This is aimed at “So you want to get into this fandom but don’t know where to start, huh?  Let me try to help with that!” I will also include some fanart illustrations because a) I fuckin’ love fanart and b) there’s some gorgeous stuff and c) I think it helps to understand the appeal of “wait wtf where did Jotunn!Loki come from all of a sudden??” UNDER THE CUT:  Gen, Thor/Loki, Steve/Bucky - fic + art recs Mostly serious fic, a mix of serious/humor art, a good amount of NSFW fic/art I’ll write brief teaser recs but links will be provided for more full recs, when I can.

There will be a lot of recs here (and even more on this recs pages! but if you scroll through those pages (you’ll need to use Ctrl+F to find these specific ones if you want the full recs), keep in mind that they were a work in progress over a span of years, as well as aimed at people who regularly read in the fandom, and that I think these fics are best suited for drawing new readers in), but I chose ones that I felt could all be one of the first you pick up!  Still, I have a suggested starting place with three fics: START HERE: Bargaining by proantagonist, thor & loki + odin & loki + frigga & loki + other marvel characters, background refereneces to canon pairings, time travel, post-the dark world, some jotunn!loki, 110.4k      A genfic and it's really more about Loki and his issues with all his family but THIS FIC HOLY HELL, it made me cry at least three times and it's gorgeously written.  Post-TDW, Thor is dead and Loki absolutely loses his shit and all his issues with his family come tumbling out to slowly get fixed through time travel and worldbuilding and dealing with Jotunheim issues and magical deals with witches.  Novel-length and one of the best in the fandom. Bedding the Wolf by leonidaslion, thor/loki + implied background thor/sif, NSFW, dub-con edging on non-con, 13.4k      This is one of the earliest fics I read in the fandom and I've reread it a couple of times and it still hits me dead on EVERY TIME.  Post-first movie, this is ALL ABOUT Thor being smarter than Loki realizes and coming down on a vicious, bratty sub!Loki with a strong, iron hard dom hand.  It's fairly strongly dub-con and it's basically pwp, but it's one of my all time favorites. No Such Liberty by Xparrot, thor & loki + other asgardians + avengers + thanos, action fic, redemption fic, 147k     This one is primarily a Thor fic and was written pre-The Dark World and so takes a different path, but it's my favorite fic in that fandom.  It's got gorgeous worldbuilding, made me cry like three times over the Loki redemption stuff, and was just an incredible plot/action story when the Avengers all teamed up to fight Thanos. *After this point, you can pretty much throw a rock and whatever fic you hit, you can pick it up! SERIOUS FIC - GEN VERSION: God in the Machine: The Marachek Protocol by Mythtaken Identity (VR2LBast), natasha + avengers + loki, mild background pairings, egyptian mythology, action scenes, 99.6k      This fic is SO GOOD, it's primarily Natasha-centric, but it's got all the Avengers going up against Egyptian gods in an incredible plot fic.  It's novel length and it's just one of those that's incredibly SOLID. Ask Me No Questions by Alex51324, thor & loki + bruce & loki + tony + other avengers, depression, 55k      Loki is stripped of his magic and hit with a truth spell so he can't lie and has to stay with the Avengers and I remember it being a really satisfying Loki redemption fic.  He primarily interacts with Thor, Tony, and Bruce, all of which are really well done. Freefall + Landing by galaxysoup, thor & loki & avengers, 28k      It's been a long time since I read these, so I don't know how well they hold up, but they're more Loki + Avengers fic and I remember crying over them, because I had such strong feelings about the long, slow crawl towards redemption.  They're fairly famous in the fandom for good reason, imo! Rise From Ash by Mikkeneko, avengers + loki + other asgardians + thanos, some tony/loki, mildly nsfw for violence, some pyshical + psychological torture, angst, avengers!loki, 98k      An epic Loki + Avengers fic that's got a lot of horror elements and descent into madness that the fic does justice to.  It's a lot of plot and worldbuilding, a bit physical torture, a bit psychological torture, and very angsty.  it's an emotional wringer of a fic but so worth it. Road to Nowhere by Lise, thor & loki + frigga + other thor characters, thor 2 spoilers, action fic, quest fic, 27.2k      Genfic, but Thor and Loki on a roadtrip to save Frigga after TDW and it's lots of mythological worldbuilding and two brothers forced to rely on each other through magical trials, and maybe deal with their issues in an incredibly grudgingly way.  I'm biased because I beta'd for it, but it really is super good! SERIOUS FIC - THOR/LOKI VERSION: I actually have a “starter pack” recs list, but it’s like 30-40 fics long and that’s way too much to dump at once! dream state by bomb, thor/loki + thor/jane breakup + other marvel characters, NSFW, post-thor 2, prostitution, amnesia, 25.3k      The premise of this fic is kind of off the wall for something I take so seriously--a year after Loki's death, Thor sees someone who looks just like him on Earth and starts a relationship with him, but it is EXQUISITELY characterized, it's an incredible gem for being one of the best Thor characterizations in the fandom (IT SPOILED ME), for the weight of his character against the sharpness of Loki's, and it is beautifully written.  One of my all time faves. Make Me by Arkada, thor/loki, NSFW, dub-con, rough sex, bondage, bdsm, loki in chains, 4k      This is a darker fic, it's really rough sex with BDSM and consent issues.  Basically, Loki won't accept anything nice from Thor, so it has to be hard and rough and hurt before he'll take it.  So Thor gives him what he needs. Shorter but scorchingly hot. Postbellum by Shiny_n_new, thor/loki (pre-slash?) + odin & frigga + other thor characters, 22k      Written pre-TDW and is probably more gen than pairing, but the author ships it and so you can read undercurrents there.  Loki sits in his prison cell and seethes while Thor tries to make repairs--to Loki, to Jotunheim, to everyone.  It's really good Thor characterization in the background, but it's a fic that centers on Loki's fury and jealousy and trying to unknot it as best the author can. Wild Ambition Fortune's Ice Prefers by amberfox17, thor/loki & asgardians & frost giants, NSFW, jotunn!loki, arranged marriage, 199.7k      EVERYTHING by Amber is super worth reading, she writes amazing porn, but this is also her epic fic, where Loki was never taken to Asgard as a baby (this is a common theme in Thorki fandom, to get Jotunn!Loki, I'll dig up some fanart links to show you later) and when Thor has to make amends for starting trouble in Jotunheim, it kicks off a long, plotful, epic worldbuilding fic about the icy planet and these two learning to get along with each other and fall in love. Had we but world enough, and time by amberfox17, thor/loki, 14.6k      Hate and love are two sides of the same coin, and only require time for one to turn to the other. And what do gods have, if not time?Or, a story in three parts, of the past, present and future: how Lævatein was forged, taken and returned, how a relationship can be cracked, shattered and remade, and how Thor lost and found Loki time and time again. My Love Is Like To Ice, And I To Fire by amberfox17, thor/loki, NSFW, jotunn!loki, intersex!loki, 9k       Where Loki is stripped of his magic and forced into Jotunn form and it brings a lot of issues to a head.  It's only about 9k, but there's porn! Covenant by RobotSquid, thor/loki + odin + frigga + laufey, NSFW, divergent timeline, jotunn!loki (sort of), intersex!loki, secret relationship, 72.9k      I'm biased because this fic was written for me, but it's also gorgeous gorgeous worldbuilding and characterization.  When they're a little bit younger, they have to deal with the reveal of Loki's origins, which leads to them having to spend time there and it's primarily a fic dealing with Loki's issues of feeling unloved and hated, but has stellar Thor characterization in the background, as he's learning to be a future king, and so much incredible worldbuilding.  SO GOOD, I devoured it like you wouldn't believe. Shadow Plays by dreamlittleyo, thor/loki, NSFW, time loop, dub con, 24.4k      Another of the earliest fics I read in this fandom, so I'm not sure how well it'll hold up, because it might have been one that SET the mold rather than expanded it, but I remember really, really enjoying it.  Time loop fic where Thor's stuck and trying to figure his way out, trying to figure out how to save them all and deal with his anger towards Loki, and it's a really good use of the concept and satisfying porny resolution! Shatter by Aria, thor/loki + other thor characters, NSFW, 32k      Instead of Thor being banished to Earth, it's Loki... and then Thor comes along anyway and suddenly they have the breathing room and lack of tragedy to figure their shit out and eventually finally bang, it's a delight. Let slip the dogs of war by amberfox17, thor/loki, NSFW, dub con, rough sex, loki in chains, 5.3k      "In a world where mages must be kept chained and their magic bound: Loki is Thor’s dog of war, unleashed only in the most terrible of battles, and now Thor must deal with the aftermath of setting Loki’s seidr loose" -- aka, Thor's going to fuck the magical noise right out of feral!Loki's head and it's scorchingly hot. Caged by rainfall, thor/loki & asgard, NSFW, rough sex, pregnant!loki, 40k wip     This is one of those fics that may seem strange at the outset, but is fairly common in Thorki fandom--because Loki's a Frost Giant and we don't really know what that means, because comics!Loki is canon genderfluid (we have a lot of Lady Loki panels), because fandom Likes It, he's often written as intersex or just straight up able to get pregnant because Frost Giants Are Like That In Fandom.So, Loki's brought back post-first movie and he's furious and kept in a locked ivory tower and Thor goes to visit him and it's vicious but also they love each other and so eventually there's sex and it's a WIP that hasn't been updated in a long time but what's there is SO GOOD. Spoils of War by Fickle_Obsessions, thor/loki, NSFW, jotunn!loki, war prize!loki, dub con, rough sex, 9.8k      Fandom loves War Prize Jotunn!Loki with rough sex and, look, we all have our needs and this is one I really, really love a lot. Good Inside by glayish, thor/loki + thor/loki/mjolnir, NSFW, object insertion, mild bondage, dub-con, 7.4k      More rough sex that's kinda dub-con but in the way that it would be with them, also Mjolnir as a sex toy.  