#I have several different process styles my art is so inconsistent

[camping-with-monsters]

Was requested to draw a Politoed with a cowboy hat :)

[genericpuff]

Rachel's art regression actually makes me so sad because yeah she always had problems with anatomy but at least her style used to have personality back then

It's actually so fascinating to look at her older art because on the one hand, to her credit, she was INCREDIBLY prolific, she made SO MUCH STUFF to the point that we're STILL finding new stuff all the time, it's actually really impressive; but on the other hand, she also clearly didn't really have a focused direction, she was kind of just trying different things waiting to see what would stick, and eventually LO was what won the lotto. But unlike previous works where she could pick them up and drop them at her own time, she was contractually obligated to LO and it forced her to meet crazy strict deadlines, so I think in a way (at least in my opinion from what I've been able to glean looking at her work from the past several years) she almost lost a lot of what she was capable of doing back then because she proceeded to spend all of her time for YEARS working on LO.

I do think she'd be fully capable of returning to that older art style, but the reality is that that style also, like LO, existed through inconsistency. She was always trying and doing different things and you can tell a lot of it was rooted in both trial and error + indecisiveness. As much as she's talked about "streamlining" the production process of LO in previous interviews, it's also very clear in its inconsistencies - as well as her older work which was also inconsistent, for better and for worse - that she never actually learned how to streamline. Unlike artists who you can at least look at and understand they have a "process" that they follow every single time, she just does not seem to have that.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing, I think it worked well for her when she was doing freelance and standalone illustrations / conceptual art. The "personality" in her work back then was her just messing around with things and doing whatever looked good, and it often paid off through beautiful illustrations and concept designs.

But that sort of approach doesn't work so well when you're trying to do a long-form comic with unique characters and a distinctive art style which is being worked on by multiple different people. Something like LO demands workflow consistency and a production pipeline with steps to follow and standards to practice, and that's not something that Rachel has ever really been good at, even before she started LO.

[seeyouspacecoyote]

Rating Record of Ragnarok as a series:

Random personal opinions about Record of Ragnarok all condensed into one shiny, spick and span, semi-coherent post, courtesy of yours truly:

Plot: Being a basic tournament style fighting anime, it's either your thing or not and fighting tournament animes are very, very much my thing. That said, the execution can vary, although I think in Record of Ragnarok, it's fairly good, even though the series itself suffers from a sense of predictability due to the basic nature of the plot itself and the fact that there are only 13 rounds (most likely.)

Also, there are different ways to set up fighting tournament animes, some are just straight up one on one matches where one fighter is eliminated each round, which Record of Ragnarok does, while others are more set up like an elimination roulette where you have various matches that eliminate one contestant but then the winner moves on the next round to fight someone else, and so on and so forth until you reach a point where there are only two fighters left and then the two of the fight until you only have one guy left standing. I do tend to prefer the latter, if only because it allows us to see fighters who win a match more often in-universe, but for Record of Ragnarok, the simpler one on one style with no further participating from the winners of each match works.

Characters: For the most part, I like the character designs in Record of Ragnarok, every character is very visually distinct and the art style is fucking amazing. I especially appreciate the large (no pun intended,) amount of attractive men. There are also many different types of men featured among all the fighters too, so no matter what your tastes are, you'll probably find someone you like if you're into men. Of course, in my case, the ones I like seem to die more often, but eh, that's my luck in pretty much every series I ever get into.

As for character development, Record of Ragnarok can be very, very inconsistent, but when it hits, it hits. Unfortunately, though some characters get very good character development, some other characters get severely neglected in the process, especially in each fight, as in some fights, it's quite obvious that one character gets disproportionate focus and narrative significance than the other one does, which makes some of the fights feel very lopsided and uneven from a storytelling perspective.

Also, another nitpick I have with the character development is that, for a series that's about humans fighting gods, the gods get disproportionately more screen-time, focus, and character development compared the the human fighters. Almost all the gods, except for Thor, play a rather significant role in the plot or get much more backstory than the human characters do, even the gods that didn't show up in-universe at all until their fights (for the ones that happen to be fighters in the tournament.)

In particular, some of the human fighters feel wasted as characters, like the authors never gave them the chance to live up to their potential, and some of the rounds felt very rushed as a result. I also would have liked to see a wider range of human fighters from different cultures and countries, and having two different Japanese swordsman on the roster on the human side is a choice, but not one I would have made (personally, I would have kept Kojiro, but I'd exchange Okita for someone else.) At the very least, for the human side, I would have preferred if they had picked one Japanese swordsman and one Japanese ninja to at least add more variety to the fighting itself.

On the gods side, there are too many Greek gods and I'd rather see a few other gods from some other cultures or countries as opposed to having 4 spots on the roster taken by Greek gods. As much as I love Greek mythology, there's literally a whole world of cultures and mythologies the authors could have taken inspiration from and it's a shame that the focus is so narrow and limited.

Pacing: The pacing is pretty on-point, given that the whole thrust (no pun intended) of the plot is one-on one fights to the death that are meant to determine the fate of the human race. Still, it does feel a bit like going on a super fast roller-coaster at times, and sometimes I have to re-read chapters to figure out what actually happened. A few more chapters devoted to world-building or character development would help fix this problem in my opinion.

Other: Despite some characters receiving very little development, even when it would have greatly improved their characters if they had, almost every character in this series is unique and memorable in their own way, which is hard to pull off, and I give the authors credit for that. Love them or hate them, there's a lot of different characters with different and unique personalities in this series and that's something I always love and appreciate in a story, so kudos to the authors for giving us such a fun, interesting series with such a colorful cast of characters. My only complaint is that I wish we got to see them interact with each other more and that each fighter in each round got a more equal amount of focus and development.

Overall, Record of Ragnarok is a fun, interesting fighting tournament series and though I don't necessarily like or agree with all of the writing decisions the authors made, it's one of the most entertaining series I've found in years and it's inspired my writing and given me a wealth of creative ideas and I'm glad I discovered it.

[60b3r]

Catching up with life.

