#dropdowns

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

@support @staff what in the world is going on? I keep getting auth errors when I try to post things and when I tried to log out in order to log back in the website keeps error looping me to the offline tumblr page rather than logging me in properly.

this is like my 4th attempt to log in by going to the login page directly via URL. It also seems to have locked me onto the bright white colour scheme, nothing I click is working? Drafts are saving but nothing else is functional?

[hailsatanacab]

about to make another spreadsheet. truly one of life's great joys

[honkbird]

The big art post !! the behind-the-scenes of the tribalhunter PNGtuber stuff ! At least on the art side-- I can talk about the coding mechanics but that's not quite my place to. The high-level overview of that is there's some cool stuff going on with memory wrappers and godot to get stuff shake'n and jamm'n The rest of it is below the cut just so you don't have to scroll tons if you don't care, but take some time and read !! 3 days of work y'know !!

The first sketches were started at 10 pm tuesday the 15th. I tweaked it with some edits until about 1 am

For people working on pngs or long term projects -- make notes !! genuinely !! you can see "ok what was i thinking when i did this" and it made like infinitely easier. You might notice that stage 2 png was not long for this world -- we ended up cutting that one and shifting 3-5 down a stage, and just making a larger final stage. The night ended with: these!

Larger final, we moved where some hands ended up, cleaned some notes, and so on

Wednesday I got to work

on some second pass ones, e.g., cleaner lineart. Mind you, not final! To have proper safespace with the png we had to make actual layered sections to avoid ripped seams on squashing and stretching and rotating and etc.

These also had the first of the talk sprites! I don't do entirely new sprites for the talking ones just because of the pure quantity of images. So, just an arm tilt and head angling. This means we have mute and a talk variants of a few sprites (e.g., the stage 1 is 3 sprites. Body, scarf flappies, and head. We have talk versions of the body and the head). Also, he used to have nips! there was going to be a slightly darker purple but we scrapped it for . well . obvious reasons. We went with classy scarf modesty.

This is how you know you're doing well!

Thursday I started on the finals!

This was the first one sent -- showing off the layers. Tip, I used to layer based on like "back arm" "head" "fore body" etc. It's weirder to get used to when you use numbered layers, but holy shit it made importing easier. You automatically know the layer order to put them in to avoid clipping. Getting these done I got to work on testing 'em too!

this gave us our first working model! Oh, he used to have black robes too! this was to match the custom ingame sprites he got, but the color wasn't quite popping enough. The scarf saturation would later be turned up too, and more color adjusting. But this was workable! A lovely demo. All that was left was design tweaks and the talk sprites!

Friday was dedicated to

figuring out the colors and the talk sprites. For giggles, here's a bunch of variants produced!

We changed the robes, the scarf tone, and his lower gradient. neat Brave fact, his design has a gradient! It's horrible for gif compression! With all that done, then came doing well . all of the sprites!

Note, the talk sprites had some copied mute ones for visual reference. Gotta be consistent! It was at this point the pngtuber was "done", so to speak. Talk sprites worked and everything uh . jiggled right. But I still had a whole weekend! There wasn't as much photo evidence. What WAS changed between then and the final was: 1) the gradient was shifted to be a smooth curve instead of dappling 2) the talk sprite for stage 5's beak was fixed to remove a tangent line 3) the belly for stage 5 was rounded out to be more consistent with the game (less "doughy" to quote) 4) we added another sprite for the arm on stage 5 to layer better. Those changes weren't done until about Saturday, and then the code was tweaked all the way up until adding damage and transition effects on sunday and monday!

P.S., the model still clipped in the end a little! The code did some growth based on the fullness factor and . uh. wow!

Anway woo !! that was some wip photos and stories, I wish there was more of an intense struggle to tell but it was pretty quickly done. My shoulderblade hurts a bit to tell the truth and I think I overdid it on the pace but hooray!

[timethehobo]

The way Rook stiffens up when they drop from a ledge tho. X’D

[antiadvil]

Thanks Google AI. I think it's really important that Dan chose to respect Dan and Phil's privacy that way

[it-crowd-unexpected-reboot]

Update #2: A New Outlining Method, Dropdown Plotter

I've been having a hard time conceptualizing how to plan out a novel lately. It used to come so easy to me. Now that I'm a real adult, it feels like there isn't enough space in my brain anymore for me to have my story all in my head without writing my ideas down somewhere.

So, good outlining methods, which can be hard to come by, are crucial for my writing process.

But, a lot of traditional methods don't work for me.

In my opinion, it's extremely important to have an outlining method that doesn't overwhelm you, and which feels creatively freeing. And when do I need to be more creatively free, than when writing an IT Crowd fanfiction?

So I've come up with a new outlining method that I'd love to share with you all! I call it Dropdown Plotter.

Dropdown Plotter uses the dropdown menu feature, which can be found in both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel, to help you better visualize (and, most importantly, easily reorganize) the major aspects of each chapter of your story.

Basically, it's a spreadsheet that includes, at minimum, 8 columns.

Chapter Title

Plotlines

Included Character(s)

Perspective Character(s)

Location(s)

Chapter Story Description

Writing Stage

Due Date

Why keep track of these things? Balance. Basically, making sure your characters, plotlines, POVs, and important locations all get adequate page time.