Scorchingly hot, too. feel my bones ignite by Lise, thor/loki, NSFW, rough sex, mild bdsm elements, 6.6k      More angry prison sex with some dom/sub elements and ridiculously hot sex. Covenant by Xero_Sky, thor/loki + other asgardians, NSFW, arranged marriage, post-avengers, 32.7k wip      "After Loki is brought back to Asgard for justice, he's somewhat appalled to find that his family still cares for him and worries about his well-being. Even worse, they have a cunning plan to keep him safe from Thanos and sort out the havoc he's been wreaking everywhere.  It works. And for one brief shining moment, Loki Is Happy. Naturally, it all goes downhill from there."  Arranged marriage fic that isn't at all fluffy or easy, it's difficult and unhappy and this is a WIP, but there's some good stuff already here that's worth reading for it, imo. Absolution by ladylapislazuli, thor/loki, arranged marriage, post-avengers, 54.2k      Another "Loki is forced to marry Thor to try to keep him contained and in Asgard" that should be silly and ridiculous but instead is heartwrenching and so, so good about digging into their issues and all the anger and hurt there.  It's a middle of the road kind of piece, not fluffy, but not tragic, and I respect it all the more for that.         STEVE/BUCKY: Out of the Dead Land by emilyenrose, steve/bucky, 62.7k      Oh, if you only read one Steve/Bucky fic, MAKE IT THIS ONE.  Post-TWS fic (not CW-compliant), Bucky tries to be Bucky again and it's a very difficult road and it was angsty and hard and so worth it and SO GOOD. The man on the bridge by boopboop, steve/bucky + tony + background pairings + avengers + other marvel characters, the winter soldier spoilers, 107.5k      This can be pretty controversial and I admit that I faded from Stucky fandom before it was finished, but I liked what was there.  Written in the aftermath of The Winter Soldier (so not CW-compliant) it's very angsty and a novel-length look at Steve/Bucky trying to come back to each other. This You Protect by Owlet, steve/bucky & avegers & ocs, 64.3k      While I wandered off for the follow-ups, they didn't feel the same as the first fic, this one is perfect exactly as it is--Bucky doesn't fully remember who he is, but his instincts to protect Steve cannot be overriden.  It's half parody, half serious, where Bucky Makes Friends With His Old People Neighbors and despairs every time Steve does something stupid and avoids him like the plague because he can't deal with his feelings, but still watches from afar.  It's GREAT. there's trees in the desert since you moved out by irnan, steve/bucky/natasha, 37k      I haven't read this one myself, but I've always liked irnan's fics and this one looks fantastic, a road trip where Steve/Bucky/Natasha work out their feelings.  (Bucky/Natasha is canon in the comics at many points, so a lot of people wanted it in the MCU, to go along with Steve/Bucky and Steve/Natasha.) sam deserves better than these assholes by lazulisong, steve/bucky + sam + natasha + other marvel characters, 10.7k      A series of fics where Sam Wilson really does deserve better than these two assholes.  I love lazulisong's writing, she really has a gift for comedic timing! Memory by emilyenrose, steve/bucky, 25.2k      Bucky working to try to remember who he is, it doesn't really go so well. your favorite ghost by augustbird, steve/bucky, 21k      I LOVE augustbird's writing, so another angsty post-TWS fic that's about the entire scope of Steve and Bucky's lives, the hard journey to bring Bucky home, is A+ for me. All The Leaves Are Brown (And the sky is gray) by AvocadoLove, bucky & tony + background steve/bucky, 17.4k      I don't remember there being much actual Stucky in this fic (though, the feelings are there) but Bucky's mission to kill Howard and Maria goes a little differently and instead he winds up with kidlet Tony on the run and it's SO GOOD.  Angsty plus cute kidlets, I DEVOURED IT.  (Everything I've ever read by AvocadoLove has been amazing, though.) HUMOR FIC: Majority Rule by Xparrot, thor & loki & avengers, humor, 2.4k     Also by Xparrot (I love everything by her!) it's short and hilarious and a great bit of funny cultural difference stuff with Thor and Loki and the Avengers. Big in Japan by gunboots     Avengers + Thorki, Tony brings back some dakimakura and it’s H I L A R I O U S. Teenage Dream by TheOtherOdinson     “Loki’s plan to invade Midgard is going perfectly - until his parents show up.” Aka, the one where Dad Odin and Mom Frigga show up and ruin their son’s takeover of Midgard, it’s HILARIOUS. Five Times the Villain's Weapon Didn't Work On Thor and the One Time It Did by TheOtherOdinson, thor + avengers + loki, humor, 3.9k     What it says on the tin and it’s delightful! I’m biased because I helped encourage it, but, no, it’s really great Thor FUN fic! Life of the Party by TheOtherOdinson, thor & loki + other asgardians, 2k     Loki tries to be a chaos shit stirrer at a party, and other people KEEP RUINING HIS FUN, it’s sharp and clever and delightful! You Shouldn't Have by TheOtherOdinson, thor & tony + thor & steve + thor & clint + thor & natasha + thor & bruce, humor, 2.1k     OKAY, LET ME EXPLAIN. One of the things I frequently talked about on Tumblr is how Asgard had the greatest decorative taste ever–everything is incredibly gold and tacky and they have water features everywhere. I LOVE IT. Also, Thor is 100% a troll that people never realize he’s doing it. These things combine into one of the most perfect fics I have ever read. Unforseen Side Effects by Fickle_Obsessions      Tony accidentally doses Thor and Loki with a drug that turns out to be an aphrodesiac. He sees more than he wants to. FANART: While the fandom is quieter today, the Thor fandom has a tremendous back archive of art, so much of it absolutely stunning and creative and wonderful! While I cannot possibly go through it all, I will at least get you started! wantstobelieve [thorki tag] does some of the most stunning artwork in the fandom, to the point that I honestly have trouble picking out favorites.  But this one is is ridiculously hot, this one is stunning  This one always hits me right in the dom/bratty sub kink, this one is a beautiful Loki piece, this one gives me all the feelings, this one is a gorgeous Jotunn!Loki, this one is is just lovely, this one is also right in the dom/sub kink, this one is a pretty Loki, this one is lovely and this one with Frigga and the kidlets is gorgeous. lohkaydraws [thorki tag] also does gorgeous work, this piece is a particular fave, but also this NSFW art is amazing. lousysharkbutt [art tag] does hilarity in Avengers fandom like no one else, this one is a favorite and this one makes me laugh every time.  Also, the best response to Civil War.  ALSO FAVE. yanagoya [loki tag] draws some of my favorite porn in the fandom, like, ever. Here and here and here and here.  All are NSFW.  Colors and smooth lines! bunnyxian [thorki tag] also does some great NSFW art--which all of these links are.  Here and here and here.  (Though, the layout makes them seem smaller than they are.  --in comparison, for example.) 10000ta [blog link] has drawn a bunch of gorgeou art for Thorki!  I’m not sure if everything of theirs is still up on their tumblr, but it’s probably floating around elsewhere, too.  A couple of faves are Egyptian Loki and Ragnarok Thorki. These two are also very nice!  --okay, yeah, I think their NSFW has moved but there’s this one and this one. horns-of-sin [blog link] is SUPER SUPER NSFW, beyond even the others! There’s a lot of Jotunn!Loki, some intersex!Loki, it’s split between solo!Loki and most of the popular Loki pairings.  It’s very pretty art (and such pretty colors!), but it’s very, very graphic and is striving to stick as many dicks into Loki as it possibly can, so be careful if you click it open! virushoney [art tag] does a lot of really beautifully colored, clean lined, super fucking cute art!  This one is a cool Jotunn!Loki, this one is a cute peacock!Loki, this one is a cute animal ears set, this one is more lovely Jotunn!Loki art, this one is godless-night [art tag] does some really pretty stuff, too.  This one is a nice Ragnarok-inspired one and this one is is lovely, but haunting. mokonosuke7 [art tag] can do some really beautiful stuff!  This one is a gorgeous Jotunn!Loki, this one is another stunning one, this one is is simple but lovely, this one is a stunning belly dancer Loki, this one has super pretty details! robinhess [blog link] has some lovely ones as well!  Here, here, here, here, and here are ones I remember from them! jiuge [blog link] does incredible pieces, too.  This one is a Mr. and Mrs. Smith parody, this one is is an incredible Jotunn!Loki, this one is the single most beautiful piece of Frigga art with kidlets that I have ever seen, this one is a lovely Thor/Loki piece, and this one is is another stunning Thor/Loki piece. derlaine [loki tag] does some of the funniest and/or most heartwarming art! This one is part one of Loki’s Childhood (a collection of all their Asgardian kidlet art and this one is part two! florbe-triz [art tag] also does really amazing art!  This one is gorgeous, this one is a great use of color, this one is possibly the best they’ve ever done, this one is a great kiss in the snow, this one is beautiful NSFW art, this one is gorgeous in this details, and this one is another stunning use of color.  If you want to go through and see everything for yourself, you’ll have to go about 12 pages back on their art tag to get to the Thor fandom stuff. Okay, honestly, just go through my Jotunn!Loki tag and you’ll see there’s far more amazing art than I could possibly all link to!  My Thorki tag is probably about 50% fanart (and the other half is fanedits and fic reblogs and such) if you want more!  This was meant to get a person started