It's been over five years since I graduated from university, and here I am, once again, applying for jobs like a robot. I have sent over 4 to 5 job applications per week, tweaked my CV individually once a month, and hand-crafted my cover letter uniquely for each jobs I applied to. To top it off, I have been doing this for 2 years combined. Assuming that is not an overstatement, I have been sending over 300 job applications to different schools, universities, and even across other industries. With this overkill—yet seems to useless—Masters degree, it does not serve as a selling point, since it is being considered inconsistent with the common practice prevalently found in Indonesian universities, that one's Masters degree should be linear in order to work in academia as a lecturer. I even had to consider dropping my Graduate degree and went with my Bachelors degree to apply for jobs. People kept saying that biotech is the future, that the sciences are dawning all over, technology grows at light-speed, but all I experience is frustration and anguish. People kept telling that I am overqualified, that there's no way I am always between jobs with such emotive motivation and carefully curated skills and my beautifully AI-tweaked resume. I’m seriously starting to consider giving up this life and trekking into the wild to make my new life, Randall Clark-style. Here I want to reflect back on my past few years' endeavor and remind myself that job-seeking is such a dehumanizing process and something must be done to fix this. But before that, a quick background on my life so far. Consider this as a short, catching-up telltale.

Right after graduating in 2018, I was so motivated to fix the education system. I applied to teaching jobs and got myself a first formal job teaching Biology and caring for a dormant Science Club back in my alma mater. Why not apply for the industry sector, you ask? There's not enough room for Biotech graduates in Indonesia, and despite what people say about the unique nature of the niche, most of the positions can either be filled with Chemical Engineering graduates, or just General Biology graduates. There's not enough value created by pursuing Biotech degree, apart from continuing in academia as a researcher. After one year, I didn't renew my contract and decided to pursue for higher education, which I thought it was necessary to create a bigger impact. I thought back then, "Here I am, teaching young generation Biology and the art of life, some of them might be doctors or environmental engineers, yes, but majority of them won't even need these stuff." I said that to myself, exactly like I was thinking back then when I was their age and learning mathematics. it was 2019 when I decided to pursue MSc/PhD Biotechnology abroad, to allow myself to engage with wider masses upon completion. This time, high-schoolers, next up, college students, or so I thought. But life is a bitch, and then we all gonna die anyway.

Luckily at that time, right after my resignation was granted, I got myself three Letters of Admission: from two different universities in The Netherlands and one from Sweden. I'd then applied for several scholarships program, one of them being the notorious LPDP. The task of simply qualifying for the first round of paperwork selection was very tedious and stressful. It was my first time dealing with a plethora of documents to prepare, and I could say the tears and blood was even worse than the process of getting an LoA from the three campuses. After two more selection stages, long story short, I didn't qualify after the interview process, and I plunged myself in depression. A month later, I collected myself to start over, and this time, applied for jobs in the edtech startups. My thoughts were somehow I could work for a while, save enough money while still creating impact, and fund my Masters off my own deposits. Well again, fortunately I told myself at that time, some unicorn companies contacted me, and somewhat early that year, precisely February 2020, I was called into one of the big edtech company to attend an interview. I scrambled to book a ticket and a homestay for 2 days and... Oh boy. Three days before my departure, Jakarta shut down the borders and Covid ruined my lifelong dream of studying abroad. Interview cancelled, plane ticket burnt, and that hotel bed never touched my back. No job, no credit, eat shit. All 2020 I cried myself to sleep.

The anxiety caused by the uncertainties was so dreadful, I fantasized going for a program—the one in the Netherlands—anyway. Talk about coping using unrealistic expectation. So I emailed the admissions office and requested to postpone my first semester to October 2020 or March 2021 (they granted the former but refused the latter). I even paid for the dorm room in the Netherlands, when I was very certain that this was just another viral outbreak that's gonna resolve on its own after several months (that was also a false hope). Then, my family business took a major hit due to lockdowns imposed by the local government, and everyone went nuts. All plans go bust, and out of nowhere, suddenly, all homeschool students I have been teaching stopped responding to my calls. All types of businesses from across all sectors took a hit. Purchasing power bottomed out. Monetary circulation grounded to a halt. In the midst of all this blazing hellfire that is a financial crisis, it was in the middle of 2020 when I applied for student loan to get myself into a campus in Jogja. I thought "Well, it can't be that bad, right, I can still go to Jogja and pursue another Masters here, domestically, without going abroad and waste lots of money." So did everybody else thought, when we all first had our online classes in October 2020. But fast forward to early 2022, It's like everyone skipped two years of their life, staring at the screen for several hours drying out eyeballs and get nothing from classes other than just one or two classes that are actually elective subjects, not among the core courses.

I greeted 2021 with much hope, a hope that someday I will be able to meet my classmates and hunt for Jogja food later in the day after classes. I would have scoured through the libraries of the renown, and I would have also joined several student councils during my studies. But no. Not even once we got a call from campus saying our classes would go from distanced learning to on-site learning. I spent 2021 lurking around Malang trying to find a closure, visiting many natural places where I used to enjoy, gulping so many unhealthy foods down my throat to ease the numbing pain, even engaged in some risky behavior of ████████████. The year ended with more student debt, an unfinished thesis proposal, a broken heart, and still, no single job interview landed. Yes, I even went through Masters fully online (including all of the phases of research). I spent all 2021 mourning the hundreds if not thousands of what-ifs while drafting my thesis proposal. A small ember light up in the darkness, I got myself a job replacing a science teacher in Surabaya during her maternity leave. I got the contract extended just before I finished my thesis defense, and I am stuck in Surabaya for another year of inconsecutive work experience. Not even a single time I ever stepped my soles on campus grounds in Jogja during my enrollment there. The only chance I got to be closer than ever to my supposed campus building is during my awards ceremony where I returned my graduation robes.

I got paid three times the amount I got when I was working in my alma mater. I got myself a small room not too far away, and after selling my family's car, I even got a small discount since I am not using the provided parking space anymore. Plus, after over half a year, I can save more than I could usually save because there are no more gas-hungry beast that is my 1.5L turbocharged CVT Medium SUV. The school itself was decent, I got mediocre lunch everyday and to be honest there are less paperwork than the previous jobs I had been working on, but oooh the lab equipment and the learning materials are very lacking. I requested for some upgrades here and there, and they didn't even bat an eye. I have to struggle and come up with weird hyper-crearive plans to deliver the lesson, which by the way are not just biology, but also physics, chemistry, and geography. I enjoyed most of my time teaching, but considering a majority of students would leave the school and continue somewhere else, the school management decided to cut over half of the staff earlier this year. By the time of writing, I still need to finish my contract, though. Fortunately, I got some leeway since there are less classes to teach now after Cambridge exams has passed. This is where the fun begins. Not another job hunting. So, wish me luck friends.

