#its a screenshot from my tablet Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[depvotee]

Daddy is soooo back baby

[bob-artist]

I'm gonna nerd out about comic process for a second!

That screenshot was from about a month ago, when I was coloring the first two episodes of Into the Smoke chapter 2. My coloring process is a little unhinged. First, I set up palettes, do base shading, and color basic backgrounds kind of simultaneously across an entire scene. So I'm actively working on 4-6 600dpi files with 60-200 final layers at a time. I also usually have a few references open from previous episodes.

(My iMac has beefy specs, and I never have any lag or performance issues, but I'm probably still driving it into the ground, lol.)

I do this stage on a non-screen tablet because I like being able to see everything at a straight angle on a very nice screen. (Mac screens are nicer than Wacom screens.)

After that, I fire up the Cintiq and do the actual serious work of shading.

I do most character shading in ITS with Kyle's lasso fill in PS. Almost all my shading on all my pages is done with two grayscale swatches (incidentally, #c2c2c2 an #e0e0e0) with different layer effects, and I just hit x to toggle between the swatches. I'll sometimes use white or a pale color for highlights, but my shading work is much more extensive than my highlights, and the shading colors are handled with gradient maps.

Backgrounds, highlights/lighting, and most of my other projects outside ITS are painted with brushes instead of lasso-filled. In addition to organizing my brushes by category, I have brush folders for specific projects, and I organize them so I can use keyboard shortcuts to sequence through the ones I use the most.

The first two episodes of ITS chapter 2 were really difficult to color because I hadn't colored an episode in like 8 months, so I had to re-learn how to do it. My natural style is more painted, so I kept accidentally over-rendering. It really took me until episode 3 to get the hang of it again.

I'm also much more comfortable with warm color palettes and warm lighting, so the sorta grungy cool palette for the interrogation room was a challenge. I need to do more cool palette and cool lighting studies. Episode 3 is back to warm, though! :D

Anyway, here you can see the in-progress color vs the final color!

And a few warmer palette panels with more typical shading for good measure. :)

[lostworldss]

Blades 3 Crack Theory

Hear me out.

In Book 2 during one of Nia’s romance scenes, she mentions praying to Ellara, Nifara, and the Mother of Grey for MC to come back.

Now we saw the Mother of Grey/Ash Empress in Book 2, and we learned all the lore about her, Nifara, and the rest of the old gods. Nifara is likely to be the big enemy for Book 3.

But how much do we know about Ellara?

I am going to preface this by saying that I’m not good at remembering all the lore/history from the lore tablets or whichever, so please correct me if i’m wrong with any of this.

But I don’t remember learning much about Ellara specifically. With Nia’s context here, I thought to believe that Ellara was a deity. Perhaps a New God since the lore tablets spoke of all the Old Gods and she wasn’t included.

After checking Book 2 chapter 8, I verified that Ellara is in fact a New God.

This makes sense, considering that Nia prays to her and she has the Temple near Riverbend named after her that we explored.

Also, in the first chapter of the series, in the very beginning scene showing the battle against the Dreadlord thousands of years ago, we see a character named Ellara speaking with Xaius (Elven king/Other New God). Not much information is given about her in the scene, except for her seemingly being in a romantic relationship with Xaius. According the the choices wiki, she is a battle mage and Xaius second in command.

I’m not sure when exactly Ellara and Xaius became New Gods, was it before or after this battle? I’m not sure if they mentioned it before in Book 1. But either way, we can assume this character is The Ellara.

I’m really hoping Book 3 goes into the lore of the New Gods more, especially after learning about the Old Gods previously. Maybe the New Gods can assist us in fighting Nifara.

But back to the actual theory part. For a brief second, lets pivot to something else.

Who is the only character in the party whose family lineage/parents are unknown? (Kade could technically count maybe, but not him).

Who’s familial background is a complete shot in the dark?

Not MC, they have memories of their parents before the raid on their hometown. They were also given different deeper backgrounds based on their race in Book 2.

It’s Nia. She was adopted by the Church of Light as an infant, and she never knew anything about her actual family.

Now, maybe it’s just a funny coincidence, but does anyone else find it a bit interesting that her last name (Ellarious) sounds very similar to the name Ellara? Hmm.

But perhaps it’s a just simply a coincidence.

We could also assume that Ellara is a mage of light magic, since we know that she was a mage that would presumably be using light magic to counter the shadow magic of the Dreadlord. And we know this was after Nifara already separated the world into Light and Shadow realms, so the elves at this time probably didn’t know about True magic. And if Ellara is a god, she must be really good at it.

Hmm. Is there anyone else we know who’s naturally attuned to magic, maybe light magic specifically?

And just one more thing. What does Ellara look like in that screenshot? What colors is she wearing? She seemed to be dressed in a lot of white and gold, and wearing jewelry. Red hair. Hmm.

If you haven’t guessed my theory that I’m hinting at, here it is:

What if Nia Ellarious is a descendent of/related to Ellara???

And I’ll be honest I remember the name being similar thing being a thought in my mind before but I didn’t put any connection to it in my mind I was just like “oh they both kinda sound similar that’s cool.”

But let me enlighten you on on more thing. The suffix “-ious” in the english language means “having/characterized by/to have characteristics of.”

Nia’s last name literally means “to have the characteristics of Ellara.”

ITS BEEN STARING US IN THE FACE THIS ENTIRE TIME.

Also worth pointing out that when we first met Nia in book 1 chapter 1, where were Scholar Vash and her heading to? The Temple of ELLARA

Like you can’t tell me All of this is a coincidence (it probably is).

[frankiesmileshow]

Hi! I'm a new fan of your work and I'm interested in starting pixel art. I would love your advice! Could you recommend some tips for a beginner like me? Tks!