[sg-1718t1]

Evaluation

Looking back on this project, I would open by saying that I am quite happy with the progress I have made. Indeed, before this project, I had never touched Nuke or done any VFX before. It was very challenging to learn everything from scratch, from the concepts of visual effects to the practice of it. I really enjoyed the fact that live action and 3D can interact together and sky is the limit when it comes to what can be done with Nuke, 3D packages and imagination. Considering that I would very much like to work in the film industry, I find that this has provided me with an incredible set of skills to pursue such a career.

Other than having to catch up in order to successfully complete the submission as well as follow along lectures, I ran into many walls during my practice and have really worked on my problem solving skills.

The first issue came from the first footage I shot. I had in mind a still shot of the Old Royal Naval College where my 3D model would slowly crawl and, as it would notice the camera, slowly stand up in an intimidating manner. The issue I faced was that because it was a still shot I could not track it properly and kept obtaining very high solve errors. Because of my incapacity of getting a good track, and therefore importing the virtual camera into my 3D package of choice, I decided I would reshoot. Refilming, I integrated a pan from right to left, making sure that this time the shot would not be still. Here, again, my lack of knowledge in tracking and VFX in general caused me to track my footage over and over again, getting bad solve errors again. It then struck me: I had to rotoscope the sky out in order to track only the buildings: the sky was very windy that day and the clouds, which were being tracked by Nuke, affected the solve very strongly. Finally, still on Nuke and exporting the tracked camera, I ran into a very unusual bug. Indeed, every time I exported by Nuke camera to Maya in order to place and animate my character to the footage, the footage was very stretched and my markers were not matching the original shot anymore. This was a major issue as I would have had to guess in order to place my 3D model in the scene. It took me about a week to figure out what was wrong as I could not seem to find a solution either on the internet or asking my peers. I redid my comp in Nuke many times because I wanted to see if the error came from Nuke. I worked on the 4k version of my footage as well as 2000x1080, 1920x1037 and 1920x1080 versions of the shot, tweaking the camera tracker as well as I could and exporting my camera over and over. This was a quite intensive week as I was extremely dependent from the University. Indeed, at home, I was using the free version of Nuke, Nuke Non-Commercial. However, the WriteGeo node, that allows you to export your camera to a 3D package, is only available in the Commercial version, available at University. I managed to make it work no matter what, yet my footage was still stretched in Maya. I concluded that the bug surely came from Maya. After desperately trying to come up with a solution to this bug that was freezing my work, trying to tweak Maya’s settings as much as I could, I figured that it was the image plane that was problematic and not the camera or the render settings, as I initially thought. In the image plane’s settings I finally managed to get my backplate to match my resolution and therefore get rid of the stretched renders.

On the other hand, I faced some difficulties when working on my CGI. The first one was against myself: I was struggling to come up with a concept that I liked and that I wanted to stick with. I really wanted to have creatures climbing the domes of the Old Royal Naval College but I realized quite fast, talking to my peers, that it was maybe a little too ambitious to have multiple animated 3D characters in my scene. I settled for having one animated gargoyle-like character for certain and seeing whether I would have time to add more. I sculpted two characters before getting the look and feel that I really wanted for my scene. I then retopologized my multi-million Dynamesh into an easily animatable character. I am really glad I learnt retopologizing as I feel it is a very important aspect of working on 3D characters, especially in a VFX environment, where the model is going to be handed over to colleagues. Finally, I UV unwrapped it using Zbrush and imported into Substance Painter in order to texture it but realized my texture was completely stretched. To fix this, I had to learn UV unwrapping in Maya, which had always been one of my worst fears when it came to 3D. Looking back, I can tell I learnt an extremely valuable skill and texturing in Substance was a piece of cake thanks to a proper UV. Linking the Substance textures into Arnold 5 textures was a completely different story: it took me a lot of time to figure it out because I started working on my model very early on, before we got tutorials from our lecturers.