[dominonary]

1, 6, 8, 13, 19?

how i would describe my style -

inconsistent HDHGFKDJHG

no, really though, i have so many different art styles at this point! i'm pretty bad at picking just one and sticking with it. i have a handful of ones i default to when i intend to draw something in "my" style, but i have several that fall in between semi-realistic and cartoony, depending entirely on what vibe i'm going for. if anything, i'd say i tend to fall in the area of "you can probably tell i can't decide between anime styles, western cartoony styles, and realistic". most of my art is like, semi-stylized but i also can't resist working on the anatomy if i let myself spend very long on a doodle, so when i actually do want to go for more stylized art, i have to really swallow down the urge and allow myself to draw spaghetti legs without defined knees or whatever it is i'm hung up on in whatever area i'm 400% zoomed in on

6. warm or cold colors -

aaahh that depends entirely on the piece though! i'm gonna say warm, because that's where my brain is leaning tonight, but my preference varies a LOT.

8. most and least fun parts of my process -

the most fun is probably cleaning up my sketch and getting it to look the way i want it! i try very hard to avoid killing the aspects that make the sketch look good, so a good amount of my drawings are secretly just sketches that i keep chipping at until they work as lineart.

the least fun is... usually towards the end, when everything is coming together enough that i start zooming out and spotting all the areas that look totally off and make me want to redo the whole thing DHGKJSDHG

13. how long do i usually take on a piece -

my pieces depend a lot! if i'm doing a thing with multiple characters, full (or near full) bodies, 70 coloring and shading layers etc, i can easily spend like 3-5 hours or more on it. my simpler doodles or linearts with minimal coloring/shading tend to be anywhere in the 10-45 minute range. i've been informed i'm a very fast doodler so a lot of my simpler stuff is churned out in like, 5-20 minute chunks! though i'm spending longer on pretty much all the ygotober pieces this month.

19. how often do i draw -

depends how busy i am! i try to at least doodle a little bit every week, but i have periods where i draw for hours a day and periods where i'm so busy with other crafts or projects that i have to sit myself down with pen and paper for an hour just to make sure my hands don't forget how to draw things. on average, i probably draw every other day or so.

[w523352394]

Personal Reflective Article

In the art concept design of the game Shanhaijing, I am committed to creating a visual experience rich in depth and imagination based on the rich mythological background of traditional Chinese culture, combined with modern game aesthetics.

When designing the game concept, I chose the ancient Chinese painting style as the core artistic expression of the game. However, during the drawing process, I also encountered insufficient understanding or misunderstanding of the mythological elements in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, which resulted in drawing characters or scenes that did not conform to the spirit and style of the original, or inaccurately expressed the cultural connotations of the original.

In this process, I once again returned to the research stage and once again gained a sufficiently in-depth understanding and study of the Shanhaijing and its related cultural background. Reading the original text, related studies and commentaries, as well as references and expert opinions, helped to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of the mythological elements.

There are tons of strange creatures and mysterious beasts in Shanhaijing, and I used these as inspiration for the design of characters and monsters in the game. By giving these creatures special abilities and attributes, it enriches the game's combat system and gameplay. Cultural elements are inherited and embodied, and the cultural elements of my hometown are integrated into the game. When drawing characters, you may encounter the problem of inconsistent visual style or incongruity with the overall style of the game. This may affect the coherence of the character image and the visual unity of the game.

This is why I developed and clarified a clear art direction and style guide before I started drawing. Make sure that all drawing styles follow the same visual style and design principles, including uniformity of color, line and scale. During the character design process, after After sketching a draft, I conducted several self-reviews. In terms of art style and visual presentation, whether it is ancient style, fantasy or combined with modernity, it enhances the game's regional characteristics while allowing more players to understand and feel the charm of these cultures.

During the drawing process, I still occasionally encounter technical or tool limitations or adaptation problems. Especially when drawing complex scenes or effects, appropriate technical support and tools may be needed to help accomplish them. Because different tools may have different advantages and scope of application, choosing the right tool can improve the efficiency and quality of the finished product.

Of course, the most important point is time and schedule management. Drawing game art is often a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. If you don't manage your time wisely, or your schedule is too tight, this may affect the quality and final completion of the art. Before I start painting, I make a detailed project plan and schedule.

Make sure that the amount of work and time for each stage is allocated properly so that the task is completed within the budgeted time. I also prioritize and assign tasks appropriately based on the priority and importance of the project. Sometimes it is necessary to be flexible and adapt the workflow to meet new challenges and discoveries.

Drawing the artwork for a game like <Mountain and Sea's Fantasy> is a complex task that requires several considerations. With in-depth research and effective time management, problems that may arise can be effectively resolved to ensure that the game art is of the desired high quality level.

[cosplayinamerica]

COSPLAY WIP : firespunalchemy

When I decided it was time to tackle Umi Ryuuzaki from Magic Knight Rayearth, I knew this would be my first major build and I needed to do some serious research before diving in.

I’ve always kept a kind of to do list for previous cosplays, but I have about six pages of planning for Umi, covering each major component as I look up different methods and materials. I’d had the wig for her for a while, even styling it (it was a wavy wig I got from Arda on sale that I straightened and trimmed), so that part was out of the way, but there was still so much more to do.

Over the quarantine in 2020, I thought this was the perfect time to start with the most intimidating part: her sword. I found files on Etsy, and contacted a friend with a 3D printer since I don’t have one.

She asked for specifications such as layer depth and what kind of filament, which I definitely didn’t know much about, and was kind enough to help teach me (it’s printed at a standard layer depth out of PLA). It started as about 8 separate pieces that I glued together with a five minute epoxy around a ¼” thick, 52 in long aluminum rod (as specified by the files).

Then...the sanding began. I started with about a 150 grit sandpaper, working on getting down the layer lines and any epoxy that had gooped out the sides, working up to about 800 grit. Then I primed with a sandable filler primer, sanded more, and then used a nail buffing block to buff and shine. I then used some Bondo to fill in areas that were a little low, before doing another round of sandable filler primer, sanding, buffing, polishing.