Advice for getting into pixel art:

1- Use a program meant for pixel art like Aseprite (the one I use now, about 30 USD$) or Graphicsgale (the one I used before, its free) , not a general-use image editor or a digital painting program.

You dont need a tablet to do pixel art, I only draw with a 10$ optical mouse, but if youre already used to drawing with a tablet, then go ahead; many people draw pixel art with those.

2- Start small. Think NES and the like, where there aren't many pixels or colors to work with.

Take screenshots or sprite sheets from NES games or Sega Genesis games (find these on https://www.spriters-resource.com/ ) , and edit them, or try adding things to them using the same colors already in the image.

I used to run a little weekly activity on my live stream where we took screenshots from old NES games and modified them for fun. The appeal is that it gives you a limited set of colors and a bunch of examples of how to use them, so it helps you learn to make color choices.

3- If you don't already draw by hand or digitally, start drawing. Get into the habit of sketching and drawing.

Try to do it every day if you can, even if its not a lot of time, and even if youre not very good. Maybe get a drawing pad and carry it around with you if you can, so you can doodle in it whenever you have time.

The skill you will develop drawing on paper will help you grow much faster as a pixel artist.

This is because sketching on paper is very fast, you can sketch ten different things in a few minutes with a pencil. But pixel art, when you are starting out, is very slow. This also makes it slow to learn, unfortunately. So getting into pencil drawing or digital painting will help speed things up.

I got a drawing pad in college and used to draw in the bus, two 30 minute rides every day for a few years really helped me improve.

4- Join a community of pixel artists, that can be motivating to get into art, they might have events and things that could give you prompts to draw and feedback.

5- Be careful about posture when drawing, you can mess up your arm and your back after a few years of furious clicking while leaning forward or slouching. Learn to move your whole arm from the elbow instead of moving just your wrist.

Good luck!

[gffa]

Update on how my One Piece reading is going:

It may have taken me literally a decade to get through Fishman Island, but Punk Hazard is actually going much better! I'm 3/4ths of the way through it already!

I would liken Punk Hazard to Thriller Bark in terms of enjoyableness--a cool aesthetic, some great humor moments that I've laughed out loud at, some great shippy moments for my faves, more sexism than I'd like but I can headcanon it into something more tolerable. Not the best, but legit enjoyable.

Trafalgar D Water Law is my perfect put-upon princess that I love with all my heart. Every single face he makes when he has to deal with Luffy only makes me love him more. Yeah, I have problems with Oda's writing post-time-skip, but he is REALLY making it up to me with every panel Law is in.

I had a long discussion with a friend about why Ace's death gave us both such complicated feelings, why we both respected the hell out of the decision to do it, but also were so disappointed by it that we both dropped the manga for like 10+ years after it happened.

Primarily it comes down to that it felt like all the emotional weight of it was just ignored because of the time-skip, that there wasn't even vow to get stronger to one day beat the shit out of Akainu, there wasn't even any "Ace believed I'd be the pirate king, so I'm going to keep on this path!" Just nothing of the weight of what happened. Then you combine that Sabaody's reunion not having enough emotional weight for the characters, new designs we didn't like very much (Zoro lost an eye and we never even see that major event!?!?), Sanji's sexism is near unbearable, the villains are boring and have absolutely no personal stake with the Strawhats, and it was just a recipe for killing our interest, despite that we both thought Ace's death to drive Luffy's character felt important, in that he was the only one without major loss in his past to drive him.

Other than that, Punk Hazard is a shorter arc so its pacing is fun, the body switching made me laugh (other than Sanji's... everything.... and I want to punch Smoker in the face for what he did in Tashigi's body), Doflaming is the absolute WORST and I love him, Caesar is a kinda fun villain, and I legit took like 30+ screenshots of Law's life being hell.

I also tried to switch back to the anime, but I've found that I cannot go from manga --> anime (despite originally watching up to the Alabasta arc, when that's all that was out at the time, then switching to the manga) because the anime's pacing is AWFUL. I know they have to stretch it out to not get ahead of Oda, but it becomes unbearable when you're used to the better pace of the manga.

I'm about 10 chapters away from the end, wish me luck and I'll be back to laugh-yell about my faves some more in Dressrosa, I bet.

Also, the Shueisha app (which was the easiest place to read the manga, since I can do it right on my tablet) is terrible for me because it made it soooooo easy to read 20+ chapters of Kagurabachi and I'm not sure it's good yet, but I am having fun!

[starqueensthings]

Hi pals!

I’ll still be travelling when you’re seeing this and haven’t watched the finale, so I don’t have any new content to share, but last week (maybe longer? I don’t know�� rainforest brain lol) I posted a poll asking if anyone was interested in seeing a snippet of my editing process, so here it is feat. possibly one of my favourite Wrecker moments.

I use a myriad of different software depending on: my mood, what computer/tablet I’m using, what the image looks like, and how much energy I’m willing to put into it lol In this video, I’m using Lightroom on my iPad.

The three main factors I look mostly closely at when I’m editing shots are 1. lighting, 2. noise, and 3. resolution (read: clarity).

This image required pretty minimal work so it’s probably not the best example, but ah well. The process in the above video is as follows, and please note the video had been sped up to 2x for file size reasons lol

The first thing I’ll do is see what the auto edit function defaults to. Often times it overexposes the image, resulting in significant colour noise, but it gives me a decent idea of what I should expect in terms of colour corrections and exposure mapping. The auto edit function wasn’t terrible in this case, but did produce some colour noise, mainly on Wrecker’s chest plate, his sleeves, and the officers hat. Once I’m done the initial scope out, I’ll exposure the image as high as possible to crop it— usually with the subject being as centered as possible.

