#(not sure if that's fundamental to the medium for me or if it's because everything is so compressed)

[aeide-thea]

wot show is so obsessed with architecture and tbh i'm not mad about it???

[turtle-steverogers]

Help. I’m having Steve thoughts. Talk to me about poor Steve fresh off the serum. He feels wrong in his skin. He feels right in his skin. Everything is so sensitive. He doesn’t know how to work this new body of his and he can’t quite get there. He can’t finish. He’s so frustrated.

Enter Bucky (of course). Haven’t thought how tho. Does Steve works up the courage to ask? To tell him? Does Bucky just know? Does he maybe walk in on something?

But it works with him. Even if this is all new to Bucky as well, somehow he just knows. And he’s slow and gentle but also steady and sure and he gets Steve relaxed and he gets him there. Couple of times 😮‍💨👀

And the thing about it is that Steve's just so sensitive now. Before he had the serum, he had the opposite problem. It took a lot to get him going, and he'd always have to maintain a certain level of energy to keep the pleasure cresting until he finished. So going hard on himself is what he's used to.

But the serum. God, the serum makes him so fucking sensitive it hurts. But when he slows down, it aches. It isn't enough. And there's so much else he's trying to learn how to adjust to, that he gives up after a while trying to figure out how to make his goddamn dick cooperate with him. After a while, he just accepts that he can't find that happy medium.

Until one day they're on leave. Somewhere in England, some shitty countryside inn, and it's late. It's late and Steve's tired and he just wants to feel good. Plus, Bucky's out for the night with some of the guys, so he figures now's a good time as any to try jerking off again.

Except he's still way too goddamn sensitive, and he's left with a heaving chest and aching cock and no relief.

He's so frustrated, that he barely notices the door unlocking until it's too late and Bucky's walking in, looking a little more than tipsy and all loose edges. Tie undone and shirt untucked and fuck, he's hot. His hair isn't gelled and Steve's got his dick in hand and--

"Oh shit," Bucky blurts, eyes wide as he takes in Steve, half naked on the bed, cock hard and leaking. Steve has the grace to blush, at least. "Fuck, sorry pal, I can... go..."

He pauses, licking his lips. His gaze is fixed on Steve's cock, and it isn't like they haven't seen each other naked before, but never like this. Never spread out and wanting.

Steve swallows. He's frozen. He can't seem to move. Put himself away. Have the grace to cover up. And there's some part of him that doesn't want to, because there's always been this thread between him and Bucky. A low simmering fire that flared every now and then. An unspoken tension beyond the understanding that they'd burn the world down for each other, that there was something more.

"Don't go," Steve croaked. Bucky's eyes widened, flicking back up to Steve's. He steps in, closes the door.

"Ah, for-- you know. Privacy," he fumbles, and Steve laughs, and fuck, he wants. He wants Bucky so bad.

"C'mere?" He asks, stroking himself again. Shuddering.

Bucky's eyes darken. "Yeah," he agrees, tugging his tie off and kicking off his shoes, shedding his clothes until he's nearly naked as well, and Steve's heart is pounding now, because are they doing this? Are they really doing this?

"You're fucking beautiful," Bucky says, reverent as he crawls onto the bed, and it's like two puzzle pieces slotting together. Inhabiting the same small space, just like they always have, even if they're different. Fundamentally changed. "Always have been, but fuck, I thought you'd never ask."

And fuck, now they've said it. Now it's out there, plain and simple.

"I haven't been able to finish," Steve admits, face turning a dark shade of red. He hitches a breath when Bucky runs his fingers over his lower stomach, ghosting downward, toward Steve's cock. "I'm too-- it's too sensitive, with the serum and-- oh fuck."

His eyes roll back as Bucky takes him in hand, and shit, he should have known Bucky would just know. He's stroking him now, slow and gentle, but firm enough that Steve's lower stomach starts to tighten, and yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's fucking perfect, he thinks.

"I've gotcha," Bucky murmurs, leaning down, kissing him. Heated and loving all at once.

And when Steve finally finishes, silent scream caught on Bucky's lips, he knows that he's safe. That even in this new skin, Bucky can make him feel like himself. Same bones. Same heart.

[writeouswriter]

pls no anti ai art demagogy on my dash, thx

(X) in reference to this reblog I assume.

This is the wildest ask I’ve ever gotten.

“Please no love for the humanity of creation on my dash, please. Please no acknowledgement that art and the human experience behind those making it is inherently and fundamentally intertwined. Please no shoving the fact in my face that art is meant to connect rather than consume.

And please no pointing out the basic truth that most AI engines are built off the stolen work of others.”

Demagogy, noun: political activity or practices that seek support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument.

You come into MY house, you tell me what not to reblog on MY blog, and you what? Call me “irrational” and insult my understanding of the topic in the process?

Political activity, political activity... fuck off. Actors, writers, artists, those most affected by this ARE the ordinary people, and their concerns and fears surrounding this are perfectly rational.

And you know, nothing hits it home more for me than when I thought about my favourite show at the moment, the one that makes me lose my mind a thousand times over, I thought about everything in it that makes me tick, thought about both strong points and weak points, because it is flawed, god, is it flawed because people inherently are, and that’s the beauty, but mostly, I thought about the sheer amount of care/thought and depth put into it in a way I've never really seen before and in a medium/genre/whatever you'd absolutely never expect to find that thought put into, especially if taken completely at a surface level. Thought about the levels of metaphor and symbolism layered in beneath the silliness, thought about the callbacks and clever timing, thought about the behind the scenes arguments about what direction worked best for the narrative and the audience, arguments that took place because of how much they cared not just about telling a good story, but about telling one that really means something to them.

Thought about the love, the time, the excitement and the flair and personality and background and intent of each and every person behind the team bleeding its way into the scripts, into the acting, into the heart of what makes it truly what it is, and how that love bleeds into the audience as well, how that love and human connection is what prompts people to write full page essays and analyses on it, draw fanart for it, create the most beautiful fics for it, that love is what prompts them to laugh and cry and vibrate at the speed of sound thinking about it, and what prompts thousands upon thousands to come together in their appreciation for and relation to it, rallying around it like a group of cavemen around a campfire when they had never before seen the flame.

And then.... then I thought about the idea of that same show being written by an AI and genuinely felt physically ill. Because no real care will have been put into that beyond "If it looks like a TV show, sounds like a TV show, it must be a TV show." And on the surface, maybe it’d look fine, I’m sure some people wouldn’t notice. But it’d not only be made without thought, but consumed without thought. And, sure, maybe that'll fill you up in the short term, but it's gonna leave you feeling hollow and sick eventually. Because stories are not a thing to be mass produced with a random assortment of the cheapest quality materials on a conveyor belt that shovels them directly into people's throats at the most efficient speed possible, stories are not a thing meant to just be consumed! They are a thing made with intent in every aspect, even when accidental because our lives shape it subconsciously, they are a thing made with love, a thing to be savoured! And yes, for that to happen, they will take a lot of time and hard work and dedication, all of which deserve fair compensation and respect, all of which cannot just be replaced by a sham amalgamation of these things, and they will be all the better for it.

And on some level, corporations know this, and they want you to blame their shortcomings on the writers, on the artists, they want you to look at things like the strikes and those rallying against AI and get mad that they’re keeping art from the common people, or forcing them to come to this, or they want you to think they’re simply trying to make art more accessible, all the while building their conveyor belts in the background with the blood of those they’re kicking down, taking away jobs and shoving the humanity out of the picture.

