#like how your image is used in production and editing and stuff

[aquarri]

.

[monkey-wrench-series]

One month on; The future of Monkey wrench as a fully animated indie series.

It’s been exactly one month since Ep 3 of Monkey was released to the public, and as the ever want to be as transparent as possible with indie production it’s time we sat down and had a very important discussion on the future of the series…

So, as we said above, one month has passed from the public release of episode 3, and everything hinges on how well it does.

Below are the metrics for it on Youtube;

Our hope was to have ep 3 hit 500k in two weeks. After 31 days we’re still under 470k views, ad rev as you can see is pitiful and engagement has evaporated. Maybe we set our hopes a little too high?

It’s not all doom and gloom though, this is the first ep to get this many views in this amount of time. Our patreon support has grown by 1/3 after the ep came out and our Scratch & Scritch plushies did ok, see images below;

So as of now, we have enough money for voices, sound and music for episode 4. Voice recording begins next week and I hope to start the animatic for the ep sometime after.

As for the animation portion of production… things are looking a little tricky.

As you should know, animation, especially frame by frame stuff like we do, it’s obscenely time intensive and expensive. For ep 3 we had a rough animation rate of $20.83 per 1 second of animation and the same for clean up with very minimal edits and redos.

Seeing the recent animation pay discourse has honestly shaken us up pretty bad, we had no idea how pitiful our pay had been compared to other indies and we in no way want to exploit anyone for their work on the series.

With both Ash and I putting everything we had saved in Eps 1, 2 and 3 and seeing how below average they’ve all performed and with how little we can afford to pay our animators, on top of burning myself out horrifically doing 3 eps in a row, we’ve sadly had to come to the conclusion that full animation for this series is no longer financially possible at our current support level.

That does not mean we’re stopping production, however.

There are two possible routes we can take;

Route 1; Animatic hybrid.

Over the past week and a half I managed to solo out 5 minutes and 15 seconds of animatic keyframe animation for our recently released outtakes video.

At our current support level I can do the animatic keyframe route for most of the mundane stuff in an ep, and then go into full animation for the ‘good bits’, that way we can pay our animators an actual decent wage. Over time if our support grows we can return to full animation.

Route 2: Kickstart ep 4 for $100k

We have thought about doing a kickstarter type thing to get the $100,000 we’d need for the animation portion of the ep. We want to pay our animators properly for their time and skill and this would be the best route to go if we want to have ep 4 fully animated.

However with our current viewership and engagement with eps 1, 2 and 3 I’m not sure we could hit a goal of $100,000 in the 30 days we need.

Is it a risk worth taking?

What would we do for rewards?

Physical rewards would take money away from animation production and things like animated rewards would take time away from myself working on the ep.

That’s pretty much where my mind has been at the past few days. I’d love to hear your input and thoughts on how you would like us to proceed.

[moonshynecybin]

what would you consider essential marc and rosquez watching? i don’t mean races but the stuff happening around it, there seems to be so much and idk where to start 😭

BIG ass question. i think it depends what you want outta this and how you best interact with content slash consume information. for me (not to brag but. winner of multiple historical essay writing competitions in high school. for context on the kind of freak i am bringing to the table here.) the research is kind of the fun part ! like i just started googling shit! i would go to inactive blogs and just search 'marquez' on them to see what would happen ! a lot of the times that works ! but it also takes a lotttt of time lol so i'll chuck some good resources your way, why not...

okay im not sure how basic we're talkin here but um. background. so the documentaries are, i think. the best place to start. theyre entertaining and offer a good amalgamation of clips to provide context for the actual racing. and like i know you de-emphasized racing (which is fine lol who cares) but it really is like the most important thing in the world to these fools and its a pretty visual sport so i think its at least helpful. like yes sepang IS about the press conference, but its also about the conversation they have ON the race track using their motorcycles. which is also somewhat a conversation that they HAVE been having all year long...

i'd start with hitting the apex (2013), its a GREAT introduction to the "characters" that does a lot of legwork to contextualize everything. lays the scene for where vale is at coming into his relationship with marc (both personally, wrt to marco simoncelli, and career-wise concerning his flop at ducati), and also how insane marc's whole deal is in general. the second half is. materially a study on what him entering the premiere class did to the sport as a whole. the introductory chapter in many respects

marc marquez: all in. MY introduction and blissfully free online. marc comma in his own words, with all the implications of that. a self-produced documentary where he is giving feedback about the edit of said documentary straight to camera and no less vulnerable because of it which is very marc imo. revealing both intentionally AND unintentionally about his whole deal with injury, vale, and his image.

motogp unlimited. im gonna be real kind of boring. like i would still watch it ! but do it kind of later, once you know the major players so youre automatically more invested. it doesnt really give you more than marc says himself in all in tbh, and i get the sense him and vale were NAWWWT interested in doing more than the bare minimum for it.

marc's rookie doc. free and subtitled on the youtubes. the first half of this is deadass just him wanting to fuck vale so bad while every comment from vale has me saying GIRL. out loud because the foreshadowing would be genuinely shocking if this was fiction. anyways the laguna seca of it all....

next i would hit up PODCASTS ! i think it makes sense after the documentaries, because these are all podcasts that arent strictly about rosquez (even if they are in many ways the main characters lmao) and personally it helps to put faces to lesser known names that might pop up before i listen to a purely audio product and get lost in the soup of sounds. the paddock pass podcast has two retrospective episodes about the 2015 season that are really good at context, oxley bom pod has a fun recent episode on valentino that i love, again just poke around a lil

videos. these guys have never filmed a lot of content together tragically. what i wouldnt give for someone to make them do an escape room. anyways ranch visit HERE (post explaining the ranch visit here). sepang presscon (sowwy) here. vale unhinged podcast interview the month after marc's documentary came out here. vale retirement interview where he gets asked about marc here. vale talking about asking marc to the ranch here. vale postrace at argentina 2018 here. UCCIO postrace at argentina 2018 here. theres a lot moreeeee just go on my blog archive and filter for rosquez and vids its easier lol

journalism. hello. okay so you should genuinely spend some time reading through mat oxley's stuff he can write (theres a paywall but you can run that shit through wayback machine). he also loves an insane comparison which i do enjoy.... again this is one that can be solved by googling his name and tacking on 'marquez' or 'rossi' or a specific time period or race it will probably reap some dividends. in terms of specific ass articles this one is kind of load bearing in terms of sepang and some of the interpersonal competitive tensions at play. that being said there are manyyyyyy crazy interviews and snippents of articles from other journos floating around motogp tumblr (like literally too many to link) adn its fun to dig around to find them, but mat oxley gets a shoutout because i was reading this article TODAY !

other content. honestly one of the best resources I'VE found for plotting out the arc of their relationship is @kingofthering's everyrosquezpodium series. you can REALLY see it play out lol. also her tagging system rules she very neatly lays out years and races... so if something jumps out at you, CLICK ITTTT ! also all of @ricciardoes fave presscon moments series. insane.

all this to say a small little rpf fandom like this rewards some digging! i would just recommend following narrative threads that interest you ! its also a small fanbase that is pretty research oriented, so if youre ever confused about somethin, just shoot an ask or run a search on someone's blog (@kwisatzworld has endless vale resources and @batsplat is one of the most thorough researchers ive ever seen, for example) like for real theres so much... i also have a primer that i made forever ago that has some links on it so you can peruse that if you so wish. but frankly a lot of it is just using those research muscles and being sufficiently deranged enough to be screenshotting reddit threads at one am so you can post them to tumblr because they mentioned marc and vale in the same sentence and that lit up some of the neurons in your brain

(and i know you said outside of races but i think theyre good benchmarks as turning points soooo you should do some diggin on laguna seca 2013, jerez 2015, argentina 2015, ASSEN 2015, sepang 2015 obvi, argentina 2018, and misano 2019. those are the big tentpoles of insane rosquez relationship drama imo. i mean theres many more but. im limiting myself.)

[pea-brain]

example donation link

if you are an artist or something and want to offer the same commissions, please feel free to take any of these images and use them yourself (edit however you want, remove my art, obviously), the text is free to use.

*in the unlikely event i receive a ton of these, i might have to close them. will let you know. reblogs will be turned off if i close commissions

extra information below v

thank you so much for reading! i used all caps for ease of read, it comes across super agro lol sorry <3 i will be nice in person

also, small note, i dont consider mobility aids (including wheelchairs) to be props, those are free to add.

any further questions DM away!

