monstersketchfactory

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[DoTW] Scenting Strangers by Willowbyrd

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Posted this on twitter already but uhhh here we go again

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The spaces have gentle names: The reflection room. The cool-down room. The calming room. The quiet room.

But shut inside them, in public schools across the state, children as young as 5 wail for their parents, scream in anger and beg to be let out.

The students, most of them with disabilities, scratch the windows or tear at the padded walls. They throw their bodies against locked doors. They wet their pants. Some children spend hours inside these rooms, missing class time. Through it all, adults stay outside the door, writing down what happens.

In Illinois, it’s legal for school employees to seclude students in a separate space — to put them in “isolated timeout” — if the students pose a safety threat to themselves or others. Yet every school day, workers isolate children for reasons that violate the law, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois has found.

Children were sent to isolation after refusing to do classwork, for swearing, for spilling milk, for throwing Legos. School employees use isolated timeout for convenience, out of frustration or as punishment, sometimes referring to it as “serving time.”

For this investigation, ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune obtained and analyzed thousands of detailed records that state law requires schools to create whenever they use seclusion. The resulting database documents more than 20,000 incidents from the 2017-18 school year and through early December 2018.

Of those, about 12,000 included enough detail to determine what prompted the timeout. In more than a third of these incidents, school workers documented no safety reason for the seclusion.

State education officials are unaware of these repeated violations because they do not monitor schools’ use of the practice. Parents, meanwhile, often are told little about what happens to their children.

The Tribune/ProPublica Illinois investigation, which also included more than 120 interviews with parents, children and school officials, provides the first in-depth examination of this practice in Illinois.

Because school employees observing the students often keep a moment-by-moment log, the records examined by reporters offer a rare view of what happens to children inside these rooms — often in their own words.

“Please someone respond to me. … I’m sorry I ripped the paper. I overreacted. Please just let me out. Is anyone out there?” 

“Please, please, please open the door. Please, I’ll be good. Open the door and I’ll be quiet.”

“I’d rather die. You’re torturing me.”

Without doubt, many of the children being secluded are challenging. Records show school employees struggling to deal with disruptive, even violent behavior, such as hitting, kicking and biting. Workers say that they have to use seclusion to keep everyone in the classroom safe and that the practice can help children learn how to calm themselves.

But disability advocates, special-education experts and administrators in school systems that have banned seclusion argue that the practice has no therapeutic or educational value, that it can traumatize children — and that there are better alternatives.

No federal law regulates the use of seclusion, and Congress has debated off and on for years whether that should change. Last fall, a bill was introduced that would prohibit seclusion in public schools that receive federal funding. A U.S. House committee held a hearing on the issue in January, but there’s been no movement since.

Nineteen states prohibit secluding children in locked rooms; four of them ban any type of seclusion. But Illinois continues to rely on the practice. The last time the U.S. Department of Education calculated state-level seclusion totals, in 2013-14, Illinois ranked No. 1.

Although state law requires schools to file a detailed report each time they use seclusion, no one is required to read these accounts.

Several school district officials said they had not reviewed seclusion reports from their schools until reporters requested them. The Illinois State Board of Education does not collect any data on schools’ use of isolated timeout and has not updated guidelines since issuing them 20 years ago.

“Having a law that allows schools to do something that is so traumatic and dangerous to students without having some sort of meaningful oversight and monitoring is really, really troubling,” said Zena Naiditch, founder and leader of Equip for Equality, a disabilities watchdog group that helped write Illinois’ rules in 1999.

Informed of the investigation’s findings, the Illinois State Board of Education said it would issue guidance clarifying that seclusion should be used only in emergencies. Officials acknowledged they don’t monitor the use of isolated timeout and said they would need legislative action to do so.

This investigation, based on records from more than 100 districts, found seclusion was used in schools across every part of the state and by a range of employees, from teachers and aides to social workers and security personnel.

Some districts declined to provide records or gave incomplete information. Others wouldn’t answer even basic questions, saying the law did not require them to. Of more than 20 districts reporters asked to visit, only three said yes.