Art is made to communicate, and sometimes it’s frustrating when we can’t get that communication across, when the image we want to convey is out of our skill level, our capability, when our words get tangled up, jumbled together and we need a helping hand to find the right ones again, and on this level, maybe AI could be a useful supplemental tool, or a fun little thing to mess around with, if ethically sourced, if used for good, if taking into account and graciously acknowledging exactly how it’s being used as a tool, rather than trying to pass it off as something it’s not.

But is it political, is it irrational, to merely state that the human condition cannot be replaced?

——

The unfollow button is free, I don’t work for you.

[worldgonewrongpod]

What have you learned from OFC and unwell that’s you’re carrying into WGW?

Wow- @lack-of-daisy-cow, this is a FANTASTIC question. The very short answer- literally everything. The long answer could go for pages and pages, and still not get close to scraping the surface- but neither of those responses are very satisfying- so let me try to get something in the middle.

Each new show is informed by, and in some ways a response to the previous show. That may seem strange, given how fundamentally different each show is form, cast, and design-wise- but there's definitely a long throughline.

We learned a ton about structuring and planning long-form storytelling during the run of Our Fair City, which we turned around and put into practice with Unwell. We also learned a lot about what kind of characters we wanted to tell stories about, and how to build them over time- I think in Our Fair City you can see a really marked shift between Season Two and Season Three in how we were thinking about how to build an ensemble of characters.

Unwell taught us a lot about the audio-only medium- and gave us a lot of chances to experiment (it also, notably, coincided with Jeffrey in grad school studying sound art and theory). Whereas with Our Fair City, we were largely theatre and live improv creators making work in an audio medium, by the time we were rolling on Unwell, we were sound artists-and I think you can hear a lot of the things we were doing to push the medium and experiment with what we could do. World Gone Wrong has grown directly out of us thinking about audio drama as an audio-rich medium (rather than a visually-poor medium) and wanting to experiment with a narrow, restricted form.

So- we're going into World Gone Wrong with a lot exciting theories about how to make interesting audio that tells a story over an extended period of time. We've got actors and writers who we've worked with in some cases for 15+ years. And notably- because of the ongoing support of listeners (through our membership program and through their advocacy and enthusiasm online), we've got the space to make a run at a new show.

We're so thankful for our listeners for giving us a chance as we play in these radically different spaces within the audio fiction medium. We're fairly sure you'll hear that the heart- and the craft- are continuous throughout, and we hope you'll enjoy World Gone Wrong (and all of the future projects that it will inform)!

[xxtha-blog]

I can't really understand Ace's psychology... In the comic he seems to me to be a funny dandy, a bit of a tease but not a bad guy, with a trauma that has led him to do stupid things for reasons who were moral. Given that the comic ended on a hopeful note thanks to Dream, we can only imagine that things will get better for him afterwards... Whereas in the Asks, the commentaries and all the information outside the comic, he comes across as much more cynical, tragic and negative... In fact, over and above what I'm sure is a lack of understanding of the comic, it's a difference in the aura of both that I feel that's confusing me... Perhaps you can enlighten me?

There's definitely a difference in how Ace acts outside of the comic vs how Ace acts inside the comics. A lot of it is the difference between Ace being essentially shackled by Joker vs afterwards.

He really doesn't break the fourth wall very much within the comic so you don't get much of his active disdain of us. It's a contained story-line, he can't interact with creators in real-time. Whereas, on a medium like tumblr or in an rp event, he's real-time talking with creators, and he loves to antagonize creators, hence, being pretty cynical.

His nature as a character is something that isn't resolved and 'things will get better' doesn't mean he's doesn't have like. Fifty different mental illnesses still. In fact, Ace in the comic recognizes this by not saying that things are better, but that they could be better, and in two parts of that, his goal is to 1. Enjoy himself. And 2. Get over what he lost, both of which he is doing in most of the post-AU stuff. When he references his tragedy he usually does so mockingly or ironically. When he talks to creators he's also doing the same. The ask blog isn't that great of an example for his post-Au character given it's intentionally a non-canon and actively antagonistic format, so he's just constantly not enjoying it. A better example would be RP events on discord, which most people never saw, or this really old one-shot I made when I was like 16, which you can read here (it's not the best written but still in character):

This is a pretty typical way he'd react. He's not really overly cynical or negative, mostly just chaotic and quick witted. If he thought you thought that about that, he would be offended, and then he'd act much more positive, just for you. He'd give people gifts and sing funny musical numbers, full orchestration. Do some dances, really bring the energy.

If people thought he was too upbeat and positive, he'd kill a rabbit with a playing card in front of them, electrocute someone, and threaten to burn their house down (whether serious or not is up to you).

His personality is always revolving around his weird way of speaking and general oddities, but he'll essentially do anything as long as an illusion is fuelling it because illusions allow him to do anything. Which includes acting in a very wide variety of ways.

The power of illusions just lets him make the world his playground.

He plays the hero, he plays the villain, he plays whatever role he thinks is something you haven't seen him play before, because he can do whatever he wants (except cliches, they'll kill him dead), and he's going to do whatever he wants, to keep you on your toes. If he's talking to creators he's almost always going to be sarcastic though, simply because he doesn't like them very much. He uses other characters as vectors for his silly hi-jinks, which he just fundamentally can't pull when talking to creators directly.

You can also find a more in depth overview of his personality here:

[eerna]

I love Danielle Gilligan as much as the next person, but after reading that article you linked I’m once again pretty pissed off they didn’t hire a plus sized actress for the role. I was pissed when the casting was announced but I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. But after everything is laid out on the table, with Jesper being given lighter skin as well as his portrayal as a bisexual man, and Kaz not being played by an disabled actor, and the erasure of Inej’s trauma it really shows they don’t actually give a shit about representing the canon characters. Everything that article points out really hits home and like the cast seems so cool and nice but there’s so many things fundamentally wrong with the adaptation that it’s really not enough anymore. The show needs the “out of character tag” because Jesus Christ they’re such watered down versions of the book it’s pretty insulting as a reader. Anyways thank you for answering asks about this stuff because it’s nice to see people looking at it with a critical eye instead of “Freddy Carter hot”

Okay a disclaimer: I think the article is wrong on quite a few accounts, and casting Danielle is one of them. Leigh Bardugo said she never specified Nina's size beyond "fat" because she wanted all large girls to relate to her, which means saying "Nina is canonically stated as plus-sized and can only be played by a plus-sized actress" is wrong. Also, calling s1 Danielle "skinny" simply because she isn't plus-sized is shitty and reductive of body diversity. At the moment of her casting, Danielle WAS accurate for Nina, because she was fat (on the smaller end of fat, but absolutely NOT skinny or medium). Danielle has gone on record to explain how badly it hurt to be rejected for her size in the industry, and then finally land a role only to have fans claim her body is wrong once again, and I am totally convinced that's a part of why she lost so much weight in the past 3 years. Kaz' casting is the same: Kaz gets up to so much inappropriate things that he says his disability got way worse after the events of the books, and putting a disabled actor through long filming days of an action show just doesn't sound viable to me. CGI and body doubles for every other scene aren't cheap, and also mean the character will NOT be played by the disabled actor most of the time, so we're back to square 1. Yes, disabled characters can be played by disabled actors, but maybe Kaz Brekker is not the best example of that. Jesper's casting, however, is absolutely unacceptable (especially when you take into account that Netflix does this all the time) and I still can't believe people just forgot about it. Same for Inej. I liked the paragraph in the article that pointed out how the show is only interested in scoring as many diversity points as possible, as quickly as possible, without making sure their tokens are treated as well written characters. It explained so well why Wesper was written the way it was. Ugh. Tokenism.