TEXT IN FIRST MAJOR IMAGES BELOW

------------------------------------

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

FIRST: AGREE UPON AMOUNT IN APPROPRIATE CURRENCY (SEE "QUESTIONS")

SECOND: WE AGREE UPON ONE OR (IF THE COMMISSION IS OVER $40) MORE GOFUNDME'S TO SEND IT TO TO SEND THE AMOUNT TO

OPTION 1: PAYPAL

SEND ME THE AMOUNT AGREED UPON VIA PAYPAL

I WILL IMMEDIATELY SEND THIS AMOUNT TO THE GOFUNDME OR GOFUNDME'S WE AGREED UPON

I WILL SEND YOU PROOF OF DONATION (SCREENSHOTS, FORWARDED EMAILS, WHATEVER YOU NEED).

(THIS IS MY PREFERRED BECAUSE I CAN BE 100% SURE THE MONEY IS SENT)

OPTION 2: STRAIGHT TO THEM

CREATE AN ACCOUNT WITH 'GOFUNDME' AND ALLOW THEM TO SEND YOU AN EMAIL TO SEND YOU A DONATION RECEIPT

SEND THE MONEY STRAIGHT TO THE AGREED UPON GOFUNDME/S

SHOW ME PROOF (SCREENSHOTS AND FORWARD THE EMAIL CONTAINING THE RECEIPT TO ME)

IF YOU CANNOT FORWARD THE ACTUAL EMAIL TO ME, I WILL NOT ACCEPT YOUR COMMISSION.

THIS HAS TO BE A NEW DONATION THAT WE MAKE TOGETHER (PEOPLE NEED MORE MONEY RIGHT NOW, I WILL NOT BE ACCEPTING COMMISSIONS BASED ON OLD DONATIONS.)

additions:

+75% extra character, complex background/ scene*, full render, complex outfit design by meee ;)

+50% medium background/ scene*, flats (will include nice lineart), complex outfit/ design, simple outfit design by me

*scene means a complex pose or it looks like they're actually in the background. interpretation of this is up to me

addition prices are calculated based off of the base price and do not compound

example calculation: half body ($30) + extra character (+75% of $30 = $23) + medium background/scene (+50% of $30 = $15) = 30+23+15= $68

for stuff not covered here (like a complex prop) just shoot me a DM

will draw: furry (not great but i can try), gore (incl extreme), horror, artistic/ casual nudity, fanart, your roc's, my doc's, romantic/ ship art, anything LGBT+ (people might not know me i felt i should add that)

wont draw: porn, fetish (up to me to interpret what i consider that), ship/ romantic/ nude art involving persons who are or appear to be under the age of 18 (even if they are 'aged up'.) even if its like kids kissing, i'm not comfortable with that cheers, anything i consider 'hateful' (i dunno man i felt i had to add it)

if i am uncomfortable i reserve the right t refuse aspects or the entire request

ownership of the art is yours, if you dont want me to post it to my account i wont

QUESTIONS

USD? AUD? CAD? EUROS?

I TRUST YOU TO BE HONEST, IF YOU ARE AUSTRALIAN, AUD, IF YOU ARE AMERICAN, USD. IF YOU DON'T USE THOSE, PICK ONE. (EUROS AND USD ARE WORTH MORE SO I WILL PUT MORE EFFORT IN NGL)

DO I (THE ARTIST) KEEP ANY OF THE MONEY?

NO!! 100% GOES TO A GOFUNDME (OR MULTIPLE) WE AGREE UPON MUTUALLY

WHEN DO YOU (THE COMMISSIONER) PAY?

ASAP! (BEFORE I START PREFERABLY) THESE PEOPLE NEED MONEY NOW. IF YOU CAN ONLY PAY HALF NOW, HALF LATER, THAT'S FINE. I WILL NOT SHOW YOU THE FINISHED PRODUCT UNTIL ALL THE MONEY IS DONATED. (I WILL SHOW YOU PROOF OF WORKING ON IT (A SKETCH))

WHEN WILL YOU (THE COMMISSIONER) RECIVE THE ART?

I AM CURRENTLY A FULL TIME UNI STUDENT, AND IF I RECEIVE A LOT OF REQUESTS IT MAY TAKE SOME TIME. I DON'T KNOW HOW STRESSFUL THIS WILL BECOME

HOW MUCH WOULD ONE LIKEDRAWING FROM MY (THE ARTIST'S) ACCOUNT COST?

DM IT TO ME I'LL TELL YA

HOW IS 'RENDERING' DIFFERENT FROM A 'FULL PAINTING'

RENDERING INCLUDES CONSIDERED LIGHTING AND SHADING AS WELL AS ATTENTION TO DETAIL. A 'FULL PAINTING' INCLUDES THAT PLUS INTERESTING COMPOSITION, BETTER LIGHTING AND DETAIL, A BETTER 'VIBE' TO IT. ITS HARD TO EXPLAIN, BUT YOU CAN SEE IT FOR SURE. IF YOU DISAGREE

REFUNDS?

NO FULL REFUNDS

IF I AM UNABLE TO PRODUCE A DRAWING IN A MAXIMUM OF 3 MONTHS I CAN REFUND YOU 50% OUT OF MY OWN POCKET. IF THIS HAPPENS, YOU WILL NOT RECIVE ANY ART FROM ME FOR THIS COMMISSION

IF THERE IS AN ISSUE WITH YOU DECIDING YOU NO LONGER WANT THIS, OR YOU ARE UNABLE TO PROVIDE SUFFICIENT PROOF (OUTLINED ABOVE) FROM THE ACTUAL GOFUNDME THAT IS NOT MY PROBLEM. YOU HAVE JUST DONATED MONEY TO PERSON/S IN DIRE NEED SO THATS AWESOME ACTUALLY

TO BE CLEAR: IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND AND THE MONEY IS SENT, I WILL NOT REFUND YOU. I WILL ONLY REFUND 50% IF I FAIL TO PRODUCE A DRAWING IN 3 MONTHS FROM TIME OF COMMISSION

[baskeigh-ball]

Ignoring the fact that ibis had the ai paint feature a couple years before this whole ai fiasco, after seeing your post, I decided to try it out to see if it really held up. I already knew what you said made no sense, as even stuff like ai painting requires heavy human input that isn't just someone typing a prompt in a thing and looking through thousands of images and somehow still calling it 'art'. Really, it's just some weird advanced bucket.

The ibis ai paint... really sucks. I'm pretty sure it hasn't even been touched since it was added. No matter what I did, I got random colours and whatever colours I had put there looked like it were from a filter, not to mention how my lineart bled everywhere like it was blurred out.

Ibis isn't problematic for adding that feature as not only was it added ages ago, but it was also just a gimmick only added because a few more popular paid programs added them, like Clip Studio Paint. I highly doubt even the company took it seriously considering how poorly built it is. This is actually the one time I'm glad some feature in an app sucks so much.

Another reason why ibis isn't problematic by the mere feature alone is that, when you look at the artists making content during the time of that update, it was received with humour. It was something fun to try, but ultimately dismissed for actual artwork, as nobody would use it to fully paint their works. Nowadays we see something slapped with the words 'ai' and think that it's instantly bad due to the latest issues with it and big corperations/ certain production companies but it isn't. It's just a lot of people abusing what was previously some fun gimmick, which it can still be, and for certain apps, still is. Nobody throws pitchforks at character ai, after all.

You can tell just by the size of this that I'm procrastinating on something. Ima go and let this rot away in your askbox now lol

You really thought this would fade away in my ask box, mwahahaha /j

I wanna start off by saying thank you for holding me accountable, I will admit that I got buzzworded pretty hard in this situation lmao

This information came as a surprise to me-- I was seeing posts pop up within the past week complaining about the ai feature on ibis, so I assumed it was recent. As it turns out, after reading your ask, I discovered that I got a few wires crossed! Because yes, the auto paint feature I referred to in my post has been around for years now, and was never taken seriously anyways

So that was my bad (and yea ur right it's completely unusable, lmao)

But as it turns out, the feature that people have been complaining about DID come out recently. It was called the AI Example feature, I think the idea was that you make a simple drawing and the AI adds 99% of the detail and color, which I've seen a bunch of other programs do.

...and then it was immediately removed due to some pretty major backlash, which, duh

^ This is the only evidence I can find of the 11.2.0 update that included the AI feature on the actual site; their update history stops at 11.1.0. But there's also the news page about the removal of the update, so it's not like they're trying to pretend it never happened.