Still on the CGI, I feel like positioning it properly in the scene was a little hard because it was hard to get the perspective right and make sure that it was lit properly. In Nuke, I softened my model, matched the grain from the footage, got the shiny shine more and darken the skin using my render passes, and finally cropped the legs out by tracking a rotoscope in order to make it look like it is standing on the side of the building.

As a means to conclude, I think that although I am quite proud and happy with the final result of my CGI and my scene as well as all the skills I have aquired, there is still a lot that can be done to improve them. Indeed, I think that a CameraShake node would have really helped the storytelling and cinematography of the shot by imitating a handheld camera (render times were too long). Rendering a proper motion blur pass would have definitely helped too in order to get very nice results when it comes to the creature’s movements. Consequently, now that I have an efficient workflow, I would love to continue working on this shot, or other ones and really push myself further. I think that I would really enjoy working in VFX for the film industry, especially on creating the assets, not so much animating them, or in compositing the shots and seeing the scenes come to life as I am very interested into cinematography.

[therearemonstersinthedark]

Astronautical || Ch. 2

A Guardians of the Galaxy Fanwork

Pairings: n/a

Genre: Adventure, general

Word Count: 4k +

Rating: T to be safe, minor violence and swearing

Links: Fanfiction.net || Ao3

Summary:  Bound and helpless on Ronan's ship, Peter finds help in one of the least likely of places.

Author’s Notes:  Here we go. Chapter 2. I'll be honest, openings are my weakest and least favorite things. I am not exactly happy with this chapter, there were several plot points I had to rework, the flow isn't that great, and Nebula is a hard character for me to write(Fun but hard), but I was getting nowhere just dwelling over it, so I decided to go with what I had and just move on for now. Maybe later on I'll come back and edit it into something I can be a little more proud of, but if I want to get anywhere in this story I need to keep moving on!

Chapter 2: Come with me and Escape

Honestly, Ronan's betrayal had been more of an annoyance than an actual concern for the Titan when it had first occured. It would later prove to be a pivitol moment in the downslide of his march to control all that there was to posses in the known galaxies. It wasn't the source, no, but it was a convenient moment that Thanos found himself often looking to when laying the blame. If he was a more emotional being he may have simply killed the Kree warlord in this version of his universe, but he found it was beneath him to fear a mortal. Ronan was still worth just a bit more to him alive than dead. He simply needed to hold the reins a bit tighter this time around.

--

Peter lay on the floor of some sort of prisoner's cell on the large Kree ship. A pair of rather grumpy and well-armed guards stood sentry just outside of the bars. His hands had been bound and his blasters confiscated, and the cold hard flooring was doing his headache no favors.

"So, uh. Nice digs you got here." He tried for the fifth time to get any sort of response from them. "Whatever happened to the whole being destroyed thing? Not that I'm complaining here! I love being not-destroyed, and am more than happy to stay that way, but I'm just a bit confused."

Not even a dirty look. Tough crowd.

"Let's try something else. Does anyone want to tell me what happened here? At Xandar I mean. Were you two here when it, uh..." A twitch, the guards suddenly stiffened and Peter felt a spark of triumph.

That spark was quickly crushed beneath the sound of approaching footsteps. Oh.

The footsteps stopped just outside of the bars, and Peter found himself staring at a pair of very familiar boots that were very uncomfortably close to his face. Oh.

Hesitantly, he brought his eyes up to look into the black depths of one of the last people he was hoping to see about now. "Hey Nebula."

The android answered with a familiar sneer. "Dismissed." She snapped at the guards without breaking eye contact. He assumed. It was hard to tell sometimes when she didn't have any pupils to focus on.

Armor rattled as the guards saluted and withdrew obediently.

"So," He started cautiously, struggling into a sitting position against the wall. "To what do I owe this honor?"

"Starlord?" She hissed back, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How do you know my name?"

Oops. A shrug, or his best attempt at one from his position as he scrambled for a reply that wouldn't end with those shoes getting acquainted with his face. "You know... Deadly assassin with blue skin and a red temper. Word gets around."

Nebula looked unconvinced, but for whatever reason seemed willing to set this issue aside for now. "Who are you?"

"I'm Star-Lord, man. Legendary outlaw? Come on, you're the ones who captured me! Your ship's all 'IDENTIFIED: STAR-LORD' and you don't even know who I am?"

"I don't," She answered flatly. "But I want to."

Well that wasn't what he was expecting.

"We all have orders to retrieve anyone who calls themselves by that name and bring them to Thanos. Why? Who are you to my father?"

"I'm the guy who touched an infinity stone and lived to tell about it." He was already buried pretty deep here. Nothing much to do but keep digging and hope he found another way out.

"That's impossible." She hissed, but she leaned closer to the bars as she spoke.

"No I really did. Well, I mean, I did in my universe. Apparently not in this one. The other Guardians and I used it to defeat Ronan and save the Galaxy-" A sharp bark of laughter cut him off.

"What are you trying to pull here? Xandar is destroyed. The Nova Corps with it. No one else stood in opposition."

"That's just what I'm saying. This is all wrong. Xandar wasn't supposed to be destroyed. Ronan was. But someone must have... changed it somehow."

"This is useless. If you're not going to make any sense then there's no point in talking with you any longer."

"No wait! I can prove it! I know things! The Orb, it's an infinity stone right? The stone of power. It's purple and Thanos kept it on Morath-no, Morag!"

"So what? You could have easily gathered that information by torturing some of these pathetic excuses for soldiers."

"No, no. I know because I stole it from Morag! but then Ronan stole it back before betraying Thanos and going after Xandar on his own."

"Ronan would never betray Thanos." Her tone was absolute, but he thought he could see a flicker of something in her expression. Damn those black eyes made her hard to read. Was she considering what he had to say or which of his limbs to break?

"But he did. And so did you." In for a penny. "The last time I saw you, you were swearing to 'hunt him like a dog' and put an end to the tyrant for good. I can help you with that!" It was Peter's turn to lean forward now. "Just let me go and I can find my friends and figure out how to fix all of this."

Nebula stiffened and pulled back from the bars. "Enough with your lies." She spat before turning on her heels and stalking away, leaving Peter staring into the dark corridor and listening to her footsteps fade away.

Well that could have gone better. But he supposed it could have gone a lot worse, too.

Nebula didn't return that night, and the guards never came back, either. He was starting to wonder if they intended to leave him to starve or die of dehydration when he finally heard the sound of footsteps returning. He'd spent much of the time dozing, but his stomach estimated that it would have been around lunch time the next day. He really hoped they brought food with them.

He was disappointed when two Kree soldiers stepped into view, empty handed save for a pair of matching blasters.

"Hey there. I had some complaints to make about the hospitality here. Is a little breakfast in bed really too much to ask? Honestly. I think I'd like to check out and head back to my ship now."

The door creaked in complaint as it was swung open. Gloved hands grabbed him roughly and manhandled him onto his feet. He was shoved between them and marched back into the large hallway of the ship. Were these the same two soldiers as before? It was hard to be sure, they kind of all started to look the same in those uniforms. Was that racist? He was too hungry and sore to care.

"So what are the chances of getting one of you lovely fellas to take my handcuffs off, huh? I promise I won't do anything naughty. It's just my arms are kinda numb, and I'd like to make sure none of my uh, cellmates chewed off any of my fingers while I slept."