And no problem ahah, I totally get that people need to vent and finding fellow SaB haters is difficult. Maybe my freedom of thought is caused by the fact that Freddy Carter isn't hot to me. Guess we'll never know

[dream-to-be-frog]

I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but while I don't really think Pedro's a bad actor overall, so far I've been underwhelmed by HBO's version of Joel. They're trying so hard to play into the whole soft daddy aspect of Pedro's previous roles all because they want to make Joel more "likable". The way I knew this was going to happen when he was cast 🙄

so far it’s very interesting for me because there are some scenes where i’m like wow that was good others where i’m like. what was that.

i am enjoying the show, and i think pedro is doing pretty well but… i do agree? i’m trying to keep an open mind still but it’s like—

the crying last episode pissed me off a little. the joel in the game does not know how to identify a single emotion besides like, i dunno. protectiveness and rage?? i love that man but he is not emotionally intelligent. (the only man i love who i’d allow to be this way.)

by cutting out ALL the action i think they aren’t able to demonstrate how brutal joel can be. nothing about him in this show so far indicates to me that this man can single-handedly slaughter a whole hospital of fireflies like. it just doesn’t make sense

this version of joel is not only softer but he also can’t hold his own as well?? i like that they wanted to make him a middle aged man and not a tank and that comes with some limitations but ellie has probably saved him as many times as he’s saved her. my biggest complaint is that it seems like they’re companions because ellie doesn’t know how to travel west and has less experience. part of his considering himself a father comes with protecting her and getting protective of her. we literally don’t see that. i know they can’t have hella action scenes but i’d like at least a little bit of joel being brutal and a little unhinged bc that’s the whole point of his character—to show the lengths he’ll go to to protect her.

i’m not sure or not if the softness could be owed to pedro as a person in terms of casting, but i do agree they’ve taken away some of his gray morality. we keep hearing he killed people with tommy, killed innocents but nothing we see ever backs that up. part of what makes joel so compelling is that he’s objectively not really a good person, but he IS fundamentally human in a way that’s so relatable and logical that we forgive the literal atrocities lol

i started drafting this last week before the left behind episode but going into david next week, i think what’s going to make or break the joel thing for me is if he tortures those people trying to find where ellie is. without the torture scene i have no clue how the end will possibly make sense given what we know about him. and i really do think it’s more a thing of the script and the tv format (and only nine episodes!) not giving enough time to focus on everything much more than it is about the actors themselves (i think they’re doing pretty good, acting-wise—especially bella)

in some ways, i feel like the underwhelming feeling can some from the less drama. i get again why they can’t have too many fight scenes or whatever, but in some cases this really lowers the stakes and so it just feels less dramatic. even him getting rebar’d was so dramatic, and while i get that a normal person (not video game dads) can’t live through getting stabbed clean through, i feel like they could have still made him fall on something sharp but it’s much smaller and doesn’t go through his whole stomach? like i feel like there could have been some happy medium where it was realistic but also more dramatic and high stakes

i feel like i repeated myself a lot and i’m never good at drafting these things bc i just spit out words and don’t think about it but. i DO think it’s very enjoyable to watch, even if i think some things weren’t done quite as effectively. the way i’m thinking about it is that more than anything, this show is just a supplement to the game, as a little bonus feature. the game will still be there, as perfect and glorious as it always is.

[ketchupkio]

Hi! I adore your art, it’s so beautiful, and was wondering how you draw heads/face shapes? No pressure to answer by the way. I just tend to struggle with getting the face shapes to look normal and was wondering how you start at least- again you don’t have to answer!

hi, thank you so much!! i use a pretty stylistic approach to faces (and my sketches are veeery rough lol) but it does have a base in knowing what structure is underneath the skin, so anatomy fundamentals will aaaalways help (and references if you're struggling with a pose). but with that said, i used Warriors as a guide for this and hopefully this answers your questions! everything under the cut.

Step 1

i start with a circle and the standard cross shape guidelines for the face on a layer with much lower opacity. the top of the circle is irrelevant and will get shaved down/refined later when i'm ready to do the hair, but i like having the full circle when i'm starting my sketch bc it just makes me feel better. if I'm trying to block out a full pose i'll usually sketch the jawline too, but i didn't this time. (note that if you're newer to drawing and not used to knowing where the face shapes go, you can use more lines! no shame in that, whatever works for you)

keeping in mind which side of the character's face will be more towards the viewer (primary side), i draw the basic shape of the eye first-- upper then lower lash line. repeat on the other side and adjust as needed by flipping your canvas, though i usually wait till later when i have more features on it to do the first flip and something looks wonky. i did a pretty decent job this time lol.

i usually use pretty short strokes when i draw because i use an ipad and i don't like to rest my hand on the screen. this was different when i used sai, i had a lot more continuous strokes then and rested my hand on the tablet, but the change in medium/program got me to do things differently. with smooth pens you're going to want to use longer strokes usually, but with fuzzier/textured pens i find you can get away with shorter pen strokes and just erasing.

Step 2

i add the irises and nose, then draw the beginning of the eyebrows and then go towards the outside of the face, indicated by the arrow. primary side first usually. the eyebrow closest to the nose should either touch or could hypothetically have a line touching the bridge. the length of the eyebrows is up to you, but usually natural eyebrows extend a little past the outer corner of the eye, so it just depends on your character. here i sketched the jawline too on the guideline layer. feel free to adjust proportions as needed.

Step 3

jawline! all my jawlines start with the same shapes, they just vary from sharper to rounder depending on the character. Wars has a slimmer, angular face with a strong jaw and chin, so his lines are usually pretty sharp and square. sometimes i put the jaw/neck/shoulders on a separate layer than the facial features, but it just depends. here they're on the same layer.

starting from the primary side, i draw one line down, then another line down on the secondary side. then i connect them to meet the chin, which should always fall in the middle of your face's centerline (or where you've put the centerline in your mind's eye bc my guidelines don't always stay accurate). i usually fiddle with the jaw a bit with the transform tools to make sure it's where i want it to be.

i've also added eyelid creases (the top, curved line is the approximate ridge for the eye socket, i just like doing that) but i'm not fussy about when i do that, i just did it here :shrug: imo eyelid creases help the viewer more clearly see the structure of the face and where things are supposed to be, but that's just the way i do it. and it's also to fill space lol

Step 4

mouth and ear(s)! i wait until after the jawline to draw the mouth just so i know how much room i have for the expression. if you're drawing a smile or something and you want it to be lopsided, the higher side should be your primary side, just trust me. when drawing the ears (or just singular ear in this case bc i wasn't feeling drawing a second one) i usually do SOOO MUCH warping and resizing. on a real person's face, the top of the ear lines up w the tail of the eyebrow and the bottom lines up w the tip of the nose. usually with my style, it ends up being the corner of the eye and the nose, but it's just depending on what looks right. poor wars' bad ear is on the primary side so he does not get the full long hylian ear. i cannot draw upturned hylian ears to save my gotdamn life.

i've also gone ahead and drawn the neck and a little bit of the trapezius muscle. y'all i BEG of you to look up how the neck muscles, tendons, and bones work bc they are so important, i think i reblogged a post about it a little while ago? or i at least saw one. everything is connected and all of the lines lead down to the divot of the collarbone. the back line of the neck should never be before the corner of the jaw and the tendon should lead up to that corner. very very very important. also the collarbones should point to the start of the deltoid muscles and that's important for posing, but i didn't draw that much for this. neck width varies depending on your character's build, so someone skinny would have a thinner neck than a chubby or muscular person.

i added the nose and cheekbone lines i always do in this step. i think they look nice and fill space well, and they can help indicate the angle/curve of the cheekbone when the face is more tilted. just my thing i've done forever tho! sometimes i wait until after i've done the hair to draw them so i know they can be seen (and i ended up moving them for this drawing bc i didn't wait vnkdsnl)

in preparation for the hair, i added a guide for the hairline and refined the shape of the skull to where i actually want it to be

MAKE SURE TO FLIP YOUR CANVAS TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING LOOKS RIGHT!