So tl;dr, I jumped on the hate train a little too quickly and never did enough research to figure out what the actual update was, and that it's been removed by now anyway (which I couldn't have known until today, ofc, but i did kinda post that thing about ibis today so it's still a pretty major oopsie)

I think I can say with confidence now that I agree, ibis paint isn't problematic to use-- they made a mistake with this update, but they actually listened to their users and removed it LITERALLY the next day. So, thanks for letting me know! I'll also edit my last post to prevent any misinformation, just in case people make the same mistake I did :]

[omentranslates]

Trigun Maximum Chugai Grace Cafe Collaboration - I Translated the Website :3

Hi I saw someone on twt wanting this to be translated and that's literally all it takes to get me moving anymore so!

Anyways I translated all the food and drinks, I found the references they chose really cute except for the evil one lmao and I also included the unbelievably small print drink ingredients if you wanna try mixing them yourself!! 🫶

Also also, if you know how to use a proxy, there is actually some stuff here that overseas fans can get our hands on!! Under the cut to keep the dash clean!! Hope it helps!!!!!

Edit my dumbass forgot the original announcement link sjshsk IT’S HERE!!!

So, the menu

Going from left to right we've got

"Battle Sausage Spaghetti"

"As Many Salmon Sandwiches You Want"

"Love&Peace Donuts"

"Banana Sundae"

and on the bottom row

"The Perfect Meal Plate: Vash's Handmade Fried Rice and Salad" ((´༎ຶོω༎ຶོ`) o k )

"Particularly Wonderful Udon"

"Mille-feuille with Ceylon Tea" (i believe the first part specifies gateau mille-feuille but I went to episode one and checked the subs for what they had her say officially and they left the gateau off so I did too)

"Latte with a random character art"

Character Drinks!!!

The Bride Soda, which comes with a double-sided postcard of the sworn friends (very common nickname for Vash and Wolfwood in JP fandom and ig official uses it too)

So the soda is their proprietary thing, it doesn't say what flavor it is or if it has one, but the shotglasses come with a little bit of smoked oak syrup and black ceylon tea and you're meant to fill the rest of the glass with soda and drink it that way. And then the rest of the text is just information and disclaimers for customers that plan on taking the bottle home (I guess it breaks really easily that’s So. lmao).

Vash's Drink <3

strawberry syrup

carbonated water and lemon juice

yellow candied cherries (drained cherries) and ice

Wolfwood's Drink

crushed coffee jelly and cafe ice (ice made and flavored with concentrated coffee and fruit juice)

brewed iced coffee and gum syrup

blue curaçao syrup and carbonated water

experimental ampules filled with blue soda

the cigarette is full of light brown sugar you're meant to mix in before drinking

Knives's Drink

apple juice and round sliced apples

mint and ice (it looks like mint leaves but full disclosure they have blurred that kanji to all hell I have no idea)

Legato's Drink

blue curaçao syrup

grapefruit juice

carbonated water and a mint cherry

a lemon and ice

Collab Merch

(Overseas pay attention here!!!!!! ChugaiOnline is opening these to online orders so we can get them with a proxy, I'll leave their link at the end of this section!!!!!!)

I've also listed all the prices in yen here so you can convert them to your currency, and all of these are the prices including the listed Japanese sales tax. If you want to see the price without it, it’s just the other number on the image!

So they've got

Two way acrylic figure stands (the main stand comes with a ball chain, you can reference these on Amiami for what this kind of product looks like I'm prettyyyyy sure like they're called different but it looks like they go together the same way). Anyways this is a set of 6 and 1650 yen each, it looks like you get to choose which one you want but they don't have a deal listed for getting all of them.

Next to it are the buttons (also called can badges idk which one is more common over here), set of 12 (6 are regular and 6 are glittery variety). They are 550 yen per button AT RANDOM, THEY WILL GIVE YOU A RANDOM ONE, or a box with one of each all 12 for 6600 yen.

Below that is the polaroid collection, it's also a 12 piece set and you can get A RANDOM ONE, THEY DO NOT LET YOU PICK for 330 yen each or a box with all of them for 3960 yen.

The same exact deal with the plastic (like a vinyl material) postcards underneath, they're double-sided and come one for 660 yen each at random or the whole set for 7920 yen.

The calendar is for 2025 and is 1980 yen probably obvious but y'know

I would be so shocked if a proxy actually let you ship the Kuroneko sama cookie discs lmao but hey wtf they're 1080 yen.

The Bride soda is listed here because this is the same merch that will be sold in the shop but they specify elsewhere that it's not available for online order even in Japan you have to go to the cafe ;-;

Also this is just personal experience but a lot of proxies will not let you get like blind or random stuff like the buttons they don't let you pick which one, some of them will only let you get it if you're getting the whole box.

Annnnnnd online order special gifts!!

For every 3000 yen spent in merch (including tax) you will get a random postcard from this set!! There are 15 to collect, they are NOT divided into halves of the event, you can get any of them at any time or all at once!! However, you can't combine orders made at different times/by different people to get more and if they run out that's it. Altho fwiw I have never seen an event run out of these lol

The online order period will be from Friday, May 24th at 11 am to Sunday, June 16th at 11:59 pm (both JST) and items will begin to arrive (within Japan, proxies will have to handle our own shipping ofc) from August 2024 on a first ordered first shipped basis.

CHUGAIONLINE STORE (JAPAN)

Ok, this last bit is relevant to the in-person cafe experience so it's just for if you're curious about other cool things going on or you have a hobby of watching JP mercari like a hawk and wanna know what to expect!

Guests who reserve places at the cafe online will get copies of some of Nightow sensei's most prized sketch pages, they'll get 3 random ones! Like with the special gift postcards, there are a limited amount and this event will end when they're all gone.

And these are the coasters, guests will get one with every item they order off the food or drink menu at random (while supplies last)! The variety you can get is split between the former and latter halves of the event so there's something new to come back for even if you've already been once! (The first 12 days is on top and the last 12 days is on bottom)

They're also doing a wallscroll campaign!

They'll have these decorating the venue, and when the event is over a raffle will be held where the winners get to pick out a scroll of their choice!

OK I THINK THAT'S EVERYTHING RELEVANT HAPPY TRIGUN MANGA CAFE EVENT!!!!!

[desultory-novice]

Here's a probably bizarre one

Are you into Table Top RPGs? And if so what do you think a Kirby themed one would look like? In just broad strokes at least, not asking you to get in depth with all the numbers or something

I'm trying to actually make one along with a few friends of mine as a "little" group project, we're throwing out ideas, figuring stuff out and what not. Turns out making a proper TTRPG is difficult and requires a lot of thought.

I used to be! In my family, playing D&D (2nd edition!!) was like watching sports for other families! I dropped out of the hobby sometime in my teens, as I started to struggle more with roleplaying ^^; and though I've shown interest in the occasional system and even played in a handful of one-shots, a lot of my knowledge comes from overhearing stories from my siblings, who are still into it!

When I brought this concept up to my sister briefly, she mentioned something (and maybe it was spun off something legendary blogger Prokopetz had said) about trying to "twist" D&D into a system for telling stories it just wasn't keyed to tell! That you CAN do that, sure, but maybe it's not the most efficient way...?

Soooo...

...In that sense two TTRPGs that come to mind when I think about alternate ways you could do a Kirby game other than just "explore dungeon and kill monsters!" (...Note that these might not be perfect fits either, they're just ones I've heard about and caught my interest!)

Magica Logia, a Japanese-only RPG (sorry...! ^^;;) that was really popular on NicoDouga/NicoVideo that is mostly based around playing these magicians with true forms (O~ooh, Soul Forms, you say?) who go around solving magical incidents!

While there IS combat, most of it is about learning what is even going wrong and using your skills (which are more like "concepts" and all HIGHLY interpretable) to detect just WHO has been affected through roleplay scenes that play out in a turn based structure!

It was REALLY popular to do long videos of characters from various games and anime playing versions of themselves via Magica Logia and so I often think that it suits a variety of more story-based settings! (Like, a huge focus on the story of a session is finding out who has been POSSESSED by the evil forces this time and I hope you can see my vision for how well that would work for Kirby!)

Another that I'm slightly less familiar with but I've always wanted to learn more about is Ryuutama, which, to quote the main website, describes itself as "Miyazaki's Oregon Trail?!" XD

A huge focus of the game seems to be around "regular" seeming characters going to new places because they're filled with wanderlust (and Kirby IS a wanderer!) and managing the resources to get there! (How much food you have at any given time feels like it would be a natural fit forany Kirby TTRPG) 

I also like that the journey and the places you go seem to be decided on by the group as a whole, with everyone contributing something! It reminds me very much of how magical various places in Pop Star (or the rest of the Kirby-verse galaxy) can be! And I think that kind of inventiveness would be wonderful.