He wiggled his fingers for emphasis. Or he assumed they were wiggling. He wasn't entirely joking about the lack of feeling, but the guards seemed as unconcerned about his fingers as they were about everything else.

Sighing and giving up for now Peter decided to check on his surroundings instead. They quickly proved to be about as interesting as the guards. The hallway was most likely used to transport much larger things than their current three man group. In fact, it looked like a small army could comfortably march down the corridor, complete with tanks and armaments. Peter tried not to think too hard about what that implied and instead shifted his attention to the lights. Bright white panels lined the ceiling and were set into the walls at seemingly random intervals, throwing out light and creating a halo of shadows all around them in various shades of pinks and purples. The whole thing gave off a feeling of creeping horror that was so wholesomly Kree.

He entertained himself for a while in wondering how the lights works but by the time they suddenly turned down a smaller hallway shooting off to the left he was no closer to understanding them. Gamora, with her assassin's knowledge of about everything in the universe, would be able to tell him what they were called. Rocket could probably tell him exactly how they worked and come up with at least five different ways they could be weaponized and used to escape his current predicament.

Instead he was bound and helpless to do much of anything but march down the corridor and see what the universe was planning to gut punch him with next. Had he always been this useless alone, or had he become so used to relying on his team that he couldn't function on his own anymore?

With that depressing thought heavy on his shoulders he followed the Kree through one more doorway and found himself at the foot of some staircase in some sort of dark and broody throne room. In the far corner of the room he spotted Nebula, the flash of her augmentations giving her away as she hovered in the shadows. He tossed her a wink which she answered with a disgusted snarl, then brought his attention to the stairs. Reclining on the throne at the very top of those stairs, haloed by more of those pinkish lights and cutting an imposing figure was none other than the Accuser himself.

Well shit. Despite having already gathered that Ronan was somehow alive in this... universe, reality, whatever it was, Peter couldn't escape the crawling feeling that he was looking at a dead man. A very much alive, very much dangerous, and very much holding a large hammer with a glowing infinity stone inside of it not-so-dead man. Double shit.

"Star Lord." Ronan's voice echoes around the chamber. Theatrical and overbearing, just like everything else about the Accuser. The butt of his warhammer scraped against the stonelike floor as Ronan leaned forward on his throne. "You are the Star Lord?"

Peter puffed up slightly under the other man's scrutiny.

"Forgive my disbelief, but Thanos himself has issued orders to have you retrieved on sight and be brought before him. Such orders are rare indeed. So imagine my surprise when my soldiers claim they have found that very Star Lord and then drag before me some sad excuse for a Terran street rat."

"Hey! I am not some sort of-"

"Silence!" A bang and a burst of light momentarily stunned Peter as Ronan slammed his hammer down for emphasis. A shiver made it's way up his spine as he was, for just the barest moment back in the void that the infinity stone had pulled him into not so long ago.

Satisfied by Peters seeming obedience Ronan reclined back into his chair. "So, would you care to tell me what it is that gives the Titan such an interest in you?" way the accuser said it, twice now in this very brief meeting, stirred Peter from his moment of disquiet. You. In that same damnable tone used by Yondu the first time he'd successfully stolen something from the captain. The same tone echoed by so many clients just before being laughed out of a job. The same tone sneered out by so many guards just before being tazed by his favorite weapons.

Ronan was underestimating him. Good. He knew just how to work with that.

"Well, what can I say? Maybe your boys here made a mistake. No harm done. Just untie my hands and uh, point me back in the direction of my ship, and I'll get out of your hair- you do have hair right? I was never quite sure."

It was hard to tell with his face shrouded in darkness, but the Kree warlord didn't seem to be very impressed by Peter's offer.

"I will ask you again," He ground out with quickly fading patience. "Who are you?"

"I'm a Guardian of the Galaxy." He laughed back. "I'm the guy that killed you once and I'll do it again if I have to."

"Enough. It doesn't matter who you are Star Lord. You will be delivered to Thanos and he will dispose of you as he sees fit. Until then I don't want to see you again." With a wave the guards stepped forward and roughly dragged him out of the room. The last thing he saw was Nebula's hard and calculating stare.

–

After being shoved unceremoniously back into his cell he was once again left on his own. His stomach reminded him again that he hadn't had anything to eat or drink since at least yesterday. They knew he had to have those things to live, right? It would be awfully hard to deliver him alive to Thanos if he had died of dehydration along the way.

By the time Nebula appeared with a tray in her hands he was ready to kiss the ground at her feet. Instead he just sat up as gracefully as he could muster, which was admittedly, not much, and offered her his best toothy grin as she unlocked the door and plopped it down in front of his crossed legs.

"Waiwaitwait!" He cried as she turned to leave. "I can't eat like this. Come on. At least let me have my hands back!"

For somebody with no pupils Nebula was really very talented at rolling her eyes, but she stepped around him anyways and removed his handcuffs with a click.

Peter pulled his arms in front of him and rubbed at his wrists. He could have moaned if the galaxy's angriest assassin wasn't currently glowering down at him like he was nothing but an overgrown Orloni. As soon as he was sure he wouldn't drop it, he grabbed the cup of water with both hands and drank it down greedily then started in on the food, dragging the tray closer to himself and eating with his hands when it became apparent he would not be offered any utensils. It wasn't the first time he'd eaten with his hands and as long as he didn't die here he doubted it would be his last. He managed to make it through about half his meal before Nebula's patience ran out.

The sound of her clearing her throat caused him to reluctantly drag his attention back to his current predicament. At some point the assassin had crossed back to the open door and now she leaned against the frame with her arm crossed and her lips pressed into a thin line.

"What did you mean when you said that you had killed Ronan once?" The bitter interrogational tone was as familiar as it was terrifying, and so was that gleam in her eyes and guarded hunch to her shoulders. She wanted something, but didn't want to admit she wanted it.

"Just what I said." He mumbled with a shrug and a mouthful of whatever this was. "I know it sounds completely crazy but this is all wrong. Xandar wasn't supposed to burn. Ronan was supposed to betray Thanos and steal the infinity stone for himself, and my friends and I were supposed to stop him."

"But how?" she pressed.

"The infinity stone. I-we held it and used its power against him."

Nebula's jaw clenched as she worked something over in her mind. Honestly, it was almost comical how very much alike her and Gamora were in their expressions. Not that he would ever say that to either of their faces unless he was feeling particularly suicidal that day.

"No mortal can hold an infinity stone and not be immediately destroyed." She scoffed, but there was just a hint of uncertainty in her voice now.

"Well... not to give away too much, but I may have been a teeny bit... less mortal at the time." Actually, now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure exactly how mortal he was right now. His connection to the Light had died with Ego, but if the Guardians had never saved Xandar, then what else could have changed? Was Ego even dead? Suddenly the last few bites of food on the tray seemed less than appealing.

"Do you think you could do it again?"

Could he?

A long pause followed as he stared blankly at his own hands. If he was part celestial again, which there was a good chance of that with how his luck was holding, then it was possible he could use it to destroy Ronan and find out what was going on.

"Yeah. Probably. But I'll need my friends." A sneer pulled at her lips at that, but once Nebula made up her mind about something she pursued it relentlessly. He had found his ticket out of here.

"Those stones may be the only power in this universe that can rival my father's. If you can truly wield them, then this would explain why he has such an interest in you. You are a threat to him."

"Hold up a second. I thought we were talking about taking out Ronan. Thanos is like, a thousand times more powerful that that overgrown Kree Lawyer!"