Step 5

hair! it's always on a separate layer for me, and that has to do with how i color too. i do the little floofy thing at the swirl of the hair first, at the back of the part, then i start the first line for the swoopy side of the hair (line 2), then the other side. i guess you could call it the major side (side w the most hair) and minor side (side w the least hair).

i usually use a lot of lines to indicate hair direction, but it just depends on your style. i'd recommend identifying the major shapes of your character's hairstyle and replicating those whenever you draw that person. so for wars, it's the big bump where his part starts on the major side, the top of the hair usually stays flat, and it waves out to the side. on the minor side his hair is shorter and flips out and there are waves and stuff in the back. what i didn't draw in this step that's an identifying feature is his sideburns, which curve inward, but that's next. warp tool is a godsend for hair.

Step 6

finish the hair! refining shapes, floofies, the back, you name it. it's all about filling in space and making sure the weight is right before you start erasing lines underneath it. i lower the opacity of the face line layer to make sure there's no weird/stray lines.

Step 7

add finishing details, erase lines, and you're done! at least with the lineart bit lol. if i know it's just going to be lines, i add scars here, but if i'm gonna color it, i leave scars and other face markings for the coloring stage. and that's it!

i hope this was informative lol. thank you anon for asking, i had fun doing this!

[mosie-b]

Film Adaptations and Their Devotion to Source Material

Call me crazy, but I genuinely prefer when movie adaptations have nothing to do with the book. I don't mean when a movie mucks up the source material like 1984 'Dune.' I'm talking gutting it and making something new from its concepts, like 'Bladerunner.' It's a phenomenal movie but has nothing to do with the book(which is also phenomenal.) Both works have the same foundation: A hired killer named Deckard hunts down a group of escaped androids through future California. But they both take it in very different directions that better complement the medium through which the story is told. Personally, I prefer 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' over 'Blade Runner' (cuz I like reading,) but If some hack tried to make a new adaptation, I'd strangle them to death with my own hands. It would be ass, downright atrocious. It just wouldn't work. It's harder to confuse an audience visually in the way the book does. I just don't think scenes like Deckard killing the first target or the whole ordeal in the ersatz precinct could land as well in a movie.

Let's contrast with a more faithful PKD adaptation. 'A Scanner Darkly' is a great movie that is only able to get away with being so close to the source material because it blends live action with animation by means of rotoscoping. It's eerie. Everything except the characters and what they're doing feels foggy and immaterial. It's able to visually complement the tone of losing your life and mind to drug abuse. Its animatedness also makes it easier to recreate the fantasy numbers that the various characters play in their heads throughout the story. With that all said, I feel the movie just isn't as good as 'Blade Runner.' 'A Scanner Darkly,' despite being a good adaptation, is fundamentally limited by its devotion to the source material. Like the rest of PKD's work, there is almost an unadaptability that, while cleverly disguised, still dampens the overall effect of the story and creates a vague dissonance between the medium and what it's actually trying to show. I should say book-wise, I prefer 'A Scanner Darkly' over 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.' I feel it's a much better story. But when ported to film, it can't compare to something like 'Blade Runner,' which was always meant for the silver screen, that's how it was written, that's how it was designed. Like sure, you can get off with the vibrations from a Dual Shock 4, but a Magic Wand is a much better-curated experience. Was that a gross metaphor? I just mean 'Blade Runner' was intended for the screen, while 'A Scanner Darkly' was intended for the page. So, if a book is chronically literary, maybe consider just gutting it. Idk if any of this has made sense, I haven't been able to sleep, and have a flight in 4 hours kill me now :3

TL;DR Often, movie adaptations of books fall short of what can be done because they attempt to bend the medium of film to contort to the rules of books. Just gut it and make the movie from scratch

[randomnumbers751650]

If you asked me the question “would you prefer a work that is good but it doesn’t me or a work that represents me but it isn’t good?”, I would simply refuse to answer this question. So,, with this in mind, I’m going to give my very personal thoughts on representation in media. Due to matters of space (this essay is 2.5k words long, I could've written more), I’ll just focus on national representation.

Representation has been a hot topic in popular discourse. At first I thought why is does this have to be such a theater for essentially discursive civil wars? But, as I absorbed more ideas, I can see why it’s so important. If I say that I prefer a good work than a representative work, I would be lying the moment I see a character in a not very good work and say “wow, this has just my experiences and issues”.

The biggest problem is that this is issue is so complex – the academic definition of complex, in which it’s not possible to separate an issue and analyze it everything else constant – I mean, in other words, representation isn’t everything that makes a person pay attention to a story. Speaking as a Brazilian, why do I sympathize, judge to be relatable characters with names that sound nothing like the names of people around me?

During all my life, I’ve been fan of stories produced in other countries, that are imported just because it’s successful in central countries, the Global North to use a common academic term. If I go to a bookstore, in the sections of fantasy and sci-fi, I’ll just see American and Western European names and if I see a name outside this, I’m pretty sure it made some success in the central markets. It feels like fantasy and sci-fi aren’t really genres that authors from the Global South really engage or readers want to see.

I exaggerate, obviously. If I search a little, it’s not too hard to find communities of Brazilian fantasy and sci-fi writer. Plus, traditional literary genres and horror seem to be genres resistant to this issue, mostly because (I believe) they are genres that deal directly with issues directly related to the people of a country/region, so they have much greater chances of having the most visible spaces in bookstores than other genres.

Plus, Brazilian stories were fundamental to my formation, especially Turma da Mônica comics (available in English as Monica’s Gang). Especially in the 1990s, Mônica comics had an amazing pacing, much better than anything else written. Recently, I started reading the webcomic Rei de Lata (Scrap King) and it’s one of the best written superhero-inspired, dystopia works that I’ve read recently, but it’s written in Portuguese and it doesn’t have the same distribution network as the big ones. But still, the number of foreign stories is much larger. And I’m part of the problem, as I will explain below – spoiler: I’m writing a webnovel in English instead of Portuguese.

I’m a fan animation and if you read this blog, you might guess that I like anime. I really enjoy how it uses the medium so creatively. It’s funny if you stop to think, because it tells the stories of characters who have nothing to do with Brazil. And yet I can see their struggles being relatable or interesting to others. But I have to admit I’m just interested in Japanese animation, people always say most weebs that enroll in Japanese studies courses abandon after one semester and I think I’d be one of them (to the chagrin of my friend); but “anime”, as a umbrella term, is a weird style, I tried learn how drawing for a while (stopped because I’m too old, anxious and non-innocent enough to be a visual artist) and one of the lessons I learned in practice is how weird anime is, in terms of realism.