Do you really want Kirby and the gang to explore a re~gular old cave? If it's going to feel like Kirby, the cave ought to have... Oh, crystal stalagmites in the shape of ice cream! Or that reflect your image like funhouse mirrors! Or the ceiling is covered with moss that acts like glow-in-the-dark bedroom stars!

...Again, I haven't seen this one played before like I have with the other one so I'm mostly going off concepts I find appealing from the product page! It does make you think though!

-

As for ideas of my own, I'm split when it comes to character creation. Either everyone should be allowed to make their own "Kirby"/Puffball and you KEEP it to puffballs, or you pass on playing Kirby and let people choose from a variety of commonly returning ally races (Poppy, Simirror, Birdo, Dee, Chilly, Joe, etc...) The reason I would suggest going either all puffs or all non-puffs is because even though my ideal Kirby TTRPG is not amazingly battle heavy, I still think that would really cut down on any questions of POWER SCALING (my beloathed... :shiver:)

I think that creativity in the interpretation of game mechanics should be emphasized, and that smaller numbered dice would be better (D4s or D6s, a D10 at most??)

I can see stats being more akin to MOODS rather than like, physical prowess and how fast you are/magic potential etc? After all, Kirby is strong enough to tackle on otherworldly horrors...but the comics often depict him as being unable to when he is, say, [Tired] or [Hungry] so having to balance your player character's ~total health~ as opposed to just their HP might make things feel more Kirby-esque, as opposed to just a Kirby-themed D&D reskin! (Not that there's anything wrong with that, if that's where one's interest lies!)

Another thing from Ryuutama that I liked the sound of was each character having a key [Personal Item] that is important to them! Maybe it's not EVEN magical, maybe it's just...emotionally significant?! Maybe part of the goal of story creation can be discovering what ties these characters together through an exploration of their items! (Everyone declares theirs to the game master and the game master builds the adventure around that?)

Anyway, I think I've made my preferences for a "non-standard" style TTRPG here clear! Sorry if that wasn't your desired direction...!

-

But yes, good luck with you and your friend's project! I'm sure it IS a lot of work! I don't know how much progress you've made in the week it took me to get to this one, but I would love to hear more if you think you've narrowed in on your idea! And I'm sure a bunch of others here would be interested as well!

[blueskittlesart]

hi :] this isnt really a reqest cuz it'll prob be a longer answer but im rlly curious abt ur comic process

i love all ur comics and somehow they always manage to gutpunch me- and ur composition and the way they read is always so beautiful and adds so much to the message youre trying to get across

yeah lol let's get into it! Ive spent maybe 5 or so years refining this process to the point it's at now so it's pretty much my standard procedure now. I'm going to use Now that you're gone as my primary example here since i still have most of the planning stages associated with it (my laptop does not have a whole lot of storage left so i usually delete my planning once the comic is finished lol) but i'll try to throw in some other examples too!

I almost always start with a written script. (the exception for this is longform oc comics which i find easier to write in the moment, but for my shorter character studies I almost always write first.) I use discord to write because it's convenient, but before i had a dedicated discord server for my stuff i was using txt files on my laptop which i do NOT recommend. anyway, this is what the written script for ntyg looked like:

note that some small elements changed in production, like the amount of time that had passed since link's death. the lines "I look at her and i am only afraid. i remember all the ways in which i hurt you. She's almost as old now as you were then. I cannot stand the thought of outliving her, too" were also added during the rough stage because i felt like there wasn't quite enough emphasis on aryll in the initial script, and since this was a major change that necessitated a whole extra page in the comic I went back and edited those lines into the script so I wouldn't forget them. (both these changes were made during the rough stage. i'll almost never make major script adjustments after the roughs are finished.)

more examples of my scripts; specifically the original script for totk: failure and two versions of oot: adulthood (one before some major refining and one after.) with comics like these, where i have a very clear idea in my head of the imagery i want to go along with the words, i'll sometimes include it interspersed in the script, either spolier-marked or denoted with brackets.

with ntyg and some of my other more. canon divergent? i guess? comics, there's sort of a mini phase in between scripting and roughs where I do some minor character studies to get designs nailed down in the early stages. with ntyg I already had a clear image in my mind for aryll, but the central character was link's dad, whose design wasn't quite so solid in my head. I really wanted to make sure that his design was well thought-out and consistent throughout everything, so i did a few mini sketches and studies to ensure I had his design memorized and could execute it consistently:

these are sans hair and accessories because nailing down consistent facial features was my main focus with them, and both these sketches ended up getting used as references for certain panels later on. This isn't a step I ALWAYS take with my comics, but if there's a central character that i'm not super used to drawing i find it helpful to get some practice in before jumping into the real thing!

after the scripting and design phases i move on to roughs, which I consider to be the most important stage in my process. roughs are very very quick approximations of what I want the final pages to look like. they usually don't take me more than a few minutes per page to create, and their sole purpose is to help me visualize the flow of the page and the placement of major elements like panels, characters, and dialog. this is what the 1st page rough for ntyg looked like compared to the final page:

as you can see, all i have laid out is the major text and visual elements, but it really helps me to visualize how the finished comic is going to flow. i do the roughs for every page before i start on the finals so that i have an idea of what the entire comic is going to look like before I really start finalizing it. it's important that these roughs are FAST--i almost never draw fully-fledged characters unless the pose or expression is particularly important to the scene, and that's because the goal is to allow everything to flow quickly and easily from panel to panel and page to page, and getting too caught up on one panel or element often breaks that flow. Nowadays, i have a pretty good idea of how much room my writing takes up so i don't write out the entire script in my roughs, but back when i was a little less experienced i took the time to write everything out in this stage to ensure that my dialog would fit into the space it was given without getting cramped or cutting off other important elements. doing that really helped me build awareness of how much dialog and panel placement matters and how i could use it, so this rough stage is non-negotiable for me even now!

after the roughs i go straight into finalization. I never enjoyed lineart back when i was learning to draw digitally so i basically built my art style to be understandable and visually appealing after one sketch phase, meaning there's legitimately no in-between stage between that rough and that final page, i just sort of. go for it. this is what works for me, but i think most normal people would probably find a second sketch phase helpful LMAO i'm just crazy and i need everything done as fast as possible. the finalization stage usually doesn't contain any major adjustments of script, composition, etc; i make it a general rule to keep most of the major adjustments confined to the earlier stages, for my own sanity. One thing that DOES occasionally change in this stage is my plans for color--ntyg in particular was originally planned to be completely black-and-white with no grays added, but when looking at my completed pages i found them sort of empty and unengaging without the gray, so i added it. usually if my color plans DO change it's something small like that--I'll almost never switch between full-color and grayscale on a whim because the way that i sketch for those two versions differs significantly so it isn't an easy switch to make.

anyways i hope this is what you were looking for! I'm very passionate about making comics and this process is a result of years of experimentation & finding what works for me, but i hope it's of some use to you as well!

[exquisite-tomarrymort-telephone]

The exquisite tomarrymort telephone will proceed thusly!

All participants who are comfortable going first will be added to a randomiser. Once selected, they will be contacted to check the date range works for them.

Most people have voted for a one-week writing/drawing period, so that's what we'll go with! At the moment, the telephone's start date is set for April 8.

How it goes

Once the first person has been confirmed, the rest of the participants will be randomised and assigned a date range that doesn't conflict with any dates they'll be unavailable. Everyone will be contacted to confirm the date range works for them.

Once all the participants have been confirmed, the timeline will be posted. The first person will be given the secret prompt on the Sunday before the telephone starts at 8 PM ET. Once the first person has completed their prompt fill, please submit it as a Google Doc for ease and to preserve formatting (G Drive link will be shared with participants) and share your summary sentence with me or jenny, Master of the Broken Telephone, by DMing this blog. If you're submitting an image, please include a link to your art in the Google Doc for ease of posting on Ao3.

Please also include your summary sentence at the beginning of your submission. That way we can include them in the final fic when posting.

Edit: Please submit your summary/prompt sentence and/or prompt fill by 11:59 PM ET on the Sunday of your week to the G Drive folder. Prompts will be passed on to the next author/artist ASAP. If you need a couple extra hours to finish your story/art, that's okay -- as long as we get the sentence for the next person by the 11:59 deadline.

The finished product will be posted on Ao3 as one fic, with each submission counting as a chapter. If you have an Ao3 username and would like to be listed as an author/artist when the fic goes up, please also include that in your Google Doc submission.

Submission guidelines

Authors will write a roughly 1,000-word one-shot (more or less is fine) based on the prompt they are given.

Artists will draw a single fanart scene with a small amount of dialogue/up to three scenes with no dialogue (or whatever you would like to draw) based on the prompt given.