After one more round of this, I painted the whole thing with a grey primer, and started painting the blade with a silver craft paint. I started painting the handle, pommel, and guard before I realized the blade’s paint felt strangely tacky. When I tried to sand it, the paint gummed up, so I had to peel it by hand until I got enough off to sand the rest down.

Ended up sanding it all the way back down to the print and having to re-prime. I did one layer of sandable primer, sanding, buffing, polishing, and felt it looked smooth enough to move on to the grey primer again. This time I didn’t want to take any chances (or more time) so I used a hammered silver spray paint for the blade. The rest of the sword was completely painted by hand, with a gloss top coat over the gem sections, then an iridescent top coat over everything.

 After all that, I figured I’d start on a smaller and easier part: her headband. This is what I’m currently working on, building out of foam and foam clay. The reference art for Umi’s armor is incredibly inconsistent on the headband, so I’ve had to choose within my options what I want to go with.

I first made the wing attachments out of 6mm EVA 50 high density foam, cutting them out from a pattern I drew in paper then rounding out with a Dremel. I primed it with about six layers of Bounce from Hot Wire Foam Factory, then realized I hadn’t accounted for several things.

So I cut them out and sanded them down again, but this time in 4 mm EVA 38 foam, etched shapes into them with a Dremel, then added foam clay to create dimension. I’m waiting for the foam clay additions to dry until I can say this will work and move forward. Thankfully, those failed pieces serve as a great way to test whether this priming method is really what I want to use, since it’s kind of a pain to apply.

I’m also working on the gems for her chest, headband, and hand, testing out methods that don’t require casting in resin. I don’t currently have a large enough setup or the budget to get into playing with resin sadly, so I’m testing the classic method of hot glue as well as using a silicone mold with foam clay. Hot glue gem creation has been an interesting process, because the eyeshadow I used to color my test gem shifted after being exposed to heat and became much greener. With the foam clay gems, I’m having trouble with air bubbles present on the surface. So I’m trying out using some Bondo to fill those holes, sanding, then priming with Plastidip. So far, the results are promising!

Other than that, I’ve ordered swatches for fabric options for the body of her costume, which I’ll have to start drafting the pattern for soon. This is my first major build, so about 90% of what I need to do is something I’ve never done before (3D printing, making gems, making boot covers, drafting a pattern…) and that’s been a great way to keep myself focused and time occupied during the nightmare of the last year. I know for many cosplayers, 2020 was rough because not having a deadline meant they felt little motivation to work, but for me it’s always been the pursuit of the craft so I’ve just been slowly chipping away at projects.

But then my cosplay journey has been a little a-typical anyway. I first learned about cosplay when some friends mentioned wanting to go to this anime convention in Dallas, A-Kon, back in around 2005. We were all in high school so we had to get permission from our parents and my boyfriend at the time drove us up there (we lived over 4 hours away). He also made my first costume of Sakura from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, while I thrifted my second costume of Melfina from Outlaw Star.

We all cosplayed and went to cons together for a few years, but then life kind of got in the way and I spent about a decade out of the convention and cosplay world. PAX South in 2015 really ignited it again, and I’ve been cosplaying ever since. For me, on a very serious level cosplay has been a way to work through some gender and body stuff, as well as stage fright/anxiety.

But I also just really enjoy coming up with creative solutions to problems and learning new skills so challenges like Sogeking’s mask or Umi’s headband are great puzzles. It doesn’t hurt that I keep cosplaying characters few people probably even remember, much less cosplay, so there are very few tutorials I can use to guide my way and I’m okay with that. I’m here to have fun and re-create some of my favorite characters, whether from recent anime or obscure and old series (just wait until I make Sabriel), learning and making friends along the way.

[realmonsterboyhours]

Lets address something with my art.

LISTEN UP COS I’M ONLY GONNA ADDRESS THIS SHIT ONCE AND ONCE ONLY So, believe it or not I get shit ALL the time in anon for my art style. I never reply because: 1.) I don’t want to give them the attention they want. and 2.) I genuinely don’t give a fuck if people don’t like my art. If YOU have an issue with my art YOU don’t have to interact. Interaction from that point on is a YOU problem that YOU should figure out why YOU feel compelled to try and force my art to be what YOU want instead of my own. So I literally most times don’t even read it the whole way, it just gets deleted. Now. This being said. The only reason I am currently writing this is to address it now is that it’s been moving into comments ON my art posts rather than just dipshits too scared to come off anon. People, you’re not getting a rise out of me. I’m not going to just CHANGE my art over night because one person didn’t like it because I have plenty of followers and friends out there who DO like what I draw. I like what I draw, so I genuinely don’t give a fuck what people think about my art. I don’t know you, I don’t care to know you, and tbh you sound like no one else wants to know you either. So unless you’re of some importance to me then I’m just flat out not gonna give a shit what you got to say. That’s just how it is. 

So as an explaination to those I DO care about who see my art and may be wondering why I draw a certain way, lemme give you a little bit of background on my art career! And why I draw Beetlejuice the ways I do. For the past 7 years I drew porn for commissions REGULARLY. People paid me up to about $300 a piece for art from time to time. I had SEVEN years of drawing a VERY specific set of body types because that’s what people wanted from me. Seven years of drawing one body type does not make transitioning into fanart of a non-stereotypical “attractive” body type well. I gotta remind you that I hadn’t drawn consistently in about two years before I started drawing for this fandom, so not only was I JUST getting back into the swing of drawing. I ALSO had to fight seven years of learning and lack of practice drawing body types. So yes, my older art is definitely a lot worse than where I am now that I’m drawing near daily. But I have only been drawing again for about 6 months. I’m still re-learning my style. I’m still experimenting which is why everything is so inconsistent. On the other hand. I do want to strive to draw SEVERAL different body types because body types being represented is important to me. For me personally, I prefer to keep things realistic to me in my head, it’s just how it is. So for example, I like giving different body types to different AUs or different characters based on WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO because I like the realism aspect of it. So for example: Incubus!Beetlejuice I tend to draw thinner by no means as a twig but thinner. He feeds off consensual sex, ad a gross, scary demon I don’t think he’s eating all the time, AND he’s fucking like a madman and putting all that energy out. Hence I imagine he would be on the thinner side. But someone like my GodNaga!Beej AU has a tummy, BUT he also has a LOT of muscle from moving around how he does. Hence his huge arms, and nice looking back muscles. My OG Beetlejuice I IDEALLY want to keep around Alex Brightman’s size. But now HEAR ME OUT. IM STILL LEARNING HOW TO DRAW DIFFERENT BODY TYPES. That standalone picture of Gamer!Beej I uploaded the other night was literally a practice at EXACTLY that. Improvement is a slow process in art, but I’ve came LEAPS and bounds already. I’ve gone from drawing him as basically a thin twink to giving them dad bods as is. I’m working on it. You guys have to be patient with me while I’m learning how to just let go and break out of 7 years of a comfort zone box I built. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was any dad bod. So just relax. And if you feel the BURNING rage in your guts to make a fool of yourself and comment some shit about how I draw, or how Beej doesn’t look how I draw him, go ahead and comment. You’re not gonna get a reply. You’re just going to get blocked, because I don’t care, I never have.