And yet, I could mention so many series and characters that I just love. These stories have elements that can transcend the specific cultural references and can be something that’s accessible and enjoyable for people so far from the original geographic and historical context. And it’s not like that: we still see adaptations of legends from the Ancient Greece yearly. The stories of Hercules, Jason, Odysseus still inspire so many adaptations and retellings. We reference them liberally.

Well, now that I have the age I have and the degree I have, I can ask what makes the stories of a country/culture/region more accessible than others, to the point I know more stories from other countries than mine. The answer is simple: these central countries managed to make industries out of it. As much as writers want to produce art, the economy needs to be fed. The paradigm of companies of this economy is that the shareholders are the most important entity, in the sense that companies must serve them first (and only according to more radical adherents). The average shareholder – not the kind that buys 30k worth of Nintendo shares just to ask why they aren’t making a new F-Zero – doesn’t care about art, they care whether their money printer is working or not and will threaten to leave if their money printer isn’t printing money. Think of that next time you see a pointless Disney live-action remake.

So, the creation of cultural industries mean that the talents will simply be concentrated in certain locations. If you watch a Brazilian movie, you will see that, in the intro credits, it’ll take five minutes to go through all sponsors. This concept is completely alien in a Hollywood movie. In addition to the highly competitive environment, they will prioritize stories that are easier to get high budget, that have an acceptable risk-return ratio and so on. One of the current main tenets of marketing is to create a representative consumer and the more narrowed your product is to your representative consumer, the higher the chances of being a success, even if it doesn’t make a lot of money.

Writer, then, have to live close to the industrial centers. Movies, to use the most obvious example, are highly technological products, that move lots of adjacent industries and services. Not just because they’re closer to their bosses, but because they can share experiences and improve each other. And so the newest technologies. There are technical aspects to the writing of anything and the more distance you are from these centers, the chances of you producing a good work become lower. Do not underestimate networking – if there’s a class in my masters’ that messed me up was Social Network Theory because you can prove with data points that no matter how hard you try to a position, chances are you’re going to lose said position to a person who will earn the double, doing half the work, just because they’re better connected than you. So reading the room, dealing with the crew and, especially, who’s funding you is a trait indispensable to get your work done in a way that’s acceptable to you. Living far from these centers will lower your networking. And, because of them concentrating all these traits, they can afford more failures than the rest – failure affordability is something ignored in technological analyses, lots of projects will fail so that one succeeds, piles of garbage to produce one golden product.

Lacking this funding, technology and networking makes a content creator from the Global South cannot compete well with what they have (not just the Global South, central countries such as France have always combat the influx of American media). So, what do they have to do? Either adjust expectations to a (much) smaller market (in which the same issues of the main centers exist, just in smaller scale) or move up to the industrial centers. The second option requires a lot of planning and essentially shoot in the dark, which means there’s a chance of failing, and you’ll still be competing with others.

Representation is also subjugated by this economic logic. Once a writer asked me about representation of Brazilians in media. Brazil has over 200 million inhabitants, which means it’s a massive market to be explored, so they have an incentive to make a character Brazilian because it might attract Brazilian viewers, independent if it’s accurate or not. I recently watched Casually Comics’s video about Yara Flor, a Brazilian Wonder Woman successor, and she’s a half-Native Brazilian, half-Ancient Greek semi-goddess. I enjoyed that Brazilian folklore was represent, but I haven’t seen the comics, but the comment section seems to have some agreement that her characterization resembles more the experience of Hispanic Americans than actual Brazilians, who don’t necessarily have the same experiences (I lived in the US for six months and I have absolutely no plans to ever go there for more than a week ever again; a lot of Hispanic American writers prefer to write about the experiences of living in two cultures because it resonates with them and their audiences, but that doesn’t interest me, so if I’m reading/watching their stuff is for other reasons). I really wish I was in the meeting that decided she’d be a Brazilian character.

And, of course, there’s the issue of what Brazil is being represented. Other Brazilian regions than the Amazon, Rio de Janeiro and, sometimes, São Paulo, are virtually forgotten (especially the Northeast, which is unfortunately subject of prejudice in southern areas) and they have very different cultures that a foreigner might not be aware of. And that’s because Brazil is big. Take a less populous country, like Paraguay or Uruguay, I wonder how much they are asked about representation, like that writer asked me. And this is not something that people can easily deny, we like to see ourselves referenced in other works. A small example of how representation matters (and because it’s small, I feel it has more power) come from a fanfic – I had a friend who was writing a megacrossover between various mecha shows and he referenced Luxembourg being defeated by the fic’s enemies; Luxembourg is a very small country, known for being a fiscal paradise, and yet a Luxembourgian reader was elated to find his country represented.

The question is why do we have to live in such a representation limbo? Why do we have to wait the unlikely chance that a talented foreign writer has a special interest in our culture and present the story based on it to be profitable enough to be produced and distributed? It’s like the ending scene from Cats! I only watched the reviews of that terrible 2019 movie, but I can’t help but to think of that, different cultures are waiting for their name to be called and be allowed in the balloon. I feel the debate of representation is like that. Instead of relying on the cost-benefit analysis of large corporations, why can’t we decentralize the production of stories? Well, their massive distribution and logistics networks is an easy answer to that. But that also create a very uncomfortable problem because everybody wants to be represented, but there’s a limit of what can be done because world-reaching movies/books/comics/series are expensive and risky.

Representation is also good. One of the most admirable things of the Encanto movie is how it’s a magical realist book adapted to the theater. There was some effort put on it. But if it was bad, would it be a valid form of representation? I refuse to answer that.

Another thing that made me write this is my interest in Chinese gacha games, like Arknights and Genshin Impact. I feel the stories of those games have a better sense of the problems the Global South experiences (especially Arknights on the contradictions of economic growth), since China is still technically part of this group, so they offer something that American and Japanese stories kind of lack. But seeing leaks of what Natlan is supposed to be makes me feel it's going to cause a very large representation civil war when it comes, and I think they’ll make a…subpar work in representation. Natlan is supposed to be based on Pre-Columbian America, but, in a world that has nations entering the equivalent of Modern Era, it’s rather questionable, especially because Pre-Columbian America had civilizations and advanced national entities. I care because…I live in this side of the world, even if I have little contact with my country’s native culture (reminder: the Brazilian racial democracy myth is a myth that hides the violence that was the construction of the national identity), I feel a sense of obligation, and I like Genshin, but I’m not part of Genshin’s primary demographic target and I don’t think a lot of people that participate of the discourse knows that, so my opinion doesn’t really matter to MiHoyo. Still, there’s a chance they do something right. I like the channel Accented Cinema because his videos make a point that even if representation is not correct, if it’s made with love and respect, it’ll still be something valid, something that can a mark on someone.

So, the question of “why these stories that have little to do my context influence me so much?” remains unanswered. Due to their logistic structure, they have larger chances of resonating with an international audience. I was going to talk more about politics, but, no, the text is already too big. But I want to talk about how I’m part of the problem here.