This software lets the user tweak the bones of the image individually in three ways, all of them very quickly demonstrated here. The first is the curve method which I despise and NEVER use— because it alters multiple aspects at once, I don’t feel like I have the same degree of control as the other methods. Next is HDR setting (the default upon import) using the sliders on the right. This is effective for images that are already pretty well lit, and does give me a little more control, but most of the time because the screenshots are so dark, I’m editing in SDR mode.

Once I’m satisfied with the exposure/lighting, I’ll move on to correcting colour distortion and saturating the image. This software also provides three methods for colour alternation and I’ll typically use all three in conjunction with each other. Colour mixing is extremely crucial when it comes to reducing odour noise and distortion. Because this software lets me isolate certain colours to adjust their hue, saturation, and luminance, I can typically reduce most of or all of the colour noise. However, it does have its limitations. In this particular post, desaturating the colour noise in Crosshair’s rifle coincided with blanching his skin tone, because this software does not let me isolate certain areas of an image. It was also important to me to emphasize the warm tones from the sunset in the background for the overall mood of the shot, so I opted to remove what colour noise I could and leave the rest. (You can’t win em all… especially when the starting image is near-black lol)

Correcting the colour distortion in this image was not particularly difficult, desaturating all purple tones removed the noise from his chest plate, and shifting green tones to something near a yellow instead removed the noise from his sleeve. I didn’t notice the colour noise on the officers hat until a little later, but that was pretty easily corrected too.

Once I’ve fixed the colour noise, I’ll shift to toning the overall image. Wrecker particularly looks good in cool tones, but It’s nice to contrast a cool tone background with the warmth of his skin.

Once the toning is done, I’ll move on the image clarity. I don’t have the means to alter the actual resolution of the image, but I’m particularly picky with balancing texture and clarity. Wrecker always looks the best with texture and clarity increased, because it brings out the scarring on his face and further humanizes him, but overdoing the texture can also emphasize pixelation. Once that’s done, I’ll reduce the overall noise only slightly (doing too much makes them look airbrushed and unnatural), and whatever is left of the colour noise (too much of this setting makes them look like ghouls LOL)

This software also offers a series of preset alterations/filters briefly shown in this video… but I’m not the biggest fan of any of them. I’m a bit of a control freak and would rather tweak each aspect individually to the degree that I like, instead blanketing the image with present modifications and then undoing certain aspects.

Before exporting the image I’ll do another once over and make sure I’m happy! In this case, I opted to go back in and add some darker tones back into the image. I don’t do this often, particularly when they start so damn dark, but I wanted to keep the focus centrally on Wrecker’s radiance lol

That’s about it. If I’m working on multiple edits in a set, this software lets me just copy and paste the settings, so the following images only require extremely light tweaks and take almost no time. And that, I’ll export, autograph, and upload!

Thank you for attending this unprofessional Ted Talk.

[texeoghea]

I've rewatch your Narinder animatic "I don't work here" SO. MANY. TIMES. I love it.

Also, what do you use for animating?

shitty screenshot of some art as an offering

hi!! im so glad you like it!! angry nari is so cute <3

i use a free video editing software called CapCut to put together my animations. it's not actually an animating software; rather, it lets you insert images or videos on a timeline, then move them around and stretch or shorten their length. it's also what i use to edit my let's plays and speedpaints! So, i download the audio from a lyric video, put that in the timeline, line up the lyrics, then make the lyric video invisible and line up all my frames to match the timing that i want. i find this much more intuitive and easy to understand than using actual animation software (of which I have tried many), even though its probably a technically more difficult way to do it.

CapCut is available on Windows and mobile (it puts a watermark at the end of videos made on the mobile app, but you can crop that out on your phone or tablet's photo app). I don't remember if theres a Mac version. as for art, I use Clip Studio Paint, but you could use any art program that lets you export images!

i totally recommend trying to animate yourself!!!!!! it takes a long time but its so much fun and i think capcut makes it really easy

[genericpuff]

Remembering My Roots - Rest in Peace, RateMyDrawings

I've talked about my old art before on here, but never really fully in-depth about the site that hosted it. I was reminded of it today while going through my FB memories and felt like I should actually write a true eulogy towards what once was.

Once upon a time, before LORE | REKINDLED, before Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH], before I had even started drawing webcomics, I entered the world of digital art through one website - not DeviantArt, not Pixiv, but a little site called RateMyDrawings. Back in the day, it was one of the most popular browser-supported art tools, offering multiple different art tools that were, at the time, revolutionary. A flash drawing tool which could replay the progress of your drawing (but the tradeoff was that you had a limited amount of 'ink' aka recording data), a Java-supported tool that was essentially Photoshop Lite (but didn't come with the recording), and later, a more refined tool supported by HTML5 (?) that offered more 3D-like brush tools. There was also DrawChat, a live drawing flash tool where you could draw with others and chat.

And on that site, I created my first works of digital art. No drawing tablet, just a mouse and a loooot of patience. They'd host contests every now and then to win budget Wacom tablets. Sometimes I'd enter, I'd never win. I did eventually get my first drawing tablet, but by then, I'd moved on from RMD onto actual software such as GIMP and Photoshop Elements.

That site is gone now, one of the first art site deaths I'd ever experience in my teen years. I was around 12-13 when I started using this site and I adored it. When people talk about missing the 'tight-knit communities' of old, I don't think of DA, I think of RMD, my first home. Unfortunately, the site couldn't survive in the 'modern' era of the Internet, overshadowed by more advanced tools and art-sharing sites like Deviantart, Facebook, and Instagram.

But I did manage to backup some of my old art pieces before the site finally became completely shuttered in the early 2020's. For a while the site was awake but lacked any content or features, with a message from the site's creator Mick that it might come back, it might not.

It didn't. The old ratemydrawings.com URL now redirects to the inactive FB page. Any attempt to bypass that kill screen like before leads to an Error 404.