"I'm sure he would find that comparison insulting." Nebula replied coolly. "Regardless, Thanos is well on his way to controlling the galaxy, and the longer we wait the more impossible it will become to destroy him. You may be my last chance to destroy that bastard and you want to stay here cowering in your little cell?"

If Peter was being honest, she had a point. Ronan had betrayed Thanos in his universe, but here he appeared to be working under the Titan's orders like any good little minion. The odds were good that whoever was pulling the strings on this nightmare, it wasn't The Accuser. If he wanted to get to the bottom of this and get the universe back on track he needed time.

"Look. If you can get me out of here I can find my friends and I am sure we can figure out some way to set everything right again."

Nebulas eyes narrowed and her whole body tensed in a subtle yet very effective threat.

"If-If we can't figure out a way back, I will help you take out Thanos." He appeased quickly, holding his hands up in mock surrender. It seemed to work as some of the tension left her form.

"Good. Before the next cycle is through we will be passing a hidden gateway that can take us to a place where Ronan will not think to follow. What will you need?" It was weird to have Nebula asking him anything in a serious tone, without anything more than the usual undercurrent of sarcasm and seething hatred that seeped into everything she did.

Peter shoved the tray with the last few bites away from his body and leaned forward. "First, we'll need the stone."

"That won't be a problem." In the silence that followed Peter waited for her to give an explanation as to how exactly she intended to steal one of the galaxies most powerful weapons from one of the galaxy's most powerful war generals in such a way that it wouldn't be consider a problem. None ever came.

"Okay. Well. On my ship I have several storage units that should be able to safely contain it. They were made for smuggling high powered or radioactive contraband without tripping off any sensors, so they should be able to hold the stone at least for a while. Then we'll just have to steal the stone, get back to my ship-I'll need my blasters back, by the way-, and hightail it out of here before anyone notices. Piece of cake, right?"

–

The first part was easy enough. Peter described where to find the containment units, and Nebula vanished with his tray and empty cup and reappeared a short amount of time later with one in hand.

The second part was where it got a bit tricky. After a brief discussion it was decided that it would be better for Peter to already be on the Milano while Nebula stole the stone, rather than risk her having to come fetch him after an alarm was raised. No one questioned the assassin as she frog marched the once again bound Peter through the hallways. What they did not agree upon, was how after Nebula had escorted him to his ship she left him cuffed to the ladder that led to the flight deck. 'So you won't get any ideas and try to leave too early' she had told him with a smirk before vanishing back into the warship's holding bay.

"NEBULA!" He shouted after her, but she was already gone. Glancing around, he noticed that at some point his ship had been ransacked, drawers pulled open and their contents scattered about. "Oh come on guys! That is NOT COOL!" His blasters sat on a shelf on the far wall, probably Nebula's doing, and he was relieved to spy his walkman discarded on a nearby shelf. With some cursing and creative contorting he even managed to get ahold of it, wrangling the headphones around his neck with his free hand and turning on some tunes while he waited.

The waiting that followed was agony. Both because Peter was a man of action so being stuck on the ship with no clue what was going on went against every fiber of his being, and because the blasted assassin had cuffed his arm up too high and he couldn't reach the floor to sit. He was pretty sure she had done it intentionally. She was spiteful like that. By the time Nebula burst back onto the ship, followed by a very angry sounding alarm, he had managed to shimmy up the ladder into a sitting position with his legs through the rungs and was working through 'Escape' by Rupert Holmes for the second time.

"Well that doesn't sound very-" He was cut off by Nebula's hand to his face she shoved past him and up the ladder.

"MOVE! We don't have time for your idiocy!" The ship rumbled to life and jerked off the floor leaving Peter scrambling for a solid grip on the ladder before he was flung about like a ragdoll.

"What happened?!" He tried calling up past the angry sound of the Milano's engines struggling under the rough treatment.

"Just shut up and get ready. We've got five seconds until they figure out how to unjam the hangar door."

"Until they wh-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!?" Even with his death grip Peter was nearly ripped from the ladder as the Milano suddenly burst forward at full speed. Somewhere over his own screams and the protests of his poor abused ship he could hear the sound of weapons being fired at them. Loose debri was flung around the room as she dodged through the blasts, bouncing off the walls, furniture, and his body. It reminded him of when he was a child and he used to sit and watch his mother do the laundry. He used to think it looked like fun to be tossed about in the dryer as well. Like most childhood dreams, the reality was painful and disappointing.

As he moved to cover his head with his free arm something small and shiny caught his attention. Aha! Perfect! It was a tiny unassuming pocket-knife like object, only it contained a mini blowtorch, among other things, that he could use to free himself. It was made for minor self-repairs on the ship, but there was no reason it couldn't also cut through the cord holding him to the ladder.

It took several sharp turns and more than just a few embarassingly failed attempts but Peter eventually managed to swipe it out of the air at it whizzed pass. The tiny welding blade made short work of the metal cord and soon he was scrambling up into the flight deck, hastily shoving his walkman into his pocket. Another particularly sharp turn nearly sent him tumbling back down bellow. Up here at least, there was no loose debri and he managed to drag himself into the co-pilot's chair with minimal bruising.

"What the hell are you doing!?" He cried as he wrestled with the seatbelt.

"Your ship pilots like an old Shi'ar Junker!"

"Don't you blame this on my ship! I could steer better than this drunk and missing a limb!"

"Keep talking and you might get to try out that second part."

They seemed to be gaining some distance from the Kree fighters that were firing at them, and Nebula was performing a few less acrobatics to avoid their beams.

"So where is this gateway? Because all I see up ahead is one very unwelcoming asteroid belt." A stream of asteroids, most of which easily dwarfing his Milano, stretched out in front of them. The colossal rocks hovered uncomfortably close to one another, jostling and bumping into each other like the stampeding herds of cattle on an old western. And Nebula was speeding straight towards them at an alarming rate.

"Nebulaaaaaaa!" He cried as she pulled up at the last second so they were flying parallel to the great asteroids. The beams from the ships sinking futher and further behind them sent up sprays of debri as they missed wildly. Just as the last ship winked out of sight over the horizon of stone Nebula cranked the controls violently to the left and sent them careening into a gap between two gigantic boulders. Oh shit. Peter scrambled for the controls but Nebula batted him away without looking up from the windshield. She had officially lost it. He was going to die smushed in between these two rocks like some sort of Star-lord sandwich.

The Milano flipped and bounced through the increasing darkness, Peter's chest aching with every new scrape and dent. Just when he thought his ship was about to fall apart the astroids vanished and they were falling through open sky.

End Ch 2.

[aaronsniderus]

Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2017

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means we receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended. Please check out our disclosure policy for more details. 

Halloween is over and it’s time to think about the holiday season already. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I get it. I’m not ready for the music or the tree decorating and I certainly haven’t contemplated all the gifts I need to buy for people yet.

However, one thing I really enjoy is gift shopping. From a young age, I’ve also really been into computers and tech, which means this blog is one of my favorite assignments of the year, so buckle up!

The gifts are in various categories and at a few different price points. This guide should give you some ideas – regardless if you’re a lifelong techie or just shopping for someone who is. Before we jump in, let’s go over a few tips in terms of the best time to buy.

Don’t Rush

It’s important not to go out tomorrow and buy all the things. Odds are high that many retailers will offer some of the better deals around Black Friday and continuing through Cyber Monday.

Online retailers like Amazon are doing more to try to take away some of that mindshare from brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday in recent years. Meanwhile, retailers like Target and Walmart are trying to get in on that Cyber Monday excitement, too.