I started writing fanfics in English because I started reading them and I said to myself “I could write as good as a native and I could practice my English”. I was kinda full of myself, but I really wanted to train my English because that’s what people to do have an edge in this competitive globalized society. So 15 years later, I’m writing an original novel about a girl in Japan go gets isekai’d to a fantasy world, because I like Japanese animation and other media (like Touhou, this exists because I thought the gag bullet hell videogame series started by a drunk programmer with interest in Japanese mythology was awesome) because I like isekai and I see it as a medium for good storytelling on cultural shock. I am not writing it in Portuguese because I wanted more people to read it, including my international friends. The result is that my novel is a marketing nightmare in its premise and most of my friends aren’t really interested (a friend was so concerned for months and she finally confessed one day she didn’t like it with tears in the DMs, but I said that I noticed that and I was waiting for her confession, because I wouldn’t just tell her in her face, and ended “no worries, nobody does”). Like a Brazilian saying says “you can take a donkey to the river, but you can’t make it drink”. I wonder what would happen if I had written in Portuguese…probably nothing would change.

Culture is made of many influences, sometimes they compete, sometimes they synthetize, but, having a degree in economics, we should remember that economics was called the “dismal science” and I see this dismality every day in the globalization, to the point I’ve asked myself if it’d be better if we never left our swamps and hovels. I know the answer to this question is negative, but seeing all the negative consequences in the history (especially the Atlantic Trade), it makes me weak to answer no…

[allurared]

it's been said before, but one thing i hate about media discourse is how EVERYTHING becomes a definitive good or definitive bad thing.

in, say, 2018 you might make a purposefully generalizing point about how plot holes don't matter and, since we're living in a reddit infested nitpicky cultural landscape, it'll come across as biting and even somewhat edgy, but then some years go by and the mere idea of mentioning a logical inconsistency in some circles is indicative of both lack of taste and bitterness, a non-issue, really.

so do plot holes matter? you'd surely be an asshole (and completely missing the point) for complaining about one in a david lynch surreal nightmare, but in a very dry, by the books whodunnit? it'd be entirely justifiable for it to take you out of it.

is it bad that a story is predictable? do spoilers matter? maybe not in a tragedy, being able to see the train that is going to run over the damsel tied to the tracks the whole time may be tantalizing on its own, the inevitability of it all, the weight of the characters flaws convalescing in a predictable but soul-crushing moment. but you can't seriously tell me you don't like a good plot twist sometimes, a nonsense one, even, the human brain naturally craves novelty, EVERYONE can enjoy a trashy thriller.

more than ignoring that some things work and some don't depending on the piece, it ignores that different types of people are going to react differently to the things they consume, naturally gravitate to logical and stern storylines, or melodramatic fantastical nightmares, and that this doesn't necessarily reflect on your morality, or politics, or spirituality, which is what it always comes down to.

at the heart of it, it's all a profoundly unkind way to think of art (and i am including the nicecore studio ghibli just go to therapy people here, you all do this A LOT), the whole point of which is a constant negotiation, does this element work? why doesn't this one? does it matter that this work doesn't fulfill this aspect?

it betrays a profound disregard for form and execution (which, being fair, is a larger cultural sickness at the moment) and is therefore never as witty or incisive as whoever is spouting it thinks it is

it also may never change, an endless cycle of the same 3 or 4 opinions, each side winning the popularity contest depending on the week. stupid morality frameworks filtering fundamentally neutral things, because. you know. the medium is the message, and our mediums excel in reductive bullshit.

[sheryl-lee]

changes*tumblr*com/post/692141171135447040/ -- so apparently, even after all of the negative feedback, tumblr will still be going through with the mp4 change. they really don't care about gifmakers or our feedback, i'm pretty sure they've never even bothered to acknowledge our complaints in the first place.

yup i'm honestly not surprised, just pissed off. it's very typical of st*ff to ignore any valid concerns that its userbase has and go forward with implementing changes that are unnecessary and wildly harmful to a large percentage of said userbase. like... the quality of the conversions don't matter to us - the fact that our gifs are being converted at all is what we're upset about. the decision on st*ff's part to be so obtuse about that is just frustrating. we've repeatedly outlined the specifics of why this whole idea is bullshit and they still don't seem to be willing to listen.

st*ff basically saying "look see the mp4 quality is minimally better now so stfu" is so condescending and emphasizes to me that they truly don't give a shit about their users, and that they are deliberately ignoring the fact that this change will fundamentally alter the gifmaking process.

the fucking quality doesn't matter if the gifs aren't gifs anymore. there's no point in using ps to make a gif and export it as such when the entire gif is rendered into a 2 second video that alters the medium of the image, and i'm sure that there will be plenty of bugs and glitches and other additional issues that content creators will have to deal with once the change is fully implemented, because it's tumblr dot com. we can barely put up with the various issues we have to deal with as is - no one is going to stay on this site if we have to navigate this on top of everything else. and i'm sure that any workarounds that exist to avoid the mp4 conversion will have their own glitches, or tumblr will crack down on them over time until it can't be avoided. it's truly so fucking dumb and quite honestly i don't have the capacity to deal with it.

i love gifmaking and creating but i've never felt as discouraged and honestly disinterested in gifmaking as i do right now. i've been giffing on here for about 4-5 years and i've put up with a lot of bullshit, but this may be enough to make me quit, if not for a little bit than possibly for good. and i hate that, but i have enough going on in my personal life as is and i don't think i have the energy or mental capacity to create with so many obstacles. gifmaking should be fun and a way to communicate with others, but when all i see is a lack of interaction, people stealing/reposting my content, persistent negativity, and additional problems forced on me by the website i create for, there's little to no enjoyment remaining for me.

[grayblacklight]

I give up! I can't be more cartoonishly evil than the American education system! And I'm literally a cartoon villain!

As someone who ended up changing schools a number of times, I want to start making a list of all the problems with the us education system, especially the classes that failed on a fundamental level - because sometimes specific teachers and schools may address certain issues or (more likely) have some their own, I feel I have more to say about the American education system then the average person. And none of it is good.

- A big one was the computer classes- which I took as many as I could as extracurriculars in HS, by the way, but the biggest issue- one that single handedly multiplylied the effects of the other failures on this list tenfold - was sources and fact checking. Of course, you all remember how many teachers insisted on exaggerating how unreliable Wikipedia is because anyone can edit it, although in reality the editors that actually work on the wiki are far more effective - but you might not know the 'shortcut' they taught for telling if some sources were inherently trustworthy... By using the domains. I wish I was making this up, but not only did they say that .com and .net were inherently sketchy because anyone could own them (which is quite frankly Bulbapedia slander), they said that some domains were inherently SAFE- which is I am convinced is a government scheme to control the population, because they proceeded to say that .Gov was an inherently trustworthy domain. Of course, I don't need to explain to you why that's bad, you are on Tumblr.

-Social studies, a name given because it sure as hell isn't history, AKA us propaganda the class. 90% of is about the US, not that it teaches you anything about the US, especially in elementary/middle school where they censor so much that there isn't anything but propaganda- and don't get me started on the 9/11 focus, glossing over the treatment of native Americans, or the pro-capitalism bias. No, today let's talk about the fact that it's IMPOSSIBLE for teachers to properly teach you everything they are supposed to in the curriculum in the time they are given. Many of the other issues with the American education system can be circumvented if you're lucky enough to get a good teacher (good luck with that in this economy though) but they made SURE that Social Studies teachers wouldn't have a lot of spare time to go in depth on the nasty parts of the US history and ESPECIALLY not modern day issues, because every history class is supposed to go over EVERYTHING. That's like if every year they taught variations on the same math class, and high school math had to teach you addition and all that before trying to speedrun teaching you geometry and trigonometry in the last quarter of the year. And pray that you don't have a BAD history teacher, you will not learn anything. I had one teacher in high school that told my class that Trump was 'guaranteed' to be re-elected regardless of what we think of him because of 'all the good he did for the economy' as if he wasn't too busy burning the world to the ground to do anything positive, and the only thing I learned from his class is that he is a fucking [YouTube]

-english/literature, second only to social studies in terms of how much propaganda there is to sit though- albeit with more variation, cause now there's abilism porn and occasionally even Christian propaganda to sit through- AND how much the internet has taught me was wrong. See, meeting and following various creators, having access to more stories across various mediums then ever before, and knowing that many of the most famous and successful writers of our time are complete fucking [YouTubes], allowed myself and many others to see what writing is actually like, and boy golly does the curriculum seem a lot dumber as a result. And yes, at one point I had to sit through a shitty Christian propaganda movie and write an essay about it's contents, in a public school that is supposedly meant to be religiously neutral. I instead wrote an essay about how messed up that is, fluffed it up into elder scrolls 4, and got a B+, so either my teacher agreed with and was required to show us that, didn't actually read it because there's a limit on how many essay's written by teenagers one person can put up with, or just really appreciated the change of pace, I still don't know for sure.