But while the site was in its comatose state - before it was shuttered permanently - I was able to access my old profile and extract some of my art pieces of old. I posted them to my FB about 3 years ago, and today they showed up in my memories.

I share a lot of art pieces from creators like Rachel Smythe in an attempt to preserve media. But I also need to remember to preserve my own. So here are a handful of the 100+ pieces I drew on RMD. Enjoy ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

Don't be confused by the '1987' part of the username, I picked that number because I was a huge Zelda weeb and 1987 was the year the first Zelda game was made. Whoof.

What's ironic is I actually didn't have the Featured Artist award last time I was actively on the site, so it clearly happened while I was inactive in its final days. The one award I wanted the most and I wasn't there to witness getting it. RIP.

Unfortunately that's all I really have in the way of high-resolution drawings as I wasn't able to preserve much else (though if I find anything more I'll definitely add it to this post!) That said, I was able to nab some screenshots of my homepage via the Wayback Machine where you can see more of the pieces I did back then:

There are so many dorky ass drawings here, some from Time Gate (because it's that freaking old!!!), some are screenshot recreations from anime that I enjoyed (a very common trend on RMD), some are collaborations. There was a point where I learned how to color with the mouse by using low opacity colors and layering them one at a time. Really upped my game there LMAO That Ocarina of Time Link drawing was the first one I ever did that made it to the front page of RMD and y'all, I was so proud, the site back then I think had 50k users total which is nothing compared to the Internet today, but achieving that was one of the greatest things ever LOL The Skyward Sword drawing that followed was one that really felt like a milestone in terms of my art evolution, I felt like I was finally creating something good. I believe I did that Skyward Sword drawing off another DA piece at the time, it was really common to do redraw challenges on RMD what with the technical limitations of the site - I suppose redrawing stuff I liked back then should have been foreshadowing LMAO

That feeling wouldn't last forever ofc once the art high wore off, but even to this day I look back on the pieces from that era fondly. It's where the mysteries of digital art finally started to 'click' in my brain, and I had still barely gotten started.

I also have a few drawings preserved that were done after I got my first drawing tablet, and you can really tell with the improvement of the lineart LOL That said, I think I was around 18-19 when I did these:

Now, one thing that I really enjoyed doing on RMD were collabs - specifically, trading collabs where users would exchange drawing files through the RMD PM system with one another to do steps of a drawing together. Often times I took the role of coloring other people's lineart pieces, which is probably where I started to really learn digital art coloring and come into my own with it.

A collab with user "lime":

Collab with user "Mikai":

A collab with user "Overik", which I specifically remember struggling with because, at the time, my computer monitor's screen was messed up resulting in the entire thing basically being a fluorescent pink:

A collab with "Mist04" that I don't remember doing lmao:

Collab with "Adzumi" (?). I'm fairly certain that's who it was, I definitely remember the process of painting this one, I had loads of fun with it:

Collab with user "ForgottenArtist", IIRC this one was more of a coloring page where they gave out the file freely for others to color, so this was my version. The forums on RMD were great for that sort of thing, people would literally just upload their drawing files for people to have fun with:

So I guess I drew this next little thing in 2021 when the site was still 'live' but not functional, I completely forgot I did this though LMAO Basically the main URL took you to that kill page I showed above, but if you knew any of the extension slugs, you could bypass that kill page and get into the rest of the site, which I was able to by using my username URL. So I got into the Java drawing tool and made this little thing in the hopes I could upload it. Of course, it didn't work, but hey, it was worth getting a screenshot, I suppose:

It's equal parts nostalgic and bittersweet to go through these drawings. Life back then feels so far away and yet I still remember it so vividly, the hours I'd spend drawing on the family PC, feeling more at home with the friends I made online than the ones I had in real life, listening to music that I still listen to to this day. It's far away now, but it still lives through me, in the work I do today. Even someone like me can go from being a complete noob drawing with a mouse to a professional making their living stabbing ink into other people while still drawing the same stories they drew as a child.

There is one piece I had to dig up outside of FB memories, fortunately it wasn't hard to find because I knew I had shared it ages ago on my FB so the search bar saved my skin. My very first digital art piece, of Sheena Fujibayashi from Tales of Symphonia, one of my favorite games of all time.

My very first digital art drawing:

Recreated in 2019:

Past me went through a lot, and they'd be doomed to go through even more still (they hadn't hit the plague yet). And yet they're going to survive, they're gonna keep getting better and better with each passing year. Thanks past me - you've done a lot of dumb shit in your life, but sticking with your craft wasn't one of them. Thank you for walking - through all the good and the bad that you've had to weather through - so that I could run for us both.

[naupactus]

4 28 31!!! :3

4 mine. jk. we are truly the most underrated band because we are dissolving slowly like a broth. but the actual underrated (in my circle?) band that is my favorite i would say 9mm parabellum bullet ive seen no one listen to them even thiugh i know theyre kot exactly underground because they made some anime opening but i really thknk its so cool . probably dont see anything about yhem vecause the japanese rock industry is so oversaturated the only thing that reaches western audiences is vkei adjacent and these r just some guys. also there's england but i dont know if theyre underrated or just horribly horribly short lived

28 EVERYTHUNV THESE DAYS!!!!!!!!!! serious serious been smiling so much i get tired from smiling and laughing at everything. but mainly seeing people i love be happy and this includes me because i will realize im happy about something and smile about it because uts so nice ^^ i am living my silliest time!!!!!! maybe it will be even sillier!!!!!!!