You are welcome to decide whether you draw or write in the moment. You can write a bullet-point list instead of prose or doodle some stickmen -- as long as you're having fun!

The main rule is that the prompt/sentence/artwork you pass to the next person cannot use the same words as the prompt/sentence you were given, aside from things like names, articles (the, a, an, etc.), and conjunctions (but, and, or, so, etc.). It can be very similar, but describe it in a different way or from another perspective. If all else fails, bust out the thesaurus and go to town. (Edited and changed on March 28.)

NB: You can write or draw NSFW stuff/smut if you're so inclined, but we ask that the prompt/sentence/section of art you submit for the following person be SFW.

Having trouble?

If at any point your availability changes or you're having difficulties with your part of the telephone, please reach out to jenny or I through this blog! We want this to be fun and low-stress, so let us help you if that's not the experience you're having.

Any questions, comments, thoughts? Drop us a message!

[ystk-archive]

[Translation] capsule in girls '60s magazine (Feb. 2004)

When I first saw their music videos, the striking visuals immediately caught my eye. Simplistic designs, vivid color schemes on the outfits and sets… I can't describe the style as anything other than '60s-inspired. For the first edition of our "Pick Up Artist" feature, it's one whose existence fascinates me — let's take a look at the charm of capsule.

capsule is a music unit consisting of Nakata Yasutaka, whom manages the sound, art direction, design, concept work and so on, and vocalist Koshijima Toshiko. Nakata directs the image, visual aspects, and songs while Koshijima performs it all, resulting in their unique style. - original interview by Aikawa Chisato, translation by ystk-archive -

The reason behind their '60s-inspired visual style

Nakata: To be honest, I don't have any particular attachment to the '60s. I just like unique and minimalistic things, stuff with interesting shapes and clean designs and whatnot. It started when I got into interior design, and at first I especially liked Space Age furniture.¹ That's changed a little recently — I like pieces made out of wood but still with that outerspace kind of vibe. Even when it's made from wood, it doesn't feel natural, it still has this sort of odd look. When it comes to the '60s, I like the plywood that they often used. But I'm intrigued by Karimoku furniture too (laughs).²

— So would you say you're more interested in space and not the '60s?

Nakata: Yeah, and I guess sci-fi movies played a part in that. In movies like Men in Black you often see Tulip chairs, though I don't think they were used to evoke a retro or '60s feel on purpose.³ With films like that I tend to focus more on the furniture and not the overall atmosphere; if anything, I see furniture along with fashion as objects that look nice when put into a scene you're taking in as a whole. I like to come up with unconventional settings. Women are usually depicted in sci-fi films as secretaries, all wearing identical wigs and uniforms, and I like that kind of weird atmosphere. So instead of me consciously liking '60s aesthetics, I wound up thinking they were cool without making the connection that they were from that decade. I also love clothes that incorporate simplistic, striking designs, since they're like spacesuits (laughs).

— How do you feel about wearing clothes like that?

Koshijima: I'm also not obsessed with the '60s or anything, but I like to play around with that era's clothing and makeup styles. It's more fun than just wearing normal clothes.

— Have you two had similar tastes all along?

Nakata: Our tastes used to be completely different. I feel like she's adjusted to match me.

— So Koshijima-san is committed to being a model?

Koshijima: Yep. I haven't changed my approach, ever since the beginning.

— Are there times where you feel like your tastes really are different?

Koshijima: I don't think so. If we actually were fundamentally different, I don't think we'd be working together. Strangely enough, when I look at the materials I'm given, I start to think they're cute. Nakata: When I get an idea, I suggest it first. Koshijima: But he doesn't show me clothes or anything directly, instead he shows me photos and videos… Like I'm being brainwashed (laughs). The more he introduces me to all kinds of cool things, the more similar we become. After I watched the materials he gave me, poses and dance moves just started coming naturally to me without even realizing it.

— Maybe you ran across something from the '60s that left an impression and that ended up coming through in your image.

Nakata: Yeah, there are a lot of easy explanations for it. I wonder if we're more like a new product with a retro design that would fit nicely in someone's living room, rather than something that could be found in an authentic '60s vintage shop. I think even if we intentionally collected oldschool aesthetics from that era and tried to copy those, it'd still turn out differently, because peoples' concept of the '60s and the real '60s are two different things. But if you take parts of that concept people have of that decade and use them, you wind up with something that has the right feel to it. For me right now, the concept I have in mind is the "style" of the '60s. Instead of making clothes or objects to match up with the '60s aesthetic, the styles are already floating around in my head, and then I make content that reflects that. There were a lot of useless shapes — like aren't record players from back then weird-looking? The technology of them and the half-dome shape are of that time, but the way they look on the outside is as if someone was imagining the future while designing them. It's interesting how these days it's the opposite: now the exterior designs of things are retro while the tech inside is highly advanced. And I like both (laughs). I even like things that seem out of place. I'm drawn to a sense of disharmony.

— Would you say the essence of the '60s is woven into your music?

Nakata: Not intentionally. I think the things I like tend to show through my music on accident. Basically I want to make any music, as long as it's cute.

— So do you feel like music is essentially an object?

Nakata: Music is something I started doing because I thought I could create it. It was right when I was in junior high school, they'd made a lot of progress with technology so making cassette tapes became fun. Part of that was because I liked the feeling of winding a tape up. I liked playing around with machines more than the music aspect itself and, when it comes to decorating, I even like the look of a tape deck sitting in a room. So that's why I want our CDs to be sold in regular stores along with other kinds of merchandise. I don't think music should be classified as something special and separate; it's good if it's just one part of the total amount of belongings in a space. Rather than wanting people to listen to our music seriously, I'd be happy if they enjoy the atmosphere it gives when they play it out in the open.

¹ Space Age design was characterized by "sleek, aerodynamic lines and geometric forms," "dominated by bright, bold hues" and was often constructed of manmade materials such as plastic. You can read more about it here. ² Karimoku is a Japanese brand of all-wood furniture boasting superior craftsmanship. You can read more about it and look at examples here. ³ This is the famous Tulip chair.

[tiikerikani]

Throwback Not-Thursday (2012 v 2024)

Gerrin Goblinkicker, Dwarf Hero (sculpted by Bob Olley)

This was the last figure I painted before starting up again in 2020.

I'm known to be insufferably/irredeemably stuck in the past, so unlike normal people who might strip and repaint their earlier figures, I painted a whole other copy. This dwarf figure is still in production, so I didn't need to wrangle one from eBay at stupid prices. I even happened to have a matching base (they had come in a 3-pack and I still had the other 2—these are discontinued).

On the old version the middle of the shield is just off-center if you look at the model from that corner and it just feels like something is wrong. For the new version I decided to place him along the diagonal of the base instead of the side. I think this way it is clearer which direction he's facing—though it's actually the feet that are aligned to the diagonal and not his face, so it's still kind of off.

I considered painting a whole pattern onto the shield instead of leaving it plain wood, but I didn't want it to be too different from the old version, so I just changed the shield boss to brass/bronze for contrast.

I had placed him too far forward too; I think I was trying to center the feet on the base instead of the figure overall.

I used the same static grass from a plastic film container of it that I got from somebody. I have no memory of where it's from and this is the only figure I have that uses it. I wonder if it's from 2000/1 when I'd just learned to paint, since a pinch of grass on the base appears to have been typical on Warhammer figures from that era. Maybe I used it on Battletech figures I painted for my classmates at $5 a pop. Anyway, it sits on a bed of green stuff instead of a thick layer of PVA glue (which shrinks so you'd need a lot of it to fill up the hollow base, but that's how I did things back then. didn't know any better).

Recipes

The base blue paint on the old model was Ral Partha's Dragon Blue (highlights in Sky Blue). I still have the Dragon Blue pot and wanted to use it but the paint doesn't stick to the primer anymore so I guess it's dead. It's a bit drowned in black wash on the 2012 model, and here's what I did on the new one:

Speedpaint Beowulf Blue (as you do because, you know, vikings). I didn't shake it enough so it came out a bit purple

Thin layer of Ultramarine Blue

Wet blend Wolf Grey into Ultramarine for first highlight

Gorgon Hide for second highlight

The green base was a bit trickier since the Army Painter Warpaints do not have a match for it (maybe the new Fanatic line does, dunno). But I made it work with a solid coat of Greenskin and then Speedpaint Shamrock Green (the latter of which is a decent match).

P.S. The old Ral Partha Bronze paint is really more of a brassy color. It's not orange-ish at all.