[gascoignephotography]

Experimentation with boxes

Throughout this entire project, I’ve been experimenting with different boxes and the outcomes that they’d come out with for my images. My first box was a big cardboard box which was my experiment box, that box was purely to discover if my project could work and something that would work over a period of time.  This box did work very well as previously stated however, I knew I needed something different for my project as it was a big box which was inconvenient to transport around as well as everything else I needed for the project (such as tape, scissors, iPad, umbrella for if it rains, hydrogen peroxide, and my makeshift developing tank). With my project now changing to me transporting the box around with me and documenting the weather wherever I went, this was a fundamental detail I needed to have.  This box experiment did help me realise what I needed for future boxes. 

The next box I experimented with was a more sturdy option, it was a converted camera case which I cut a lens hole in to make a camera obscura.  

This box was a lot easier to transport around because of its light feel and handle which ticked that box for me straight away.  It also had proofing inside which helped for making it light leak-proof saving on the use of tape. The lens was an old medium format one I had which I could use and along with the help of my lecturer and the Media Loan Hub we have at uni, I had access to the correct tools to use to enable it to secure the lens in place.  I cut my pieces of paper in half to do only a5 images instead of a4 which meant I could take more images and it would take up less space overall. These smaller pieces of paper also fit in the camera a lot better than the a4 would’ve done and also meant that the whole paper was filled by the image. When you compare this to the cardboard box, there was only a very small section of the landscape which was printed onto the image almost like a vignette effect on my images. At first, I enjoyed this effect on my images but then I grew to not like it once I’d come up with a finalised plan of how to present my work at my degree show. As I was having it in a uniform style, I didn’t like having the images in different places across the paper so I preferred for it to be in this camera where the image completely covered the page.  

This was me testing if the lens and the magnifying lens would work well together and if the image would fill the page. Seeing it inside the box helped confirm that this would be the case and once I’d tested it for the 4-hour process time, I could see it in full. 

This was the confirmation that the image would fill the paper, this was also the strongest an image had been in this whole experimentation process.  The only thing I wasn’t keen on was that it was somewhat out of focus and unsharp however, after much debate I realised this would be the case as it was a long process of photography so landscapes move. 

With this camera, I believed that this camera being smaller than the other one, it would take less time in the development process overall so I made sure to do test strips.  Here’s the analysis of my test strips :

After using this camera for a while, I did decide that it wasn’t working for me as it wasn’t big enough, it was a struggle to fit the lens in and not distort it in the process which would, in the end, distort the entire image and create a different type of imagery and overall message for my project.  It also became very professional having a silver box instead of a cardboard box and almost went against my plan to have it be handmade and recycled so I decided to create a pro/con list to try and decide which camera I’d prefer to have for my project. 

[caustic-light]

I'm not sure if you have an accurate grasp on the usage of AI for art at the moment? This is not accusatory, but what you are saying doesn't line up with what I see with people using it. Most of the people I see who use it, who are personal freinds, walks me through the process, and it is very involved and involves telling the machine exactly what to do with individual details through programming and advanced tool menus. Yes plenty of people use it to generate images just for fun, but the people who are making art with it are isolating different parameters to precisely generate the image in their heads over the painstaking course of hours, by engaging in the programming process, not just using the an online image generator. The people generating images for silly twitter jokes and one-offs are not the same as the people using it for art, but I think some people think they are because they are not familiar with the art process, which is led by programmers. Most of the people you see who will call themselves AI artists are engaging in this process, it is different than people making images for their own personal reference or for jokes. I am sorry if this isnt clear, I'm not great with English LOL but I did my best let me know if I need to clarify or anything.

Ok, two things in advance that I feel compelled to note out of fairness towards you, people arguing with me and people coming across this.

I am fundamentally not really interested in this conversation. I am engaging with it because I have thoughts and people responding to me in different ways are giving me a platform to voice those thoughts. As soon as somebody responds to me with anything that doesn’t make me think of something I haven’t already said in a way I feel sufficient, I will not respond, so be ready for me to drop this entire conversation at a moments notice without warning if you want to send me your thoughts and are hoping for a response.

I am not gonna link to all the context, so I do wanna note that I am engaging with this discussion in a hypothetical sense more than a real one. I am entertaining this despite being absolutely opposed to AI art on a visceral level because of how it samples it’s data and I am entertaining it because I think that the general topic provides a lot of ideas that would be really good for art if there existed a version of them that isn’t built on collecting massive datasets of it without the artists consent and usually even knowledge.

See, here is my main issue with how AI is being sold to me. I am not accusing you personally of it, more so the person I was arguing with. But there is this dissonance here between the idea that AI is this deep and sophisticated tool that has a steep learning curve and that you put mountains of work into vs the idea that it’s an easy tool that allows average joes with no artistic training to express themselves and thereby removes a lot of barriers from making art.

And I feel like I maybe haven’t explained in the best way why it can’t be both the way it’s being sold to me on either front.

Let’s look at finger paint. Finger paint is a very limited medium. And by very I mean extremely limited. But it’s also an extremely intuitive medium. There is no possible peripheral for art that is more responsive and intuitive than your own body. And that has specific consequences:

When you use it, a lot of your potential ambitions are unattainable.

When you use it you get an immediate feedback and the art you create is broken down to very bare essentials. The movements you make have an easily understood consequence and the decisions you make, due to the simplicity have easily understood consequences.

So when you use it as somebody who has no artistic ability yet, everything you do is a learning experience. You learn about color, you learn about shapes, you learn what it’s like to get a tactile feedback from your medium, you learn how to organize colors in a way that looks good on a canvas.

Finger paint is arguably not a very good medium for people who are serious about getting into art, or rather, finger paint alone is not a good medium for people who are serious about getting into art. The early learning experience may be massive, but the learning curve doesn’t go very far. There is a high skill ceiling, but only when you have learned a lot of stuff by other means.

Contrast: Marble. Take a hammer and mortar and make a statue. Immense amount of things you can learn. Incredible depth of possibilities. But also relying on you having a wealth of knowledge and learning an (I assume) incredibly difficult to use tool and medium. So even worse for a bloody beginner in most cases I would say. But for a pro you can literally just make whatever object your heart desires in excruciating, gorgeous detail.