31 when i was smaller i had a pokemon phase right at the time where i got my hands on Internet Tablet, and now my phone for some reason has every everysingle pic from that tablet inside it so actually half or more of my photo gallery is screenshots of cool pokemon and other such creatures art i gound on google. there are like 30000 photos in this gallery

[vikenticomeshome]

Cyberworld QBorgs (part 3) - Zeta Quest 3D

Here's another post about Cyberworld QBorgs. The QBorg "Zeta Quest 3D" was based on the cartoon "The Zeta Project" from the 2000s. Unfortunately, much of the content from this QBorg is currently lost. I believe I have assembled just about everything that could be retrieved from the Internet Archive. While it is possible to walk around in the known levels, it is currently not possible to interact with the characters or get much of the story. Maybe someday a former Cyberworld employee will come forward with assets.

Here's the page where they explain the premise and ask you to download the Cyberworld browser. I will transcribe the text.

Begin

The Zeta Project Presents Zeta Quest 3D.

Become Zeta, and continue the search for Dr. Selig in this revolutionary 3D game.

If you have not already downloaded the Cyberworld browser you will need to do so, but trust us; it's worth it!

End

I like that we get a small screenshot of the game world which shows what the right-side panel is supposed to look like. Even after gathering all of the files that could be archived, much of the right-side panel is missing.

Since we're here, we may as well see the system requirements.

Begin

The Cyberworld browser is for PC users only.

System Requirements: Windows 95 or 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 (or greater), Windows 200 Professional/Server

Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (or above); compatible with Netscape Communicator 4 (or above)

VGA with 256 colors or greater

Pentium 90 MHz (133 MHz recommended)

16 MB RAM (32 MB recommended)

End

I think I can handle that.

Our first borg is the intro. It is just a flash animation that discusses the premise in more detail. I will transcribe this as well.

Begin Narration Bucky has intercepted a transmission from Dr. Selig, Zeta's creator, who is working on a new Infiltration Unit at a top secret lab deep in the mountains of New Mexico. By triangulating the Satellite signals carrying the transmission, Bucky has pinned down the location of the lab. This may be Zeta's best chance to find Dr. Selig.

Playing the role of Zeta, you must find Dr. Selig, and keep from being captured by security forces at the lab.

We are then dropped off in a forest, presumably near the lab that we need to inflitrate.

If we move forward, we can find Ro, one of Zeta's allies in the show. She has a phone for us to take.

She's also supposed to have some dialogue here, but that is lost.

We can walk down the single path until we reach an ominous looking building. I believe this is the hidden science lab. However, we cannot just walk in there. Zeta is an infiltration robot on the show, and I think he has disguises in this game. However, with most of the buttons missing their images, I can't figure out how to put on the disguise. I'm guessing the correct disguise is "Lab Tech", which is the top right item.

However, it looks like, if I was able to put on a disguise, I would move onto a borg called "guard" next. So, let's skip ahead.

I think I can make out my character's face on the Wanted poster.

Shhh.. the guard is sleeping.

You can steal that tablet computer off his desk. I also found some power cells down the hall.

The white void awaits at the end of the hall.

It's supposed to lead to the "office" borg, but its broken. Let's skip ahead to that borg anyway.

Someone painted an entire desk, chair, and computer on the wall, which is odd.

We can find some office workers.

I found this area in the office map, which looks out of place. It has a white void, but it didn't seem to take me anywhere.

So, I tried another white void that looked more like it belonged.

I think I put on a scientist disguise, though its hard to say when the disguise menu doesn't have labels. Anyway, that second white void took me to "IU 8 Lab A".

I found a new friend. He is called weldbot. He doesn't speak, move, or do anything, so he may not be alive.

And then, I found another white void with no real way to continue. There are no other maps (called borgs) known to exist.

So, what did I think of that? I have never seen "The Zeta Project", so I can't speak for the accuracy or any creative liberties here. Unfortunately, so much of the game content is currently lost that it would be unfair for me to form much of an opinion on it. Here's hoping that we get another situation like when Eddie Ruminski came forward with the assets for those other Cyberworld QBorg games.

Anyway, I should probably watch the show at some point. I like the concept of a an assassin robot growing a conscience, rebelling against his agency, and trying to track down his original creator.

[rjalker]

You can also download the demo for Wolf Quest 2.7 (The old game from before 2010) for free here on the Wolf Quest itch.io page.

"https://eduweb.itch.io/wolfquest"

Scroll all the way to the very bottom of the page and you'll see this:

[ID: A cropped screenshot that shows a page with a dark brown background, orange buttons, and white text, that reads:

"Download: Free Trial (Windows) WolfQuest 2.7 (Old vers...", which is 235 MB.

Download: Free Trial (Mac) WolfQuest 2.7 (Old version)", which is 319 MB.

Download: WolfQuest Wallpaper (Wolf dreams images fro...", which is 116 MB.

End ID.]

This is the old demo for the original Wolf Quest game, which came out in 2007. It lets you play the first Quest on the first map, Amethyst Mountain. You have to learn how to hunt, then find a mate. You can then run around with your mate continuing to hunt and leveling up.

The new game will not be using the same "Level" based style of gaming but will instead be an actual open world game where you can do any quest on any map and the game will transition much more smoothly between the stages of life rather than continuing the old fashioned idea of levels being tied to goals being tied to maps.

The old game is definitely still fun to play on its own, and especially with the free demo there's no reason not to try it lol.

They also have the old game available for mobile, but I'm not sure where to find the demo for that, you might just have to check your phone/tablet's app store?

Wolf Quest Anniversary Edition, the overhauled brand new modern version of the game does not have a free trial, because the maps are more than twice as big as in the old game, so even just Amethyst Mountain all by itself is a game in and of itself. It only costs $20 though, and you can see lots of gameplay videos on youtube if you want to see what it looks like before you buy it.

And when you buy Wolf Quest AE, you also get the full version of the old game included for free, which means you get to go to the Slough Creek and Lost River maps. In Slough Creek you get to raise pups until the middle of summer when the game ends, because that's where the "Level" ended.