[shadyb00ts]

How 2020 Turned Me Into A Swiftie Again

If you’d told me a few years ago that I’d have not one but two Taylor Swift albums in my year-end favorites list, I would’ve thought you were out of your mind. Then again, stranger things have happened in this hellscape of a year.

I’m really not sure where the first time I heard the phrase “Life is too short to pretend to hate Taylor Swift” was. I have no idea who originated it, but it stuck with me when I started to unpack that about a year ago, during her Lover era. By then, my perception and feelings about Taylor had been very... inconsistent, to say the least. I started out as a full-on stan, then it dwindled from there overtime until I basically became a hater, which then turned into indifference but silent respect. Now, I’m pretty much on the road to becoming a stan again. Revisiting her catalog, analyzing her lyrics, watching interviews, the works. 

I wanted to examine what it was that made my opinions about her go through so many steep rises and falls within this entire decade. Part of it was her shift in musical style that I didn’t quite mesh with, but another part was owning up to the internal biases I had when I was younger and how gullible I was in going along with whatever the media or the popular conscious was saying about her and the kind of person she is. 

I’m somebody who’s incapable of separating art from the artist. I simply don’t listen to artists when I don’t like them as people or don’t agree with their actions. Examples include but are not limited to Kim Petras, Melanie Martinez, Azealia Banks, Grimes, just to name a few. I have my own personal reasons for just not wanting to engage with any of their music, and if you still want to, that’s none of my business.

At some point in my life, I think Taylor got on that list. Looking back on it now, I find that completely ridiculous, because she never really did anything or acted in a way that warranted that reaction out of me. So I wanted to delve into how that even came about in the first place.

With that said, I want to take a trip down memory lane and go back through her eras, and go through the timeline of my strange relationship with Taylor Swift’s body of work as well as her public persona. Fair warning, it’s gonna be really cheesy and emotional at parts, but it is fully my truth. Thank you in advance if you manage to read the whole thing.

Part 1: The Country Era

It’s 2010 and I’m in eighth grade. I’m in an extremely Muslim country, the only son of an extremely Muslim family that enrolled me in an extremely Muslim school. I’m getting bullied by the boys in my class for being too feminine and being ignored by the girls for being a boy. The last close friend I had from elementary school had just moved away the year prior, and I’d never felt more alone in my life.

I was a closeted gay kid still trying to figure himself out and hating who he was. I escaped to cringey online chat sites like IMVU and catfished as a girl, because at the time I thought the only way to get boys to like me and want to be with me was to pretend to be someone else, someone I actually liked.

When I think back on this era, I mostly remember the girls in my class obsessing over these three albums and singing her songs with each other all the time. I desperately wanted to join them and fangirl with them over her music, though of course they never gave me the time of day. I remember I would memorize so many of her songs and write them all down on a special notebook I kept. When I wasn’t paying attention in classes, that’s what I would do; scribble out a collection of all the songs of hers that I knew by heart.

To me, these three albums represented a certain kind of vivid fantasy. Taylor’s songwriting has obviously grown exponentially over the past decade, but even back then she was always so damn good at storytelling and detail, painting you a very clear picture of a scene and placing you right there. For a miserable, self-hating fourteen-year-old gay boy that was always seeking escapism from a homophobic environment, this was the perfect outlet for me to live out a different kind of life, to play pretend.

I honestly can’t explain what it is about her style of songwriting but she always made me feel like I was genuinely experiencing everything she was talking about. Things like kissing in the rain, riding around in the truck of the boy of my dreams in a tiny one horse town, shedding teardrops on a guitar that I definitely didn’t own, experiencing crushing heartbreak. This was stuff that my sheltered ass couldn’t comprehend.

Taylor perfectly captured that ideal, that small town girl with big dreams and storybook romances. I was in love with her discography at the time, having memorized pretty much the entirety of Fearless because that was my favorite of three. Middle school was hell for me, but her music was definitely something that helped me pull through, because she sent my imagination into overdrive.

This was a time in my life where I didn’t really care yet about an artist’s public image or the media’s portrayal of them, It was purely about the music for me. Of course, when looking at these albums now, there were a few questionable choices she made lyrically, I have to admit. Particularly with songs like “Better Than Revenge” and “Innocent”, both having aged terribly with the former being bafflingly misogynistic and the latter being about Kanye. As of my writing this, Taylor is currently in the process of re-recording her old catalog, and I assume that she would skip these two songs in particular, as well as several others that haven’t exactly aged well.

This era really got me through some tough times and she provided much-needed relief for me within each of these three albums. I’ll always have an attachment to them because of the bittersweet memories they represent.

Part 2: Red

Red I decided to put in its own category, because this was kind of a weird era for Taylor. Even back when I was an ignorant teenager that barely had any critical thinking skills, I felt the dissonance of this album and its Max Martin produced singles. This album represented Taylor dipping her toe into pop music, which she made abundantly clear when she decided to release We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together as the lead single.

I actually remember this moment quite clearly. She premiered the single at some kind of fan event that I believe was streamed live on YouTube, and either I watched it live or I watched the full recording of it later on. At the time I remember feeling it was kind of bizarre to hear Taylor adopt this style of music, because it was so drastically different from her previous work and it took me a while to adjust. Obviously I enjoyed pop music at the time as much as I do now, but I just hadn’t been expecting it to come from Taylor. 

Fortunately it was just the three singles that were full pop, and the rest of the album still had her signature DNA and also includes some of her best work. All Too Well, for example, is I think one of the best songs she’s ever made, if not the best. I think if I were introducing Taylor to someone that’s totally unfamiliar with her, that would be my first choice, because it’s a masterwork in songwriting and emotionality.