It's a lot easier to conceptualize these things when you have it on a color-coded spreadsheet, zoomed out really far, and can see in a big picture way. For example, you might see that the red color indicating "Legolas" is in a scene, drops off after Chapter 17. You might see that the green-coded plot about his missing shoe is only important for 5 chapters in the middle of the story, or that we're spending almost the entire story in the bathroom and never in the evil lair.

So, how do you use the Dropdown Plotter?

First, you go into the dropdown menu, and you can see all the plots you've selected. There's a handy "search feature" for those writing the next Game of Thrones. You want to click the little pencil icon in the bottom right, which is the "edit" button.

On the right-hand side of your screen, a column will pop up called "Data Validation Rules." From here, you can edit the names and colors of each item in the dropdown menu, and add or delete things as you'd like.

Make sure to click "allow multiple selections" on the bottom of the data validation rules pop-up. This will allow you to select multiple characters, multiple locations, and multiple plots when you're in the dropdown menus.

Don't forget to click "Done" at the bottom!

On top of the dropdown menus, the nice thing about working in a spreadsheet is that you can always drag and drop the rows and columns. This makes it extremely easy to change the order of scenes around, in a way that feels very impermanent and easy.

Here is what my Dropdown Plotter looked like for the first three chapters of The Grant: An IT Crowd Fanfiction.

Looks pretty, right? And pretty outlines build confidence! Not only that, but what I like most about this outlining method is that it encourages me to be less precious with my ideas.

It's way less intimidating to overhaul major aspects of your story, such as the dominant POV, the main plot, etc., when all you have to do is click a little button in the dropdown menu to change everything. When I'm editing a little blurb in a spreadsheet versus an entire step outline, it reminds me that no writing problem is insurmountable, and nothing is ever really set in stone.

Again, it builds confidence.

Unfortunately, I've only built a Dropdown Plotter in Google Sheets, but I've provided a blank version to share with you all. The nice thing about spreadsheets is that you can add and delete things as you see fit. For example, some people might want to add...

More columns indicating multiple scenes within the same chapter!

A "Story Beat" column, to mark the specific plot beats each chapter follows (as in the Hero's Journey or the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet).

An "Important Info" column, to mark any worldbuilding or character details discussed or introduced in a certain chapter.

Literally anything your little heart desires!

Happy outlining and I hope you enjoy the Dropdown Plotter!

[dol-dogboy]

Oh yeah I’m pretty sure I remember seeing a post abt wanting to find good resources for kink lists so here you go! Four of em’ served hot and ready for ur freakiness pleasure. Quality not guaranteed I am liable for absolutely nothing

[iraprince]

also wow this new ui on desktop.... SUCKS................. on one hand i can see that they're TRRRYYYYING??? to listen to us when we say "cluttering the page up w a bunch of garbage is bad" but they've overshot it and decided to hide every useful/regularly-clicked button from us behind a nesting cascade of additional unnecessary clicks. that is not what we meant but thanks for trying

[sunxrice]

with artfight just around the corner, here's your annual reminder to keep the text on your profiles (user, character, permissions, comments) readable. people are going to be reading them, and not everyone uses your preferred site theme. this means:

remove text colors, particularly pure white / black (or any colors close to white / black), pastel colors, or neon colors

or at least keep text colors readable on both light and dark themes

check how your profiles look on both desktop and mobile, some formats (especially tables) can look different on certain devices

other formatting choices (like font or text size) can also impact readability. this is not to say that you can't decorate your profile or whatever. if you can make it both pretty and readable, by all means go ahead, but readability comes first

depending on how complex the formatting is, sometimes your best bet is to remove formatting from all text and reformat everything, preferably in source mode, so you can manually edit the tags and fix any broken or inconsistent formatting that might have been there.

(also: paste your text without formatting; this is a pretty common reason why pasted text can look weird. typically the keyboard shortcut for this is ctrl + shift + v, but you might be able to find this option in the right click (long press if you're on mobile) menu. pasting text in source mode also removes formatting.)

my point is: learn bbcode and get used to editing your profiles in source mode. there's a guide (https://artfight.net/info/guide-bbcode) that you can refer to if you're confused about anything.

thanks

[endykelopaedia]

i dont think i hear people complaining abt the intensity of discord nitro advertising enough 😭

[nights-at-crystarium]

I’m sorry you’re dealing with stuff. I hope it’s resolved quickly and we’ll for everyone involved. 🫂

Thank you ;w; It's already resolved, now I just need a few days to recover mentally.

[spontaneite-fr]

I was thinking "this is some really long maintenance, gotta be something big" and then "random February day is a weird time for a major update" and then I realised it's valentine's in a couple days.

It would be GREAT timing for a breeding or romance themed feature update, just saying.

[hey-scully-itsme]

having a riveting afternoon overhauling my book spreadsheet, the spreadsheet where i track all my books

[mediumgayitalian]

what are you doing in a catholic elementary school?? do you work there?

yep! im at a prac for the next couple weeks actually, im a year out (-_-) from being certified, but i work for the local catholic school board. have for years and i grew up there so i know the ins and outs of their internet system WELL lol

[divinector]

Drop Down Menu On Hover

[scaryfaggot]