You can watch this video to get an overview of the history of this game:

And since this video's from 4 years ago, here's one of my recent screenshots:

[ID: A screenshot from the game Wolf Quest 3 in photo mode, showing a cow elk in the middle of running, turning on one hoof sideways to the camera, while the rest of the herd stampedes away in the background. End ID.]

[katapotato55]

a mature and intellectual discussion on art tablet screens

ahem. ...

WHY IN THE FUCK DOES NO ONE TALK ABOUT THE AWFUL RAINBOW GRAIN THAT MATTE FILTER CAUSES

WHY IT LOOKS AWFUL AND ITS HARD TO TELL WHAT MY GRADIENTS LOOK LIKE BECAUSE I HAVE TO LOOK PAST THOUSANDS OF LITTLE GRAINS OF RAINBOW. "but it stops light from causing glare onto your tablet screen!" THE TABLET IN QUESTION REQUIRES 3 DIFFERENT CABLES AND A SEPARATE COMPUTER TO WORK WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU DRAWING THAT HAS SO MUCH DAMN LIGHT???? WHO DRAWS IN A BRIGHTLY LIT ROOM ANYWAYS??? I thought it was NORMAL to be a filthy house gremlin drawing in the oubliette I call a home, am i seriously alone on this??

I added a noise filter to this screenshot to best describe what it looks like on my end and SURE it doesn't look the worst, but you gotta zoom in on shit and its hard to draw things when it feels like the rainbow grain is giving you eyeball cancer Why ? ? ? why does no one talk about this awful rainbow grain? ?? on that note anyone know if the XP pen 16 Pro(gen 2) has this awful noise (and if it does it is as bad as huion's kamvas 13)? I want to upgrade but i don't want to play Russian roulette with shipping. help would be appreciated hope you enjoyed listening to me complain.

[alexseanchai]

I'm looking for sources bc this image was edited (I see no timestamps), and I am baffled.

The tweet handles above are elonmusk (of course) and esjesjesj; here's a tweet from the latter, containing a screenshot with the exact text as in the image above, except that the second tweet is by "punished evan loves worf", eeesssjjj—both bios say one is the other's alt account—and the tweet is from eleven seconds before taking the screenshot:

So, technically the image up top misattributes the second tweet, but in the same way it's technically misattribution to say the In Death series is by Nora Roberts. (JD Robb and Nora Roberts write in different genres, you see, and sometimes she cowrites with herself.) Not that important, probably.

But. Figured it couldn't hurt to check if the original tweet could be found. And. Uh. Here's two tweets of the four-tweet thread; the second quote-tweets the first, which has an embedded news clip I would appreciate someone finding or making a transcript of, thus the URLs in the automatic alt text:

And here's three screenshots of the full thread; image 1 is viewing the Replies tab of eeesssjjj's profile, with the Musk tweet visible and the censored tweet showing only the "Visibility limited" banner; image 2 is viewing the censored tweet itself, which now shows its contents, but the Musk tweet is now hidden behind the "user you blocked" banner; my tablet decided to close X-Twitter in between me pasting those in and me going back for the tweet link, so image 3 is what happened when I tried to grab the esj link:

Why can't you share this?

We try to keep X a place for healthy conversation, so we've disabled most of the ways to engage with this Post.

*cracks up laughing in social model of disability and a strong wish to whack many people over the head with hardcover books about Aktion T4*

And the Musk tweet is gone from image 3 altogether, so I can't just click through to get that link. I won't say I wouldn't unblock Elon Musk for love or money, but I can't search his tweets while I have him blocked, and I would have to get paid handsomely in order to scroll through twelve days of his tweets. So while both these tweets do exist, I have only the screenshots to prove it.

Isn't that fascinating.

(Still baffled about why the image up top is edited, though.)

[ifixersblog]

5 Tips to Stop Your iPad from Shutting Down Randomly

The Apple iPad may be one of the best tablets in the world, but that doesn’t mean its okay. Rather, one of the most common problems iPad users are struggling with is that the tablet shuts down automatically. This can be one of the most frustrating things, especially when doing really interesting or important things on the iPad.

However, if your iPad shutdown unexpectedly and you don’t know the cause of the problem, try these 5 professional tips to prevent your iPad from shutting down randomly.

Why does my iPad keep shutting down?

There are several possible reasons why your iPad may shut down randomly. For example, the problem may be due to a software bug, memory overflow, or battery drain. Therefore, we provide a viable solution to address each aspect and solve the problem accordingly.

1. Hard Restart iPad

A hard reset may be required if the iPad powers off randomly while charging or playing games. A hard reset is useful if your computer shuts down automatically, or if the battery is draining rapidly due to malicious processes or cellular radiation. Also, there is no adverse effect after a hard reboot. It’s so easy that you can do it yourself by following the guide below.

iPad with Home button: Please hold the Home button and Power button till the Apple logo shows itself.

Other iPad models: Please press and then release the Volume Up button and Volume Down button respectively and fast. Then press the Top button till the Apple logo shows itself.

2. Update Your iPad

Outdated iPadOS will cause many problems. It is not strange that it makes your iPad turn on and off. Therefore, updating the iPad to the latest version of iOS can resolve the “iPad turns off automatically” issue. And you can easily find out the solution if yours is caused by this reason.

Step 1. Head to the Settings app.

Step 2. Choose the General option.

Step 3. Choose the Software Update button.

Step 4. Tap the Download & Install option.

3. Recharge

The problem might also be due to the improper functioning of the battery and related software that could be preventing the iPad from running smoothly. The best way to rule out such a scenario is to drain the battery completely. After it has lost all its charge, here is what you need to do.

Plug the iPad to the mains. Remember to always use an original Apple charger.

See if the device is charging normally. Let it charge completely in one go.