Most good mediums for beginners are in the middle. A good way to learn art is a medium that has little hassle, is easy and intuitive to use, fast to get into and that has a lot of headroom for learning things. This is why drawing tablets were absolutely a revolution in making art accessible. To take drawing, and add stuff like an undo button? To remove the hassle of dealing with pens and markers and all that stuff? Amazing. It also has an incredible amount of headroom. Even a pencil and paper will go from little stick men to photorealistic greyscale and everything in between. Incredibly intuitive, flexible, powerful. On a tablet you have nearly the same but with a lot less bullshit in the way and so much more.

Now which end of this is AI on? If you’re a newbie and you make an image, what do you learn about art from it? Which skills do you gain? Is it a medium that is responsive and that allows you to easily experiment? Is it a medium where the strokes you put in teach you something? Is it easy to grow on as an artist? Something that will spit a whole image at you based on prompts you have to figure out as their own whole thing, where to put your own ideas into it and to make changes you have to painstakingly redo little bits again and again, program your way around the way the AI works, and also already know extremely specifically what you want every detail to look like, or otherwise just redo whatever you don’t like at random until you like it, all of that sounds to me like a shitty peripheral to get into art with. Like something that can give you fast results if you’re very easily pleased, but that if you have the ambition for more immediately brick walls your growth. You are selling to me a medium that requires a really high amount of hassle and a high amount of already acquired knowledge on art to make anything actually artful with. And that is not something a beginner will get a lot out of I think. Because even if you learn all the hassle, what has this taught you about art itself? The way it works is so unintuitive compared to most tools you can use to make art that using it gives you no feedback. It’s not impossible to learn art through, but it’s doing so with a large barrier in front of you.

And on the other side, if you have the knowledge, if you have already learned all this stuff, you know your shit and you know what you want. Wouldn’t you rather spend the work to learn a medium that is more responsive, that is more interactive, that is frankly easier to use once you get over the difficulty spike that comes with learning how to use a new tool? Or one that may be hard to use, but has a much higher amount of things you can do with it?

Look, I suck at drawing. But I am a good writer. I am good enough to be past the Dunning Krueger pit and have clawed my way out of the despair that follows realizing you’re in the Dunning Krueger pit. So I have a lot of confidence in my abilities. And I can think of a lot of fun uses for a writing bot. But none of them are fiddling around with it to whip up a story I could write myself, knowing I can do it better by hand. To work with a bot to make something I know I will enjoy sounds like it’s by far the harder option, even if it may be quicker. It sounds frustrating in every possible way. I already hate editing my own writing, but editing something a bot made by trying to find ways to get the bot to understand my intention better? Jesus that sounds like agony.

So if a beginner is going to have their growth and progress brick walled by the finicky nature of AI and the amount of knowledge necessary to make anything that actually looks how you imagined it, why not instead bite into the sour apple and spend the extra time and work to get into learning how to work with another tool that might feel harder, but ultimately lets you grow much more and offers you a lot more flexibility? Everything you and others are saying to me to explain how AI is actually really sophisticated as an art tool only makes it seem like there is no natural and beginner friendly learning curve.

And if a pro already has the ability to attain what they want with more control and easier ways to input intention, why use AI as a primary medium instead of either 1. something to just fuck around with in addition to your other stuff, or something to challenge you, or 2. something to take away hassle of things you don’t care to do yourself. A shoelaces procreate brush, a stock image McDonalds, blurred in the background, a symmetry tool. That kind of stuff I think is the real thing AI is useful for. But unfortunately it’s all trained on stolen art and therefore is going to immediately present ethical issues to the artists who might be interested in using it to make creation less burdensome.

And I think, who this really is attractive to is people who have artistic ambition and understanding that is way above their own skill level. Because that is frustrating and to have a tool like AI is an attractive option to get closer to what you want in a way that feels a lot easier and frankly a lot less bullshit. Because learning any kind of creative skill is hard. And it is easy to learn the ambition way faster than the part where you can actually do it.

And I understand this, I am there with my own art. I’m not a dead newbie, but I am far from being happy with what I can do or a level where I feel very comfortable presenting it to others. Like, I relate hard. But also I still feel like AI is kind of a crapshoot at the moment, even beyond moral debates, I feel like it can not possibly be as rewarding to work with as it is to have a skill you are comfortable enough with to take pride in. And with that while I very much relate to the kind of person I think AI art is really attractive to (I am deliberately ignoring ppl who wanna klick a button and then sell themselves as artists without putting in work because they have no respect for the process of creation) I also feel like it’s an extremely hollow promise where your own frustration with being limited in what you can do is preying on itself. Because really, as it seems to be now from everything advocates have told me about it, it’s not nearly at a point where it’s more than a finicky novelty let alone providing a level of freedom and responsiveness that can rival what you can do if you’re happy with your own competence in a medium and tool. Which sounds pretentious as fuck of me to say, but man, I have been so insecure in my skills for so long, I have earned the right to be pretentious and vain about the joy of creation.

[susustudio]

Silhouttes of girls in first place

by: amanda pu

Where is a place that brings peace? I’m someone whose always been incredibly attached to home, not in a physical sense but rather home in the sense of where my family is at. I’m not sure if I’m ever really at peace, I’ve lately come to the realisation that anxiety and stress are things that often come much too easily on me. I would say however that there’s something particularly comforting about lying in your bed at home, knowing your family is just outside your door, and that your biggest supporters in the world are so close to you. So perhaps the moment, rather than the place, that brings me the most peace lies in those weekend mornings where my parents have made breakfast and I get woken up by my mom and dad bickering over their next piece of gossip. 

What is something you would tell your younger self? I would advise my younger self not to be so quick to judge others. I think even now, but especially so when I was younger I had this mindset that everything was permanent and set in stone, whether it be decisions we make in life or relationships we have with others and between other people. Obviously there’s many things we all might wish to change about out past but I’m grateful for all my past mistakes because they’ve essentially made me who I am today. However I think that something my younger self would have really benefitted from was a genuine open-mindedness to open up to others, you never know who might become one of your closest friends in the future. You’ll never meet the best people in your life if you don’t try. But that also works in the opposite way, just as out relationships with others change, people might naturally drift away from you. That’s fine, we grow up and become different people – but there’s always going to be that special place in our hearts for that person you’ve spent your entire childhood with. There’s nothing wrong with change, embrace it and in turn, grow with it. 

How are you like who you were 5 years ago? and how are you different now? I am not of the opinion that people ever change in a sense, I believe that once the foundations of how we think and interact with others becomes set in our formative years in childhood, the changes we undergo afterwards are all superficial in nature. There’s the obvious surface level changes, my interests are different, there’s different people in my life now but fundamentally, I don’t think I’m much different. I guess the big change though is I’ve become a lot more comfortable in my own skin. I’ve basically come to the realisation that none of this matters, not in the nihilistic sense but rather that I shouldn’t take myself so seriously. Life is meant to be enjoyed so why should I be worrying so much about little things? That mindset is honestly the best thing that’s happened to me, things are only embarrassing if you find them embarrassing. Otherwise, they become funny little stories you get to tell later on, they get to build your character and ultimately make you a more interesting person.

What is an object that matters a lot to you? I know it’s a bit materialistic but the object that matters the most is probably my phone. I love my phone, it’s something I can’t be parted with, it stores all my memories and is a place I can reach out to others. However recently my phone has really been though a lot, I smashed the screen and got permanently locked out of it so I had to wipe the whole phone. I ended up losing all of my photos, which I’m still incredibly sad about but at the end of the day, the phone is just a medium, it’s not the actual object that matters but rather what it means. I see my phone as a crucial way to connect, and to keep in touch with all my friends and family.