I do think the thing that irked me the most about this album and era, even to this day, was the lack of cohesion. Of course I figured that she would eventually venture into pop music, but the way in which she did it just felt a bit too jarring to me. Perhaps if the album had a more even distribution of pop songs and country songs, it would’ve been slightly more palatable for me. It’s not even that the three pop songs were bad; they were quite good for their time. Though to be completely honest they’re the songs I barely ever return to any time I listen to Red now. They’re the kind of catchy pop songs where it’s difficult not to get sick of them at a certain point in your life. I’ve grown to really dislike the lead single, and even 22.

Her image was also starting to get much more scrutinized by the media around this time. I think this era probably marked the sharp rise of the “Taylor Swift has too many boyfriends!” argument people loved to throw around. I wish I could say I was smart enough to not buy into that shit at the time, but I wasn’t. While it didn’t bother me, it was something that I wondered about, why she dated and broke up with so many guys at such a young age. It was something that I judged her for. Obviously I didn’t yet understand that it was normal for people her age to date around. Plus it gave her some great material.

By this time, Taylor was making the gradual transition of country sweetheart to pop star, and while Red was kind of a rocky start to that, naturally she managed to pull it off. But not quite flawlessly.

Part 3: The Pop Era

Okay, I have a lot to say about these girls.

I think this era started off strong with 1989. It was a more fully realized version of Taylor’s little pop experiment, and it actually had the cohesion that I needed to be able to fully adapt to this new style she’d cultivated. She wrote yet another one of her best songs with Blank Space, which I like to think was a precursor to Reputation (and dare I say that one song did Reputation’s concept better than that album as a whole?).

However... Shake It Off. I’m sorry, I just hate that song.

WANEGBT, the first single off of Red, isn’t exactly the best song either but it made sense as to why she chose that as the first single. It was to signify her dabbling into pop. Reputation’s first single I also am not the biggest fan of, but again, made perfect sense as an introduction, but I’ll get to that later. Shake It Off, though? For the life of me, I have no idea why this song was the first single. Or to be frank, why it was even on the album at all. 

I’m sorry y’all, I just hate it. Everything about it. The verses, the chorus, the appalling rap bridge. She should’ve kept that song in the drafts and released Blank Space as a first single, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on. Sorry Shake It Off stans, but I’m sure all three of you will get over it. ❤

That said, 1989 had some excellent songs, and I was finally starting to get used to Taylor doing pop. However, my excitement and enthusiasm for her music started to falter due to my weak mind at the time once again getting swayed by the media. 

This time, I began to see Taylor as someone that seemed to be very calculated and conniving in the way she curated her image. Something that didn’t sit well with me was the “girl squad” stuff, and how all of the women she surrounded herself with were essentially these supermodels with unattainable beauty standards, and also believing the rumors about how certain famous women were given private requests to join Taylor’s “squad”. And then of course, the Kim and Kanye thing happened. #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty trended worldwide, and that was probably my earliest exposure to an instance of a celebrity getting canceled, so I was just happy to join the bandwagon. My opinion of her shifted like that, and it’s crazy to think about it now, how I barely had the capacity to form my own opinions and was easily influenced by everything I heard.

Despite me kind of joining the Taylor hate train, I did like Reputation as a concept. I liked how she disappeared from the public eye and came back being like, “You want me to be the villain? The snake? Fine.” Look What You Made Me Do, as I mentioned before, was the perfect choice for the first single despite the song itself being sonically....not the best. The music video and the line about how the old Taylor couldn’t come to the phone was an iconic moment in pop culture, I have to admit that.

I didn’t listen to the album as a whole until later, though. I was having my own hang-ups about Taylor that I think are silly now, but at the time when I didn’t like an artist I would mostly avoid their work. When I did listen to the album, though, I thought it was... okay. There’s one standout track to me and that is Getaway Car, and it’s the only song from Reputation I can say I fully adore to pieces. The other songs on there I either just like, or I find to be meh at best. (Also I know Ready For It is objectively a bad song but I really enjoy the chorus, don’t @ me, @ god)

A few years later, Lover happened and.... Once again, horrible first single. ME! is a genuinely atrocious song, and I have no idea how esteemed, prolific songwriter Taylor Swift managed to reach a point where she had a song with the phrase “spelling is fun!” in it. I feel the exact same way about this song as I do about Shake It Off. It had no business being in the album whatsoever.

As far as Lover the album goes, this came out around the time where I was kind of feeling indifferent toward Taylor (which is hilarious if you know what the first track on it is). I was much more politically aware and had learned not to put too much faith in white women, and I was focusing on other artists so much that Lover barely even came onto my radar. I listened to it once, thought it was meh, and moved on. I revisited it earlier this year and realized I was a bit too harsh on it the first time around. Sure it was her weakest album overall, but it wasn’t bad by any means. It was perfectly alright, and there were songwriting moments within it that were still quite strong. The title track and also Miss Americana comes to mind as standouts.

She started to become more vocal politically around this time. A lot of people thought it was too little too late, which was a fair point. However to me it made sense that she stayed tight-lipped about politics when she was younger, considering she was operating within the realm of country music. Plus, upon watching her documentary, it was pretty clear she had old white men behind the scenes telling her what she should or shouldn’t say, to make sure she maintained that all-American country girl sweetheart image. Still, I do agree with the people who thought that she should’ve used her platform sooner.

Oh and for the record, I think You Need to Calm Down is a terrible song. The video was cute, and the message behind it is fine, but I just hate it sonically.

At this point my interest in Taylor was probably at an all time low. The era started off strong with 1989, but it progressively got weaker. She just wasn’t really giving me much in terms of lyricism, and her pop productions were starting to blend together to the point where a lot of them were sounding very same-y. Lover to me marked the point of stagnation in her music; it was solid enough, but it just wasn’t going anywhere. We’ve seen Pop Taylor, she was cute for a while, but what else? Where does she go from here?

Well... She went into the woods.

Part 4: The Cottagecore Sisters

When I heard about Taylor dropping a surprise album, I suppose I was intrigued. She is one of the few artists that are successful enough to be able to make a move like that and cause a lot of buzz and excitement. I didn’t think much about it though, because my 2020 at that time was still inundated with SAWAYAMA and Ungodly Hour on repeat. On a whim, though, I decided to listen to it one day, not expecting much out of it.