Bonus: Super-black background tutorial (kind of)

When you take the photos, use a sheet of black velour / flocking as the backdrop; Green Stuff World sells these in various sizes but the material is originally used in other things that need to be super dark, like telescopes, so you can probably find it in places where astronomy stuff is sold.

You'll never get all the dust and speckles out of it with a tape roller so just remove as much as you can.

Editing the pictures—I use GIMP:

(Optional) Crop your image. You can do it now, or at the end like I do.

Adjust levels and do color corrections as needed.

Fuzzy select the black area around the figures. 10% tolerance worked for me, but go lower if the figures are dark. You want to avoid picking up parts of the miniatures.

Invert the selection.

Copy and paste to a new layer and put it at the top. This layer will be transparent and contain just the figures and a lot of dust speckles.

Create a new white layer and put it under the transparent layer. Now you can see all the speckles against the white background.

Clean up background with eraser tool.

Hide the white layer and create a black layer. (Or just put the black layer above the white one.)

Clean up any stray dust with eraser tool.

If fuzzy select was overzealous and took out too much (you can flip the solid layers on and off to check), copy/paste those areas back in from the original picture.

[sandinthepipes]

Hello fellow dyslexic/adhd/others who would like to enjoy fanfics through their ears, I just spent the entire day testing android apps to find one that doesn’t suck as much.

TL;DR - these two T2S, Audify

I feel like I need to share this because 90% the apps don’t even allow a web page as a source, let alone get past the log in page, and I cant be the only one who doesn’t want to download every single fic.

“Oh, but doesn’t android have a built-in text-to-speech function in the accessibility settings?” I hear you ask. Yes, but it sucks ass very badly. Firstly it only reads in the system language, so it doesn’t really work. Second, you need to highlight all that you want it to read, and seeing that I read a minimum of 15k words in a sitting, I’m not gonna do that.

Also I’m broke, I imagine you are too, but even if I wasn’t I’m not paying for this, if I did I wouldn’t even be supporting a human being, so no.

I’ll immediately break your trust with the first point, but it’s what I’ve been doing until now, and now that I know what the android mobile experience is like, I feel the need to include this. The best solution I’ve had so far (which works wonders, let me tell you) is letting Siri read them on the iPad. It’s only doable when I’m at home and it’s still an apple product, so that’s why I began the research. However the positive points are INCREDIBLE so I’m going to ads it to the list because I said so.

First of all it’s built-in and SO EASY to access, you literally just swipe with two fingers and it stars to read. It reads the punctuation, you might think that’s a given and so did I, but no. A question sounds like a question, an exclamation point does why its supposed to do, short sentences sound what they’re supposed to sound like. In apparently all the apps ever created, you won’t find any of it, just flat, monotone voices with flat little pauses. Overall excellent experience 10/10.

Cons: it’s on apple, I consider apple the same as Disney, I would love to not give them more money so that they can make the market increasingly worse. Every now and then a system update will fuck with the tts function and it will be unusable for a while. Sometimes it doesn’t like the text format on some fics. It’s not portable.

Now that we got that out of the way let us get to the meet.

Speechify - it sucks bad. At least the free version, but seen as it costs almost 10€ a month I’m not even going to consider the premium version. Fuck that. You can’t increase the speed, and as somebody who hasn’t watched a single YouTube video on normal speed since they added the function I can’t do that, too slow, I forgot what we were talking about once we get to the end of the sentence. Also you can only use those weird very robotic voices, and they’re not even that many. Don’t recommend. I felt like I had to include it since it was one of the few who allowed browser navigation and well, it’s speechify. Also you can’t t have saved more than 3 “files” per time. Doesn’t have sleep mode.

T2S - cute. It works. Again, no emotions, but it reads what it has to, nice voice selections, easy to use. The premium version adds literally nothing, they’re a good app, what they have, they give. Also you can customise the interface colour if you want. Has the sleep mode. - EDIT: this app allows you to have multiple tabs open at the same time, unlike Audify. - EDIT EDIT: it's waaay better than Audify with pdf files.

Audify - works exactly the same as T2S, but it saves the history and has a bit more customisation for how it reads and what it reads (which you don’t really need for ao3, but if you wanted to read, say, Wikipedia with all the notes and stuff, now you know). Has the sleep mode. - EDIT: the double tap to start reading works slightly better than T2S on websites with weird formatting. But unlike T2S you can only have one tab open - EDIT EDIT: will turn your pdf file into text and will show you just text. If you had things like images or columns fucks for you.

That’s all folks. Now go and be free of your reading impediment, or be free in your multitasking, or whatever you want to do. I’m done, I’ve given my datas to all kinds of shady apps, I need to go do damage control

[holmesxwatson]

The Television Sherlock Holmes by Peter Haining

[The Television Sherlock Holmes by Peter Haining, hardcover 1986.] (x)

I found a used, hardcover copy of this beautiful book with special thanks to one of the previous owners who lovingly wrapped it in a dustjacket, it's in really great shape! It's coffee-table size with lots of info on the history of Sherlock Holmes adaptations on stage, screen and tv, with tons of behind the scenes stuff on the Granada production. There's a foreward by Jeremy Brett and two afterwords by David Burke and Edward Hardwicke. It also includes a 15-page interview with Jeremy Brett that took place during the filming of an episode. Here's a pdf of the table of contents, in case you have your eye on a copy, but want to know what you're getting first. It looks like there were a few subsequent editions with different covers to coincide with later seasons as well.

Excerpt from the interview with Jeremy Brett included in The Television Sherlock Holmes:

"‘But the most important thing of all I discovered was the relationship with Watson. He wasn't the doddering plodder following behind as is so often shown. He had the compassion to stay with Holmes, picking him up. It is one of the great friendships of literature.’

Jeremy's understanding of this relationship undoubtedly started when he played Watson in 1981 in The Crucifer of Blood. ‘If you look at it from Watson's side, Holmes emerges as about the loneliest man in literature,’ he said.

‘Really, Watson is much more my kind of part than Holmes – Holmes is a big stretch. I don't like working alone. I'm not a one-man band, so when I took on Holmes I came to rely on Watson as much as I could without bending the willow.’

'Holmes is a very private man, a tragic genius. But Watson has his friends and his surgery. He's not a dull man, he's an ordinary, good man of great compassion, warmth and consideration. He's a gentleman. Everybody would like a friend like Watson.’

‘The relationship between them is terribly British. Holmes has a great deal of trouble saying such simple things as "Help!", “Thank you” and "I'd be lost without you". Watson sees beyond that. He's fascinated by Holmes and his intuitive leaps. And he realizes that if he stays away from Holmes for too long the man will overdose.’

'Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that it is Holmes who needs Watson and not the other way round. I didn't see any of that in the earlier films, nor did I see anything of the vulnerability of Holmes. So that's why I set out right from the beginning to show the insecurity and to explore the amazing friendship between those two men.'

Jeremy's evident understanding of both sides of this partnership helped me fit another piece into the jig-saw of how he has achieved his outstanding performance as Holmes. This also seemed like a suitable moment to discuss the two men who had partnered him as Watson, David Burke and Edward Hardwicke.

Jeremy's face broke into a smile at the mention of David Burke's name. 'We made a very good odd couple,' he chuckled throatily. 'Of course it was a terrific gamble that we would be able to work together, that we would see our parts in a compatible way. But in fact there was no cause to worry because we soon found we got on so well.’

‘David is debonair with an attractiveness about him that proved to be unusual and appealing in a Watson. That was a real bonus and helped to break the traditional mould,' Jeremy added.

Just as Jeremy's Holmes had thrown a whole new perspective on the detective, so David Burke's Watson had shattered the old image of the bumbling and rather comic doctor. How did he feel, though, when David decided against making The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

‘I was very sorry, naturally.' Jeremy stretched his lean frame further out from the chair and contemplated the fireplace. ‘But being an actor I quite understood. And if it had to happen, that was the right time between Holmes’ disappearance in The Final Problem and his reappearance three years later in The Empty House. Looking back, I think the change has been very useful.'

Jeremy closes his eyes for a moment as if selecting his next words carefully. ‘The thing is,’ he says after a pause, ‘if you work together with the same person it becomes almost like a marriage. However fresh you try to be on a day-to-day basis it becomes a known way. So for me the change of Watsons was like a breath of fresh air, a shot of adrenalin in the arm.’

Whether Jeremy had intended the pun or not, his face remains unchanged as he continues. ‘What happened was a chemical change – and it is a chemical change – of a new person adding a new element to the friendship. Remember that three years have passed since the two men last met, so things have happened to them both which enabled us to restart the friendship at a different angle.’

‘It was revitalizing for me, though not easy for Edward. But he is an immensely sensitive person and a brilliant actor so it really did not take us long to find our way into a new relationship.’