“Is this something that we’re ashamed of? It’s not our finest,” said Christan Schrader, director of the Black Hawk Area Special Education District in East Moline, which documented about 850 seclusions in the time period examined.

Schrader said she thinks her staff generally uses seclusion appropriately but acknowledged room for improvement. She met with reporters at the district’s administration building but wouldn’t let them see the seclusion rooms in the school across the parking lot.

“Nobody wants to talk about those things because it doesn’t reflect well,” she said.

Absolutely barbaric.  

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View Fully here - https://www.deviantart.com/ocoree/art/Creekside-Preening-817974988

This one was an interesting piece to work on! I had been requested to reinvision/adapt/update/tweak an existing character with pretty much free reign on what I could do with the character, so I took a formerly fully-scaled wyvern and poomfed him up with a coat of feathers, a new set of headgear, some fin adjustments, and a new coat of ‘paint’ following similar schematics of the original incarnations. It was interesting working with cast-lights from multiple sources known for throwing strongly-colored reflection light, and using that in an attempt to portray the general reflectiveness of the scales and feathers; plus remembering ambient cast lighting on fellow scenic items. Rivers/creeks/streams/brooks are.. interesting bodies of water to attempt replicating, as they all look differently depending on angle, time of day, and weather/seasonal conditions. I’ll eventually figure out an easier way to render them more effectively than I tried here. Same for my trees.. Trees are… hmm, yeah… Trees… Liking the water shadows though, and the little blue cast light on the rocks under the trees :> Character © Hyratel Art © 2019 - Myself - Please do not alter, copy, and/or redistribute!

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“The original Steven Universe is over” is a sentence that sure did punch me in the gut, I’ll tell you what

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Dog owners please be aware.

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Commission Pricing 2019

My up to date commission pricing, disclaimer, and terms of service. Please reference this guide for commissioning me in the future. Thank you.

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Disclaimer and Terms of service: By reading this information below and sending payment, the commissioner is agreeing to terms of service below.

All commissions will be taken through Paypal only, payment will be sent as “Service” and not “Gift”. The start of commission will not be started until full payment has been received, unless otherwise discussed privately. Please include the username of commissioner that is requesting the commission, as well as a brief description on what was ordered in the details of the transfer. The commissioner will not receive any files until full commission payment has been paid in full. If there is a current queue, I will be work from the first commission and message each person individually once it is time for that commissioner’s turn. If commissioner cannot provide payment at that time, their spot will be skipped onto the next in queue. If the queue has been completed and previous skipped commissioners have still not provided payment, the commission will be terminated. If commissioned again by the same commissioner in the future, commissioner will have to provide payment at time of commission regardless of their position in the queue.

Each commission will come as a PNG file type. Any other file type will be discussed privately. Each commissioner will take the full sized version of that specific commission with full resolution. PSDs will NOT be provided, I reserve the right to keep all original files unless otherwise discussed. Extra details and extra characters will cost more, ie mechanical parts, overly detailed clothing, and complicated designs. I will not draw overly sexual acts, fetish acts, illegal activities, hateful imagery, and offensive works. Clear visual references from commissioner MUST be provided. Any inaccuracies that I have after the process has been completed will not be adjusted if the information provided did not accurately explain the information correctly. If commissioner purchases a higher tier commission than the Sketch stage, they will be sent work in progress imagery to accurately see the process. If there needs to be adjustments made, the Sketch process is the only time any major changes can be made.

All information regarding commission will be recorded only via private messaging system online (notes/direct message, email, or Discord). I reserve the right to decline and/or terminate the process of the commission. In the event the processes has been terminated, refund will only be provided on how much work that is left to do, ie if the commission is for Flats, and it was terminated during the Lining process, only $15 will be refunded. The commissioner will have the incomplete version sent to them once the process has been terminated. Refunds will not be provided in Sketch tier.