With that in mind, feel free to wait it out a while and see if you can get the best deal possible. The best time to buy certain items may indeed be after Black Friday. Retailers may discount items to get rid of excess stock. If the item is popular enough, it’s important to note that this strategy could backfire.

And with that, let’s get into the gizmos and gadgets.

Home Theater

Home theater is a big category for home tech. There are TVs, speaker systems and streaming media players to take a look at.

Best TV for the Money

You can get a nice 1080p TV crazy cheap nowadays. The techie on your list is going to want the latest and greatest, though, but you don’t have to break the bank.

VIZIO does very high quality electronics at an affordable price. This won’t be the last time you see them in this roundup. You can get a 50” 4K TV with high dynamic range  (HDR) for under $600.

For context, 4K bumps up picture clarity because it’s double the resolution of a standard 1080p HDTV. HDR increases the spectrum of the color gamut that can be shown by your television so you get the deepest black and the whitest white.

You’ll lose a little bit of the pop, but you can also get a 4K display without HDR for about $100 less.

Speakers

When it comes to home theater, you don’t want to use the TV speakers. They just don’t kick out a deep enough sound to really get you into the experience. With that in mind, one thing to take a look at is sound bars and speaker systems.

In this area, VIZIO sells a great sound bar and subwoofer package for $150. For another $80, speakers can be added behind the viewer as well for a more three-dimensional sound experience.

Media Players

When it comes to streaming media players, there are four big competitors in the market.

The current option I would recommend is the Apple TV 4K. It’s a little more expensive than the other options I’m going to talk about, but the nice thing here is that if you have any existing HD content from iTunes or a previous Apple TV, you automatically get the content���s 4K version when it becomes available without an upcharge. That’s not the case for many other services.

It starts at $179, with $20 more for a version with more storage capacity. This one also has extensive gaming capability and can function as a hub for your smart home devices as well.

Roku, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire all have 4K streaming dongles for around $70. For an extra $5, Amazon is currently bundling an HD antenna, so you can get your local channels in high definition if you’re a cord cutter.

Voice Assistants

We don’t have a lot of the technology referenced in Iron Man, but one area in which we might be in a mighty close is with his voice assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. There are at least two major platforms competing for the ability to control your entertainment, schedule and smart home devices using only your voice.

The Amazon Echo is one that I have personal experience with, so I’ll start there. I use voice commands to turn lights on and off through connected smart outlets. In this area, they’ve also released updated versions that can serve as their own hub for supported devices, so you don’t have to have a separate connector. It lets me control streaming radio and music with just my voice. I’m able to control my Fire TV Stick. I can ask the Echo all sorts of questions including the weather and sports scores. Most recently, I’ve connected two of these devices in an intercom system so I can call between rooms.

This isn’t to say that the Echo is the only game in town. The Google Home offers a very similar feature set. Apple is also jumping into this arena sometime in December with its HomePod.

The HomePod might be one to keep an eye on. It uses its directional microphones to figure out the audio environment in the room it’s in to give you the best possible audio experience. This is also the only speaker/voice assistant option that supports Apple Music. With that said, the audio calibration features mean there’s a price jump. At $349, the starting price comes in at $200 more than its closest competitor.

Video Games

When it comes to video games, I’m going to touch on virtual reality actually becoming a reality for consumers, as well as on the newest home console hardware.

Virtual Reality

The absolute latest and greatest in video games right now is virtual reality. It provides the most immersive experience by putting you right in the game. With that said, it’s important to note that the latest and greatest sometimes comes at a heavy premium.

One of the cheaper entry points into this arena may be a PlayStation VR. However, you’re looking at $350 minimum for the required virtual-reality accessories and $250 for a PlayStation 4.

HTC’s Vive VR cost $599, but it currently requires a PC powerful enough to handle some of the processing load, and those don’t come cheap. The Oculus Rift is only $399, but you do need a compatible PC as well. Finally, the Samsung Gear VR comes in at $130, but it requires a compatible Samsung smartphone.

Home Consoles

Gamers tend to organize themselves into tribes. You’re either a Nintendo, PlayStation or Xbox gamer and that’s just the way it is. I would advise anyone looking to buy a console or games for their friends or loved ones to be very conscious of which side of the triangle that particular person falls on. That said, my analysis of each of these companies’ offerings is going to be purely from a technical and usability perspective.

In addition to beloved characters like Zelda and Mario, Nintendo has a very compelling console offering in the Switch. The console offers multiple controller styles and can either be docked at home or taken on the road. With enough controllers, up to eight people can play together in the same room in addition to online multiplayer options. It also has some of the motion control options made popular by its Wii predecessors. The Switch retails for $399.

For the same price, Sony offers its top-of-the-line PlayStation 4 Pro. The console features 4K playback with HDR for Blu-rays and media content as well as the same features for games if the developers choose to build them in.

From a purely technical standpoint, the Xbox One X has the competition beat in terms of power, but from a practical standpoint it offers the same 4K HDR features as the PS4 Pro. It really comes down to what the person you’re buying for prefers to game on.

Tablets and Phones

A lot of these get purchased around the holidays, so I feel like I have to say something about them in here, but it’s important to note that these very much come down to personal preference and, increasingly, the size of your budget.

For people who have iPhones, there are two new options this holiday season. The iPhone 8 features a really nice front-facing camera that can do interesting things like on-the-fly filters. There’s also wireless charging. Then there’s the iPhone X. It has all the features of the 8, plus Face ID and the ability to use an array of cameras to do some really cool things like animated emojis. (This is something better seen than described.) There are also some cool applications with augmented reality. This is the first iPhone with an OLED screen, enabling more true-to-life color. However, the iPhone X will cost you $1,000 at the least.

On the Android side, there are a lot of great options for phones at every price point. However, two phone options that are really pushing the boundaries of what can be done with Google’s smartphone platform are Samsung’s Galaxy line and the Pixel phones backed by Google. You may be able to pay for the phone on a monthly basis through your carrier.

The tablets in many cases are just like their phone counterparts with bigger screens and no calling capability. In many cases, you may be able to actually get these cheaper than a phone.

If you do mostly reading on tablet devices, you may want to take a look at the new Kindle devices. The e-ink displays mean no glare, even in bright sunlight, and they’re also easier on the eyes.

Geek Culture

It’s not strictly tech, but many people who are interested in technology are also fans of comic books, sci-fi and all kinds of other cool stuff. If you’re just looking to get someone who’s proud to think of themselves as a pop-culture geek something they’ll really enjoy, check out services like Lootcrate and My Geek Box.

You can get these at a number of price points from $15 to around $50. You can choose to get random cool items or items based around the theme you pick. It could be anything from Harry Potter to Marvel to Star Wars and even WWE. You can choose to get one or send a monthly subscription.

We’ve gone through a lot of different gift options, but we’ve included a list of our favorites below:

VIZIO 50” class 2160p 4K smart TV with HDR

Amazon Echo

Wireless speaker systems

Lootcrate

Game consoles

The post Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2017 appeared first on ZING Blog by Quicken Loans.

from Updates About Loans https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/gifts-ideas-for-the-tech-savvy-person

[mikebrackett]

Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2017

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means we receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended. Please check out our disclosure policy for more details. 

Halloween is over and it’s time to think about the holiday season already. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I get it. I’m not ready for the music or the tree decorating and I certainly haven’t contemplated all the gifts I need to buy for people yet.

However, one thing I really enjoy is gift shopping. From a young age, I’ve also really been into computers and tech, which means this blog is one of my favorite assignments of the year, so buckle up!