‘I have this feeling that The Return of Sherlock Holmes is better even than the first 13 stories. I can't quite tell you why that is – It is to do with some shift of emphasis, some confidence, some chemistry between Edward and me. But there is definitely something.'

Jeremy has clearly been re-charged not only by this change, but others that have taken place during the series. ‘You can so easily fall into a kind of complacency if things don't change,’ he went on. ‘It's something to do with the human animal. So I have enjoyed new directors, new actors in guest roles, even a new lighting cameraman or technician joining the team. On a long series you become terribly aware of new faces, but if you are trying to continue being creative then you need them, for each new face brings in new ideas. All the time the format is changing ever so slightly and that is terribly important, I think.’

I found Jeremy's examination of his art a fascinating insight into the man himself, and it seemed appropriate at that moment that he should be called to play another scene. He invited me to come and watch."

[creaturecomfortsva]

some old things i made.

i used to call my crochet shop "sadgirlcrochet". i started posting and selling my crochet stuff in late 2020, was dealing with some serious depression, and had only come to terms with being NB a few months earlier. calling myself a girl still felt right back then, or at least not painful. i put frowny faces on everything.

this was the flagship product, the depressed daisy bikini. I'm thinking about re-designing these because they were always my best-selling product. honestly, as someone who works in marketing, "sad girl crochet" was branding gold. I could make any design that was popular with the tiktok crochet girlies but trade a smiley face for a frown and BOOM. iconic piece. hundreds of instagram likes. for example, my 420 creations in 2021:

these are some of my favorite creations from that year. and while they're adorable, they're also simple. i wasn't exactly challenging myself on a technical level - more of my energy was going towards figuring out how to market via the instagram algorithm. because sadgirlcrochet was, above all else, marketable. the clothes weren't for crocheters. they were for followers.

i redesigned the depressed daisy bikinis in 2021. i sold close to a hundred of these, maybe more. i didn't track inventory too closely (but i DID track my instagram followers, obsessively, at the time)

i also had a really shitty phone camera, so i edited the fuck out of my photos to make the blurriness and low resolution into a feature instead of a bug. it worked for a little while. also, my living situation was hellish at the time, but we had a giant yard with this 70-year-old dogwood tree, and it made for an excellent backdrop.

a commissioned witch hat i made for a friend. one of my favorite things i have ever made. after a while, i realized i liked doing commissions more than just creating products to sell to the masses because it let me push myself on a technical level.

this was my most-liked photo of 2021. partly because of my boobs. that's fine. they look great. i created this top because of a commission that went viral, and it spawned so many copycats and fake etsy listings.

my feelings toward the top itself are mild. it's cute. i made it so that people would like and share this photo. there's not much heart in it, if i'm honest. i look back at this top and know that it was made almost algorithmically. granny square bralettes + halter straps + strawberries were all Very In right then so my hands produced this.

the picture above is one of the first photos i took of myself and felt like i looked like my gender. gender euphoria, i suppose, though the stress of my life at the time dampened the joy. it was then that i started really questioning how i felt about having my online image so tied up in my girlhood. in my feminine body shape. i was 24 and recently estranged from my relatives and working through childhood trauma, including all my preconceptions about gender, and whether or not i owed girlhood to anyone.

i owed girlhood to my followers, though.

when i announced that i would be killing the sad girl crochet brand, a lot of people were genuinely upset. i lost over a thousand followers in three months. people didn't care what i, tabby, was creating. they cared about seeing Content under the Sad Girl Brand. that's okay.

when creating for sad girl crochet i felt beholden to both sadness and girlhood. my primary mode of expression and self-understanding, my crochet, started to be incongruous with what i actually needed to express. instead of contending with my sadness and seeking to understand it, i exploited it. instead of finding my own version of girlhood, i recreated the girlhood that was shown to me online. it led to a pretty significant creative drought from mid-2022 till about three months ago, in late 2023.

when you make the art people expect of you rather than the art that is true, you kill a part of your soul. i know this now.

i did my first craft fair in summer 2022 and immediately after, i was creatively bereft. what little bits of creative energy i had left were spent. a few months later my husband and i moved across the state, away from the hellish house with the beautiful yard, a fresh start. once we moved, i told myself, i would feel at home with sad girl again. and i kept waiting to feel the way i did in 2020 and 2021. but the more time went by, the less sadgirl felt like a creative outlet, and more an albatross round my neck.

and weirdly...i started to feel guilty about ever marketing my sadness in the first place. to grapple with the fact that i was making money off of other women and femmes with depression - and marketing to them on the basis that they were as depressed as me. the more i thought about it, the squickier it felt.

i barely posted anything in 2022 and 2023. i signed up for pattern tests and immediately dropped out of them. i made promises i didn't deliver on. eventually, i just stopped logging on.

a lot of life went by. i crocheted for my family, my loved ones, myself. journaled. got back on tumblr. deleted twitter. started trading screen time for books. got outside more. made friends in the new town. and the longer i ignored sadgirlcrochet, the less i wanted to go back.

see, the thing was, i was actually healing and growing, finally. our living situation was stable. my family found our own little village. i came to terms with being trans-er than i'd let myself admit. sad girl was dead. i'd killed her. and that was healthy for me.

creature comforts was born of a desire to be truer to myself and to live with more love. to craft instead of sell. to share instead of market. to be online without wearing a mask. to be active on tumblr instead of instagram. to be a creator and an artist. to let these desires be misunderstood by others. to love, unabashedly.

i'm excited to see where this takes me in 2024.

[benetnvsch]

ADDRESSING TWITTER'S TOS/POLICY IN REGARDS TO ARTISTS AND AI

Hi !! if you're an artist and have been on twitter, you've most likely seen these screen shots of twitters terms of service and privacy policy regarding AI and how twitter can use your content

I want to break down the information that's been going around as I noticed a lot of it is unintentionally misinformation/fearmongering that may be causing artists more harm than good by causing them to panic and leave the platform early

As someone who is an artist and makes a good amount of my income off of art, I understand the threat of AI art and know how scary it is and I hope to dispel some of this fear regarding twitter's TOS/Privacy policy at least. At a surface level yes, what's going on seems scary but there's far more to it and I'd like to explain it in more detail so people can properly make decisions!

This is a long post just as a warning and all screenshots should have an alt - ID with the text and general summary of the image

Terms of Service

Firstly, lets look at the viral post regarding twitter's terms of service and are shown below

I have seen these spread a lot and have seen so many people leave twitter/delete all their art/deactivate there when this is just industry standard to include in TOS

Below are other sites TOS I found real quick with the same/similar clauses! From instagram, tiktok, and even Tumblr itself respectively, with the bit worded similar highlighted

Even Bluesky, a sight viewed as a safe haven from AI content has this section

As you can see, all of them say essentially the same thing, as it is industry standard and it's necessary for sites that allow you to publish and others to interact with your content to prevent companies from getting into legal trouble.

Let me break down some of the most common terms and how these app do these things with your art/content:

storing data - > allowing you to keep content uploaded/stored on their servers (Ex. comments, info about user like pfp)

publishing -> allowing you to post content

redistributing -> allowing others to share content, sharing on other sites (Ex. a Tumblr post on twitter)

modifying -> automatic cropping, in app editing, dropping quality in order to post, etc.

creating derivative works -> reblogs with comments, quote retweets where people add stuff to your work, tiktok stitches/duets

While these terms may seems intimidating, they are basically just tech jargon for the specific terms we know used for legal purposes, once more, simply industry standard :)

Saying that Twitter "published stored modified and then created a derivative work of my data without compensating me" sounds way more horrible than saying "I posted my art to twitter which killed the quality and cropped it funny and my friend quote-tweeted it with 'haha L' " and yet they're the same !

Privacy Policy

This part is more messy than the first and may be more of a cause for concern for artists. It is in regards to this screenshot I've seen going around

Firstly, I want to say that that is the only section in twitter's privacy policy where AI /machine learning is mentioned and the section it is is regarding how twitter uses user information.