I reserve full the rights all imagery, this includes but not limited to prints and merchandise, to promote myself and my services. I reserve the right to increase prices at my own convenience. All watermarks/signatures will always be placed on finished commission piece. The commissioner is never to remove them from any imagery provided. Commissioner cannot make any prints of work provided nor make any income off of work provided. The commissioner can, however, crop imagery for personal use icons, website or gallery, but credit must be included in any postings. Postings of imagery should never be full resolution nor an unwatermarked version of said work. I reserve the right to post online at my own discretion of any

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Ahhhh! Rasa, if you make a whole comic like this I will be all up in it every time you upload. Not that I don’t already do that though.

I have no business making speech bubbles, please excuse the janky placement - I am Jon Snow (before he forgot all of his lines) when it comes to comic pages I wanted to draw a character interaction image with dialog, my co-creator and I eventually want to try our hand at a series of short comics about the world we share (I get to draw fields and rolling hills as all of my characters are based in the wilds… most of hers are based in cities… with buildings. One of us dun goofed) and it seemed like a fun learning experience. Painting the ground was a pain, I still don’t know how to render soil/rocks properly but I gave it a shot and had fun with the puddles. Living in the UK we often have these grey, overcast skies with spits of rain here and there and I absolutely love it. The sky is all just this warm grey gradient and reflected in puddles - I don’t know what it is specifically that I like so much about the overcast look but it’s my favourite - so I decided to go with that for this image. The calf is a young Borrusk, it isn’t uncommon for the villagers to take them on short walks to encourage them to follow their eventual rider who in this case is Kotsu’s son, Jorhnn (pronounced ‘Yor-hn’). Kotsu is carrying this little girl on their way home as it begins to rain again. So yeah, cabbage leaves. Everyone wants to lay down to a funny crunch right?

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Rasa, you make the best mood settings. <3

Messing about, seeing if I can mock animate that fire glow - it was quite fun! I have no idea what he’s doing, he’s just sort of standing over an out of view campfire? Maybe I’ll figure out something else to go in the image at some point. Screen cap sort of thing?  I have no reason for making half of the stuff I do other than ‘‘Oooh I wonder if I can do x and y’’ haha

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nicki (@willowbyrdz) on Aug 25, 2019 at 10:27pm PDT

I'm do happy how this came out.

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Signal boost!

One of my favorite Webtoon artist is needing a lineartist to help them out temporarily

I’m for sure going to try this too for sure. 

This is formatted for instagram obviously hence the note about swiping. I won’t respond to every email - but I especially won’t respond if you don’t read all the requirements and its clear that you didn’t. 

I’m going to be going to LACC in October and I want to be able to start building up my buffer for it! I have a couple weeks worth now but that is not a super safe spot to be in so I am paying for help!! 

Thank you!!

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Lol I made a Pokefusion. Dewoot x Gulpin = Gulott. 

I might do more of these tbh. Maybe I’ll do lets draws.... note to self.

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Animal Gaits for Animators by Stephen Cunnane

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Continuing with my messy little bestiary. Re-drew the Mammoth as I wasn’t happy with it and illustrated it’s odd little tapir snout. Some prehistoric elephants were weird as all hell! Really interesting to learn about them and their habitats as well as their adaptations (pygmy mammoth are something I need in my life). There isn’t a great deal to these guys however, they’re not unlike modern day elephants in their habits and family groups. These guys would live up to the north mostly along with the Cockatrice.

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I redesigned my old mermaid character, Corsica. She's based on a nurse shark was her original design, but I also took that same concept and added to it. I thought about it a lot and how a plausible mermaid would be. In this case, I figured they wouldn't have mammalian breasts, because that's needed since they are going to be laying eggs. Thus, no chest.  I then thought a lot about hair and obviously I didn't want actual hair but I went for sea anemones as her "hair". Since her gills were on her neck, they would move to push water into her gills. Here is her original.

Corsica Redesign by Willowbyrd

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The lines addition looks awesome. I’m so happy on how it’s coming out! She looks amazing so far. I can’t wait to put on her colors and see how well she looks.

Another Corsica from yesterday.

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Another Corsica from yesterday.