However, if the iPad does not seem to be charging as it should be, there might be some issues with the charging cable or the mains.

Or if you are charging via a USB port on a PC, try a different slot.

Once it has acquired full charge, disconnect and check if it is still restarting automatically.

If the issue persists, you can try the solutions given below.

4. Declutter Your iPad

If your iPad still keeps turning off, declutter the storage. If you haven’t cleaned up the storage for a while, there is a good chance that it would be cluttered. The huge pileup of unnecessary files, app cache, redundant screenshots, and useless videos may have hogged up a ton of storage space. Not just that, even the useless apps may be creating problems and causing the iPad to shut down frequently.

To resolve the issue, navigate to the Settings app on your iPad > General > iPad Storage. Now, iPadOS will show you a breakdown of how the storage has been consumed by each category, like photos, apps, media, and messages. Once you get a clear picture of the storage consumption, remove all the unnecessary files to retrieve plenty of precious space. With uncluttered storage, the iPad might finally get the better of the unexpected rebooting issue.

5. Factory Restore

If everything else fails, it is time to restore your iPad. However, make sure you have taken a backup of your device before factory restoring it to minimize the chances of data loss.

Connect your iPad to the PC or Mac. As before, make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed on the PC or Mac (macOS Mojave or earlier). On Mac with macOS Catalina or later, make sure that the latest version of the macOS is running.

Go to iTunes/Finder and select your device.

Click on the Restore iPad option.

Follow on-screen instructions that appear.

When the process is complete, your iPad will be almost as good as new and will ensure there are no software or data corruption issues.

Remember to check if the iPad is functioning properly or if it is still shutting down on its own.

Contact the Pros

If none of the above tricks help fix the random reboot issue on your iPad, it’s likely that the issue is hardware related. And in this scenario, you need to consult an iPad expert as soon as possible.

With several years of expertise under our belt and backed by an experienced team of supertechies, iFixers is a well-known Apple device repair centre. So, contact us to help you fix your iPad perfectly, professionally and affordably.

by ifixers - Apple service center in Bangalore

[brainbuffering]

12 Days of Manga 2022

Day 8: Top 3 Seinen 

1) Hiraeth - The End of the Journey by Yuhki Kamatani from Kodansha (T: Leah Surgent L: Salud Campos Blasco E: Jesika Brooks)

[ID: English Volume 1 of Hiraeth - The End of The Journey by Yuhki Kamatani. A girl with short brown hair smiles brightly at the viewer. She has a flower crown of morning glories and wisteria (?) in her hair. The montage is also made up of japanese mountains, a 1930s Motorbike with a sidecar, a Shrine Gate, cranes and two other smaller figures: a man in black leather and sunglasses back to back with a person in long white godly robes and long white hair]

“After the death of her best friend, Mika is determined to follow her into the grave. But her suicide attempt introduces her to a world unlike any she's ever seen...full of gods and spirits and entities of which she could never have dreamed. But even with this world of wonder, can she find a way out of her sorrow?”

Yuhki Kamatani has got to be one of the most talented mangaka working in the industry. Their artwork is absolutley stunning, each panel a work of art in its own right, each line necessary to the telling of the story. I was waiting for Kodansha to release the series from Digital Jail before buying it, because I wanted to physically own it as a piece of arwork but alas... digital it remains.

But that does at least mean I can have pages and pages of screenshots saved to my tablet!

The series is a wonderful combination of dark, heartfelt, and hopeful. It’s a journey of three people facing the notion of mortality and what a death wish really is; from the perspective of a god who has accepted that their long time on earth is finally done and is happy for one final jaunt around Japan, an immortal who sees the curse of living forever as painful as the curse of inevitable death, and a suicidal teenager who longs to see her deceased friend once again.

I’m really eager to see how the series ends, and i’m rooting for Mika to finally choose life at the end of all this. It’s difficult as a teenager to be so suddenly faced with the concept of mortality, and seeing Mika tackle that from a suicidal perspective is incredibly moving. Seeing the philosophical elements laid out so beautifully and casually makes for a really fascinating read too, that makes you yourself think of how to aproach the notion of life and death.

Two volumes in, and Kamatani’s perspective is about as clear as you’d expect: Life is complicated, and death even more so. A long life is a good thing that should be saught after, but not at the cost of everything else in it. Kamatani looks at the importance of the connections we make with others, and how people cannot truly be gone as long as we remember them. Perhaps that’s a little cliche, but given how we’re still all in a stage of global grief in the middle of an ongoing pandemic, it’s an important thing to remember.

And as a final reminder, hey, Kodansha! If you ever want to release these books as physical editions I am more than willing to double dip for them!!!

2) Yakuza Fiance: Raise wa Tanin ga Ii by Asuka Konishi from SevenSeas  (T: M. Fulcrum A: Sopha Tyrant L: Arbash Mughal E: Abb Lehrke)

[ID: A Japanese high school girl with purple hair and red striking eyes looks over the shoulder of a boy hugging her. She is tugging his shirt down to reveal a large tiger back tattoo. There are red flowers (possibly camillas?) floating around them on a white background.]

“Too Much Love Will Kill You

Yoshino grew up the sheltered yakuza princess of the largest crime family in Osaka, the Somei. Due to her resting bitch face and dangerous family, no man has ever approached her. When her grandfather signs a truce with the Tokyo-based Miyama crime family, he offers her up as a truce bride to the Miyama leader's grandson! Kirishima Miyama is popular, charming, and seems totally normal. But behind his smile is a violent sadomasochist who thirsts for her dominance even more when she impresses him with her moxie! Even though she knows how bad yakuza can be, she's stunned by Miyama's viciousness. She can't turn him down with the East-West peace treaty on the line...so instead she steels herself to play ball!”                                    