Secondly, I do want to want to acknowledge that Elon Musk does have an AI development company, xAI. This company works in the development of AI, however, they want to make a good AGI which stands for artificial general intelligence (chatgpt, for example, is another AGI) in order to "understand the universe" with a scientific focus. Elon has mentioned wanting it to be able to solve complex mathematics and technical problems. He also, ofc, wants it to be marketable. You can read more about that here: xAI's website

Elon Musk has claimed that xAI will use tweets to help train it/improve it. As far as I'm aware, this isn't happening yet. xAI also, despite the name, does NOT belong/isn't a service of Xcorp (aka twitter). Therefore, xAI is not an official X product or service like the privacy policy is covering. I believe that the TOS/the privacy policies would need to expand to disclaim that your information will be shared specifically with affiliates in the context of training artificial intelligence models for xAI to be able to use it but I'm no lawyer. (also,,,Elon Musk has said cis/cisgender is a slur and said he was going to remove the block feature which he legally couldn't do. I'd be weary about anything he says)

Anyway, back to the screenshot provided, I know at a glance the red underlined text where it says it uses information collected to train AI but let's look at that in context. Firstly, it starts by saying it uses data it collects to provide and operate X products and services and also uses this data to help improve products to improve user's experiences on X and that AI may be used for "the purposes outlined in this policy". This means essentially just that is uses data it collects on you not only as a basis for X products and services (ex. targeting ads) but also as a way for them to improve (ex. AI algorithms to improve targeting ads). Other services it lists are recommending topics, recommending people to follow, offering third-party services, allowing affiliates etc. I believe this is all the policy allows AI to be used for atm.

An example of this is if I were to post an image of a dog, an AI may see and recognize the dog in my image and then suggest me more dog content! It may also use this picture of a dog to add to its database of dogs, specific breeds, animals with fur, etc. to improve this recommendation feature.

This type of AI image, once more, is common in a lot of media sites such as Tumblr, insta, and tiktok, and is often used for content moderation as shown below once more

Again, as far as I'm aware, this type of machine learning is to improve/streamline twitter's recommendation algorithm and not to produce generative content as that would need to be disclaimed!!

Claiming that twitter is now using your art to train AI models therefore is somewhat misleading as yes, it is technically doing that, as it does scan the images you post including art. However, it is NOT doing it to learn how to draw/generate new content but to scan and recognize objects/settings/etc better so it can do what social media does best, push more products to you and earn more money.

(also as a small tangent/personal opinion, AI art cannot be copywritten and therefore selling it would be a very messy area, so I do not think a company driven by profit and greed would invest so much in such a legally grey area)

Machine learning is a vast field , encompassing WAY More than just art. Please don't jump to assume just because AI is mentioned in a privacy policy that that means twitter is training a generative AI when everything else points to it being used for content moderation and profit like every other site uses it

Given how untrustworthy and just plain horrible Elon Musk is, it is VERY likely that one day twitter and xAI will use user's content to develop/train a generative AI that may have an art aspect aside from the science focus but for now it is just scanning your images- all of them- art or not- for recognizable content to sell for you and to improve that algorithm to better recognize stuff, the same way Tumblr does that but to detect if there's any nsfw elements in images.

WHAT TO DO AS AN ARTIST?

Everyone has a right to their own opinion of course ! Even just knowing websites collect and store this type of data on you is a valid reason to leave and everyone has their own right to leave any website should they get uncomfortable !

However, when people lie about what the TOS/privacy policy actually says and means and actively spread fear and discourage artists from using twitter, they're unintentionally only making things worse for artists with no where to go.

Yes twitter sucks but the sad reality is that it's the only option a lot of artists have and forcing them away from that for something that isn't even happening yet can be incredibly harmful, especially since there's not really a good replacement site for it yet that isn't also using AI / has that same TOS clause (despite it being harmless)

I do believe that one day xAI will being using your data and while I don't think it'll ever focus solely on art generation as it's largely science based, it is still something to be weary of and it's very valid if artists leave twitter because of that! Yet it should be up to artists to decide when they want to leave/deactivate and I think they should know as much information as possibly before making that decision.

There's also many ways you can protect your art from AI such as glazing it, heavily watermarking it, posting links to external sites, etc. Elon has also stated he'll only be using public tweets which means privating your account/anything sent in DMS should be fine!!

Overall, I just think if we as artists want any chance of fighting back against AI we have to stay vocal and actively fight against those who are pushing it and abandon and scatter at the first sign of ANY machine learning on websites we use, whether it's producing generative art content or not.

Finally, want to end this by saying that this is all just what I've researched by myself and in some cases conclusions I've made based on what makes the most sense to me. In other words, A Lot Could Be Wrong ! so please take this with a grain of salt, especially that second part ! Im not at all any AI/twitter expert but I know that a lot of what people were saying wasn't entirely correct either and wanted to speak up ! If you have anything to add or correct please feel free !!

[stepswowdsen]

【KagePro】 KuroEne Christmas Anthology Comics Illustration 🖤💙⛄❄️

I was looking through my old files and found this Christmas/Winter-themed art of Azami, Ene, and Kuroha 🎄 🔔

OMFG ENE IS SO CUTE AHHHHHHHH OMFG MY WIFE!!! 💙 🥺 🫶 ✨ HER EXPRESSION IS SO ADORABLE GOSH ADHSHDDHSHDSH I LOVE THE COLOURS TOO

Snow bunny Santa (Cutest Santa) and evil snake bf~~ 🐍 🐇

I can't find the source unfortunately but I'm assuming it's from one of the KagePro anthologies or KagePro fanbooks considering it seems like it's from a booklet with the page photo/scan and also cuz it names the illustrator in the bottom right as Osora

I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT KUROENE HAVE "OFFICIAL" ILLUSTRATIONS??? SCREAMING THEY'RE SO CUTEEEEEEE Or at least ones in fanbooks that are approved by the official creators??? (I'm just assuming anyways)

KUROENE MY KAGEPRO OTP!!! 🖤 💙

ENE'S CUTE CHRISTMAS HAT AND MUFFLERS I'M ASCENDING!!! THE CUTEST!!!

Ok I managed to confirm that this KuroEne + Azami Christmas/Winter themed illustration comes from one of the Kagerou Daze Official Anthology Comics. The KagePro anthology comics are mainly drawn by KagePro fan-artists, but official KagePro artists, Sidu, Wannyanpuu, Mahiro Satou, and Sayuki, have also drawn stuff for the anthologies. So, these are licensed and approved by the official creators.

I need my hands on the "official" KuroEne illust so bad 🥺 🖤 💙 🫶

I managed to confirm it cuz the font that denotes the artist is the same throughout the Anthology comics.

Now the big question lies in WHICH anthology this comes from… Some of the illusts are posted on the KagePro fan-wiki, but not all of them.

Like I'll have to see if the E-books for these were ever released online, but if not, then I'll try to get my hands on physical secondhand resellings

ON GOD??? "OFFICIAL" KUROENE ILLUSTRATION??? FOR ME??? THEY'RE SO CUTE WAHHHHHH

Just did a quick search and frick I don't think the e-books are available online 😔

I think I tracked it down tho. I tried looking for anthologies that おそら (Osora) drew for, so I think it could be SUMMER, WINTER, BITTER

Tho I'm not too sure, cuz not all of the anthology comics' product descriptions put the Artist list.

Trying to hunt down where the KuroEne illustration comes from so I'll just buy all KagePro anthology comics through used copies (secondhand resellings). It's go time

Since I'm not sure which one it's in, I'll get all 11 of them for cheap 🙏 Plus I also wanna scan the comics + illusts in them.

Feila just confirmed for me it comes from the Winter anthology, which makes sense considering the Christmas themed clothes. Tysm! 🙏

Feila, I hope you don't mind me posting your edit 🤭

They noticed that in the KagePro: Anthology Comic KuroEne illust by Osora, Kuroha's holding a snowman with blue colours (coincidentally, the same colours that Ene's hair and eyes tend to be drawn as - turquoise and her image colour blue), so the snowman is Ene /lh

Ene is carrying a giant red presents bag with a cat sitting on it so, honestly, thinking of a KuroEne idea where Ene is the Santa who goes around giving gifts is soooo cute.

Ene: It's Christmas!!! Which means it's time for presents!!!

Kuroha: Where's my present, hm?

Ene: Put the gun away, tough guy, it's CHRISTMAS!!!

Kuroha: Oh? This one is just a toy gun, though. (<- Is he lying or telling the truth? Who knows!!!)

Ene: Bad naughty guys like you just get COAL!!! BLEH!!! NO PRESENTS FOR YOU!!! (//>~<//) (:P)

Kuroha knows how to appeal to Ene's need for praise and attention so he just "butters her up" - showers her with praise and compliments and flattery, and Ene responds like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!!! Call me cute!!! Say I'm the cutest Santa in the whole world~ And MAYBE I'll think about giving you your present~" And pouts and crosses her arms at him in Ene's classic embarrassed tsundere fashion.

It would be cute if he kisses her (like on the cheek or the lips), and then says, "Thank you for your hard work this year, Santa~" And Ene just explodes (//O//O//) /lh