Earlier when I was talking about her country era, I mentioned that Taylor’s storytelling and her penchant for detailed descriptions were my favorite parts of her writing. Her innate ability to transport me into other worlds, to provide escapism when my life became too much to deal with. I feel like these aspects were missing in the several years that Taylor focused on pop music. There were flashes of it in some of her later work, sure, but very few. She was becoming a huge mega superstar and her songs started to lose that sense of relatability that had been easy for me to latch on too. These things definitely contributed to my loss of interest for her work in general.

And then Folklore managed to bring me back to that place of fantasy I described before, but heightened. Elevated. Evolved. This is why I think that Folklore is Taylor Swift’s magnum opus.

Storytelling is without a doubt her strongest skill as an artist. To be able to construct not just a narrative but an entire world through songs is not something anyone can pull off. Throughout her pop era, there was always that something missing because I knew that she was capable of more. I couldn’t explain it well back then, but despite her penmanship still being commendable during those years, it still felt oddly lackluster. I knew she could do better, but I didn’t have the proof yet.

This is it. Both Folklore and Evermore showcase exactly what I knew she was capable of. This is Taylor Swift at her most creative, at her full power.

I think in a recent interview I watched (though I can’t remember which one), even she herself acknowledged how it would’ve been a disservice to continue strictly writing autobiographical songs, and so she decided to write from the perspectives of multiple different characters while also occasionally inserting herself and her life experiences into these narratives. She essentially created her own folklore and managed to make me invested in characters that don’t even exist.

I have to talk about the love triangle trilogy: cardigan, august and betty. It’s a testament to her songwriting ability that these fictional characters feel like real people. The story of Betty, James and Augusta/Augustine is just so well done to the point where I forget that it’s Taylor Swift singing. When I listen to these songs, I am fully imagining the characters she conjured up. 

The song that I find the most profound out of the three, and also happens to be my favorite song on the album, is august. To me, it is the most heartbreaking song out of all of them. I relate so much to that girl who’s hopelessly in love with someone that just doesn’t give a shit about them and is merely using her for a summer fling. And it’s not even like I’ve experienced something similar to this in real life, Taylor just somehow made it relatable with the sheer power of her pen game. It’s even more heartbreaking considering we don’t know what happened to this girl, if she ever managed to find happiness, because in the Long Pond Sessions Taylor mentioned that Betty and James eventually got back together. They got their happy ending, but what happened to Augustine?

I can’t believe she’s got me this deep in my feelings over non-existent teenagers, I swear to god.

Just when I thought Folklore was going to be the end of this new side of her for a while, she releases Evermore in December, its sister album. While I don’t think it’s quite as strong as Folklore, it still delivered immensely in terms of lyricism, productions and vocals. Evermore’s release pretty much solidified the realization that I was basically becoming a Swiftie again, a whole decade later.

I was embarrassed by that thought at first, but honestly now I’m at a point where I don’t think there’s anything to be embarrassed about. Taylor is too skilled of a songwriter for me to consider her a guilty pleasure. I just needed something to help me come to that conclusion, and these two albums did just that. She finally gave to me what I was waiting for.

Final Thoughts

I don’t really stan artists the same way I used to now, which I mentioned previously in my review of Chromatica. I don’t deify them or hold them to an impossible moral standard they could never live up to anymore. I see them as flawed human beings that have the capacity to make great art. So when I say I’m becoming a Swiftie, I’m still fully aware that Taylor Swift is a thirty-one year old rich white woman who is bound to have shortcomings and missteps as a person. In my mind, she hasn’t done anything drastic enough or stupid enough for me to become uncomfortable in listening to her work. I had my own ideas about how she could’ve been fake, conniving, manipulative or whatever else the media was trying to convey about her, but there really is no way of knowing who she truly is as a person.

Celebrities and influencers have the power to curate their image however they want. The relationships they have with us, the audience, are entirely parasocial, so of course we base our judgments of them based on very limited knowledge, or just the surface-level view of what they’re like. I don’t know if Taylor is as down to earth and genuine as she appears to be now, and I honestly don’t need to know. If she does things I disagree with or acts a certain way that deserves criticism, of course I’d still call her out, and depending on the severity of what it was she said or did, it might end up with me not wanting to engage with her work anymore.

But the reality is, as a person, I’ve realized that she is just fine. I was holding on to a certain idea of her in my head where I think at one point I dubbed her “the Anne Hathaway of music”, meaning someone that comes across too perfect to the point where it seems calculated and disingenuous. But honestly, I just don’t feel that way about her anymore. I don’t feel particularly attached to her as a person, either. 

But I do feel an attachment to her music. At the end of the day, that’s where I’m standing now when it comes to her. I don’t have any expectations or delusions about her as a human being, and I’m not going to remain devoted to her if she does something dumb, but I believe that she is an insanely gifted artist who has written so many songs that genuinely speak to me and make me feel intensely. She lost me for a while, but now I’m right back in it.

So yeah, like I said in the beginning of the post, life’s too short to pretend to hate Taylor Swift. I’d rather just pretend to live in a mystical small town as a sad gay witch. And I’m at peace with that.

[cookehenry90]

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[comicteaparty]

October 19th-October 25th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from October 19th, 2019 to October 25th, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:

Describe your design process for new characters.  How do you go about it?

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

Ohooh it is my time! First I draw a bunch of quick drawings of body and face We are a small team, so then we had discussions, we knew how they looked in general, sallly had to be small with curls etc. Then when the body was chosen it was time to draw outfits. Since we are doing a whole world we had to find out about what kind of clothing generally people would wear, what accessories, what does nobels and rich wear, contra poor, what is religious garments. Then the faces had to be chosen and drawn again. Then when all elements was in place, it was time for colors. For Lani, I did like 30 different versions of colors, ans combination before we found the right one. For side characters there has been only a few sketches, and since we knew the whole class system with clothing, it was easier to pick and match compared to place in society. Then thinking about the role the person have in society. Next is designing scientist, and that's going to be fun!