Move out of the way Nisekoi, let’s see some yakuza teens in an aranged marriage get absolutely wrecked by the criminal underworld they grew up in!

High Schoolers they might be, but this is no sweetheart romance and I’m really digging it! The art work is really strong, especially the coloured inserts. It’s a very promising first volume and I definetly want to see what fucked up mess this all leads to! There’s far too much happy Yakuza romance going around, let’s see what happens if we actually explore the notion of organised crime. 

Now, how does that meme go? “He is definitely a red flag but red’s my favourite colour so what it do baby?” Kirishima’s is definetly not someone I would ever want to be in a relationship with, but boy howdy does he look good covered in someone else’s blood! And Yoshino looks even more beautiful when holding a knife to his throat and threatening to ruin his life if he steps out of line. There are a lot of unhealthy boxes being ticked by this series, so it’s definetly not one for those seeking out wholesome happiness. But not everything has to be “A Sign of Affection” you know!

I’m also facinated by the localisation choices being made in the official translation. Yoshino’s family speaks with an Osakan Dialect, which is usually translated into English media as a Southern American Dialect. However in Yakuza’s Fiance they have opted for a Northern British/Irish Dialect which feels quite refreshing! Why does english localisation always have to be so American? English Localisations are read all over the world, and whilst back in the 00s Australia and New Zealand would sometimes have seperate translations to North America (e.g. Fruits Baskets), that is no longer the case! At times the characterisation can feel a little disjointed with a lack of consitency between phrasing, and I wonder if this is the result of having a seperate translator and adaptor on the series?

If anybody happens to know if Fulcrum and/or Tyrant are on twitter please let me know, I would love to ask them my (polite and engaged) questions!

3) Delicious In Dungeon by Ryoko Kui from Yen Press (T: Taylor Engel L: Abigail Blackman)

[ID: English Cover for Delicious in Dungeon Vol 1. A human man in a full suit of metal armour holds a frying pan in one hand and a spatula in the other. Behind him, a dwarf with a big black beard, a halfling, and an elf in blue robes cook a giant mushroom on a spit roast. They are in a castle dungeon corridor, a red dragon looks in from the doorway behind them.]

“When young adventurer Laios and his company are attacked and soundly thrashed by a dragon deep in a dungeon, the party loses all its money and provisions...and a member! They're eager to go back and save her, but there is just one problem: If they set out with no food or coin to speak of, they're sure to starve on the way! But Laios comes up with a brilliant idea: ""Let's eat the monsters!"" Slimes, basilisks, and even dragons...none are safe from the appetites of these dungeon-crawling gourmands!”       

The most disapointing thing about this manga is that I cannot eat the food they prepare. Seriously, I know that the recipies for living armour are based upon regular crustacians, but that doesn’t mean they ARE crustacians! What does bug jewlery taste like? Does slime taste like bubblegum flavouring? Because it looks like it should...

As a DnD player, I really enjoyed all the references to role playing, especially the chapter with the mimics. Fucking mimics. I’m still angry about the door mimic my DM put me up against and I kept rolling like shit against.

Whilst the focus of the manga is obviously the humour, I’m really enjoying the developing relationships between the characters, and so far all the emotional beats have hit perfectly.

I’ve only read two volumes so far, and I’m not in any desperate rush to read the rest of th series, but I’m definetly going to be keeping my eye out for more in whatever inevitable coin boosts/sales happen so as they happen!

[levymcgarden55]

[id: 4 images.

1: a photograph of a marble sarcophagus carving chiefly featuring a man reaching out and tenderly holding the face of a dog.

2: a screenshot of a tumblr post. It has a cut off image of an ancient tablet. “The inscription reads:

(Italics) "His owner buried the dog Parthenope, that he played with, in gratitude for this happiness. [Mutual] love is rewarding, like the one for this dog. Having been a friend to my owner, I deserve this grave. Looking at this, find yourself a worthy friend who is both ready to love you while you are still alive and will care for your body [after your death].” (End italics)

On so many of the other funerary carvings, the text was often more about the person who commissioned the carving than the person the carving was commissioned for. This one, which is for a dog, doesn't even identify his owner—it's entirely about a very, very good boy named Parthenope, who was loved so much that he will be remembered forever.”

3: screenshots of a news article.

“Someone gave that prehistoric dog a bone...

The remains of three Paleolithic dogs, including one with a mammoth bone in its mouth, have been unearthed at Predmosti in the Czech Republic, according to a new Journal of Archaeological Science paper.”

(A photograph of a rock)

4: a screenshot of a tumblr post, quoting the article: “The remains of three Paleolithic dogs, including one with a mammoth bone in its mouth, have been unearthed at Predmosti in the Czech Republic, according to a new Journal of Archaeological Science paper.

The remains indicate what life was like for these prehistoric dogs in this region, and how humans viewed canines. The dogs appear to have often sunk their teeth into meaty mammoth bones. These weren't just mammoth in terms of size, but came from actual mammoths.

(Bolded) In the case of the dog found with the bone in its mouth, the researchers believe a human inserted it there after death." (End bold)

Do you guys even know what this means... It means that someone cared enough about this dog, and knew it's love for mammoth bones, that upon the dogs death, the human placed a bone in the canines mouth because they wanted it to take the bone with them in the afterlife. I love knowing that humans have always been like this because I've been burying stuffed animals with my passed pets since I was a kid” /end ID]

I can’t stop getting emotional about how tenderly a shepherd caresses his dog’s face on this marble sarcophagus from the third century

The dog’s face is just so lovingly crafted and it’s much more finely detailed than some of the other animals in the piece. The expression is pure contentment and devotion. This scene is a tiny portion of a huge elaborate sculpture but I really feel like the artist was trying to capture a specific emotion with these two. The way that you feel when you look at your dog is thousands of years old.