The gifts are in various categories and at a few different price points. This guide should give you some ideas – regardless if you’re a lifelong techie or just shopping for someone who is. Before we jump in, let’s go over a few tips in terms of the best time to buy.

Don’t Rush

It’s important not to go out tomorrow and buy all the things. Odds are high that many retailers will offer some of the better deals around Black Friday and continuing through Cyber Monday.

Online retailers like Amazon are doing more to try to take away some of that mindshare from brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday in recent years. Meanwhile, retailers like Target and Walmart are trying to get in on that Cyber Monday excitement, too.

With that in mind, feel free to wait it out a while and see if you can get the best deal possible. The best time to buy certain items may indeed be after Black Friday. Retailers may discount items to get rid of excess stock. If the item is popular enough, it’s important to note that this strategy could backfire.

And with that, let’s get into the gizmos and gadgets.

Home Theater

Home theater is a big category for home tech. There are TVs, speaker systems and streaming media players to take a look at.

Best TV for the Money

You can get a nice 1080p TV crazy cheap nowadays. The techie on your list is going to want the latest and greatest, though, but you don’t have to break the bank.

VIZIO does very high quality electronics at an affordable price. This won’t be the last time you see them in this roundup. You can get a 50” 4K TV with high dynamic range  (HDR) for under $600.

For context, 4K bumps up picture clarity because it’s double the resolution of a standard 1080p HDTV. HDR increases the spectrum of the color gamut that can be shown by your television so you get the deepest black and the whitest white.

You’ll lose a little bit of the pop, but you can also get a 4K display without HDR for about $100 less.

Speakers

When it comes to home theater, you don’t want to use the TV speakers. They just don’t kick out a deep enough sound to really get you into the experience. With that in mind, one thing to take a look at is sound bars and speaker systems.

In this area, VIZIO sells a great sound bar and subwoofer package for $150. For another $80, speakers can be added behind the viewer as well for a more three-dimensional sound experience.

Media Players

When it comes to streaming media players, there are four big competitors in the market.

The current option I would recommend is the Apple TV 4K. It’s a little more expensive than the other options I’m going to talk about, but the nice thing here is that if you have any existing HD content from iTunes or a previous Apple TV, you automatically get the content’s 4K version when it becomes available without an upcharge. That’s not the case for many other services.

It starts at $179, with $20 more for a version with more storage capacity. This one also has extensive gaming capability and can function as a hub for your smart home devices as well.

Roku, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire all have 4K streaming dongles for around $70. For an extra $5, Amazon is currently bundling an HD antenna, so you can get your local channels in high definition if you’re a cord cutter.

Voice Assistants

We don’t have a lot of the technology referenced in Iron Man, but one area in which we might be in a mighty close is with his voice assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. There are at least two major platforms competing for the ability to control your entertainment, schedule and smart home devices using only your voice.

The Amazon Echo is one that I have personal experience with, so I’ll start there. I use voice commands to turn lights on and off through connected smart outlets. In this area, they’ve also released updated versions that can serve as their own hub for supported devices, so you don’t have to have a separate connector. It lets me control streaming radio and music with just my voice. I’m able to control my Fire TV Stick. I can ask the Echo all sorts of questions including the weather and sports scores. Most recently, I’ve connected two of these devices in an intercom system so I can call between rooms.

This isn’t to say that the Echo is the only game in town. The Google Home offers a very similar feature set. Apple is also jumping into this arena sometime in December with its HomePod.

The HomePod might be one to keep an eye on. It uses its directional microphones to figure out the audio environment in the room it’s in to give you the best possible audio experience. This is also the only speaker/voice assistant option that supports Apple Music. With that said, the audio calibration features mean there’s a price jump. At $349, the starting price comes in at $200 more than its closest competitor.

Video Games

When it comes to video games, I’m going to touch on virtual reality actually becoming a reality for consumers, as well as on the newest home console hardware.

Virtual Reality

The absolute latest and greatest in video games right now is virtual reality. It provides the most immersive experience by putting you right in the game. With that said, it’s important to note that the latest and greatest sometimes comes at a heavy premium.

One of the cheaper entry points into this arena may be a PlayStation VR. However, you’re looking at $350 minimum for the required virtual-reality accessories and $250 for a PlayStation 4.

HTC’s Vive VR cost $599, but it currently requires a PC powerful enough to handle some of the processing load, and those don’t come cheap. The Oculus Rift is only $399, but you do need a compatible PC as well. Finally, the Samsung Gear VR comes in at $130, but it requires a compatible Samsung smartphone.

Home Consoles

Gamers tend to organize themselves into tribes. You’re either a Nintendo, PlayStation or Xbox gamer and that’s just the way it is. I would advise anyone looking to buy a console or games for their friends or loved ones to be very conscious of which side of the triangle that particular person falls on. That said, my analysis of each of these companies’ offerings is going to be purely from a technical and usability perspective.

In addition to beloved characters like Zelda and Mario, Nintendo has a very compelling console offering in the Switch. The console offers multiple controller styles and can either be docked at home or taken on the road. With enough controllers, up to eight people can play together in the same room in addition to online multiplayer options. It also has some of the motion control options made popular by its Wii predecessors. The Switch retails for $399.

For the same price, Sony offers its top-of-the-line PlayStation 4 Pro. The console features 4K playback with HDR for Blu-rays and media content as well as the same features for games if the developers choose to build them in.

From a purely technical standpoint, the Xbox One X has the competition beat in terms of power, but from a practical standpoint it offers the same 4K HDR features as the PS4 Pro. It really comes down to what the person you’re buying for prefers to game on.

Tablets and Phones

A lot of these get purchased around the holidays, so I feel like I have to say something about them in here, but it’s important to note that these very much come down to personal preference and, increasingly, the size of your budget.

For people who have iPhones, there are two new options this holiday season. The iPhone 8 features a really nice front-facing camera that can do interesting things like on-the-fly filters. There’s also wireless charging. Then there’s the iPhone X. It has all the features of the 8, plus Face ID and the ability to use an array of cameras to do some really cool things like animated emojis. (This is something better seen than described.) There are also some cool applications with augmented reality. This is the first iPhone with an OLED screen, enabling more true-to-life color. However, the iPhone X will cost you $1,000 at the least.

On the Android side, there are a lot of great options for phones at every price point. However, two phone options that are really pushing the boundaries of what can be done with Google’s smartphone platform are Samsung’s Galaxy line and the Pixel phones backed by Google. You may be able to pay for the phone on a monthly basis through your carrier.

The tablets in many cases are just like their phone counterparts with bigger screens and no calling capability. In many cases, you may be able to actually get these cheaper than a phone.

If you do mostly reading on tablet devices, you may want to take a look at the new Kindle devices. The e-ink displays mean no glare, even in bright sunlight, and they’re also easier on the eyes.

Geek Culture

It’s not strictly tech, but many people who are interested in technology are also fans of comic books, sci-fi and all kinds of other cool stuff. If you’re just looking to get someone who’s proud to think of themselves as a pop-culture geek something they’ll really enjoy, check out services like Lootcrate and My Geek Box.

You can get these at a number of price points from $15 to around $50. You can choose to get random cool items or items based around the theme you pick. It could be anything from Harry Potter to Marvel to Star Wars and even WWE. You can choose to get one or send a monthly subscription.

We’ve gone through a lot of different gift options, but we’ve included a list of our favorites below:

VIZIO 50” class 2160p 4K smart TV with HDR

Amazon Echo

Wireless speaker systems

Lootcrate

Game consoles

The post Holiday Tech Gift Guide 2017 appeared first on ZING Blog by Quicken Loans.

from Updates About Loans https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/gifts-ideas-for-the-tech-savvy-person