Line up if the finished designs of the main(edited)

Face exploration

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More final clothing design

[IMAGE]

Color exploration

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spacerocketbunny

Oh damn I love all this! I never thought of actually mapping out all the different classes religious/ non religious formal/ casual etc. That's so smart! And these designs are so cute ahhhh

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

aaw thanks! It was very important for us that it was clear to see! Since the man Andrée is a nobel, and Sallly was part of a crime gang, and Lani is a tempelgirl, and we do have a lot of different social groups

The Q - working on WAYFINDERS

And their homeland is very northern/Viking inspired. I'm very excited to show the other country in the story, which has a much more Mediterranean flavor!

Also yes @Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS is super impressive!

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

Aaaaaaaw you are too sweet!

AntiBunny

Process? Not so much a process as an idea forms in my subconscious and then like Athena rises fully formed in armor from my head. After that they will go through a few revisions. Usually they get simplified a bit, I try to make them a bit more iconic, and easier to draw repeatedly of course.

In AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ this resulted in some of the earlier character designs being a tad inconsistent, for instance a character in a T-Shirt interacting with a character in a long winter coat.

Since then I've been trying to come up with more consistent seasonal outfit designs. With Book 2 I think I've gotten a lot more consistent with the outfits all making it very clear that it's summer.

So short version is that it starts out with them forming organically from loose ideas, then getting refined and redesigned over time. Not exactly the most scientific approach I know.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

For new major characters in Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/) I usually try to design a character and draw them at least 5 times before I have them show up in the comic. Their initial design usually pops into my head pretty quickly, but I do a bunch of test drawings to A) see what looks best and B) isolate things that might be difficult to replicate, and simplify them as much as I can. For new minor characters, my process is way more haphazard - and I’ll admit I fall back on a lot of similar face and body shapes when designing incidental crowd characters or random one-line characters.

But the area I’ve had the most fun jumping into - and didn’t expect to even try out - was costume design. I imagined my characters staying in their main outfits for the entire story, but was encouraged to design wardrobes for each, just as a fun exercise at first. And now, I see outfit-swaps as ways to get out of drawing ruts - and it’s more fun for the readers, too! Makes total sense that characters would switch clothes over a longer story, so when I started doing it, it was not only a “OF COURSE!” moment, but a huge relief in terms of being allowed to try new designs. I’m really looking forward to drawing my characters in all sorts of different ways now.(edited)

The Q - working on WAYFINDERS

THem color schemes though!

MJ Massey

I need to get better about this. I usually slap dash throw characters together, especially background characters, but based on their character traits, I have an idea of how I want them to look.

For my main characters, I start drawing them a couple times, mostly just doodles and then like a concept art or two to really get the hang of them, but I find that drawing them in the comic is what gets them under my fingers the best

Emily and Chester were the ones I designed first, as the two mains I wanted to make sure they would play off each other well. With Emily, the key thing was to make sure she wasn't too cute or attractive--she's supposed to be kind of plain looking and a little drab

Chester, in contrast, is soft and playful looking while Emily is more angular and sharp

Cronaj

For Whispers of the Past, my characters have gone through several redesigns over the years, as I spent time planning the comic, getting better at drawing, and discovering the deeper personalities of my characters. As it is my first comic, I wasn't very organized in my initial process. Since my art style is not very cartoony, I don't use the same stylistic cues to help the readers tell the characters apart, and instead, I rely on a lot of subtle features to tell them apart, such as Agatha's thick eyebrows and full lips:

Or Izrekiel's round under-eye, or his round face:

Some of these reference sheets are more complete than others, and some are older or newer depending on how much help I needed when adjusting each character's designs to my evolving style.

Desnik

I usually start with writing them before I totally know what they look like. Sometimes they wind up with props that I need to work into the design as the story gets rewritten.

Deo101 (Millennium)

For me I generally have a solid idea in my mind before I start drawing. I draw that idea, refine it a bit, and then I draw them about 10-100 more times, depending how much they'll show up. For background characters i pretty much design them right then and there, but for major and minor named characters, i need to get comfortable with them and really test how they react to things. I also will paint my main characters, because I find that forcing myself to fully realize what the character would look like realistically really helps me be more informed when I'm simplifying them later! I tend to focus pretty strongly on color, and tend to monochrome designs. There is also some research involved, where i make moodboards once i get the initial design down so I can refine things! A lot, i know.

[ryanmeyerart]

Grace Hartigan’s “Barbie”

This essay was written in 2012

Opinion alert — Jackson Pollock is the most famous Abstract Expressionist painter. Fact alert — it was in New York City that Pollock and the other artists associated with this new movement blossomed. The “Irascibles,’ as they were dubbed, began to shake up the art world with their new philosophy and aesthetic. The novelty of Abstract Expressionism was powerful enough from the beginning to draw in a younger group of artists. Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis, and Grace Hartigan are a few of the artists known as the second generation New York School. Despite her young age, Hartigan was deep in the Cedar Tavern circle and was considered a friend by Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Kline, etc. Curious and observant, Hartigan looked outward at her surrounding physical, social, and political world for inspiration. She began to paint a combination of what she saw and what she felt. Her commentary on daily life is the leading characteristic of her work. Her paintings such as Barbie have been interpreted as feminist precursors to pop art, but in reality, Hartigan did not ally herself with either feminism or pop art. For Barbie the output is a statement about the contemporary ‘60’s society. This painting and the great majority of her other works are musings on life and should be viewed the same way one reads poetry. A complete interpretation can only be accurately made by considering her own words as well as clues from her life’s story.

Hartigan was born on March 28, 1922 in New Jersey. She was greatly influenced by her aunt, an english schoolteacher who piqued her interest in writing and theatre which lasted all through high school. She married at age 18 and ended up in California after she and her husband ran out of money on their way to Alaska. They lived there several years with their newborn son until World War II broke out. They decided to move back east where he was then drafted. She began to take night classes to learn drawing and painting and got a job as a draftsman. She fell in love with Matisse after being introduced to book of his work and immediately began seeking out a way to paint like him. She then began to study under Ike Muse and moved to New York with him after she and her husband split. Not much time passed before she and Muse split also and she began to support herself with a “life of total poverty but meeting all marvelous, exciting people.”1 This is a reference to the collection of artists and writers who patronized the Cedar Tavern in the 40’s and 50’s. She visited Pollock’s and de Kooning’s studios and began the journey headfirst into pure Abstract Expressionism which solidified her status in the group as well as Clement Greenberg’s approval. Her first few works in ’49 and ’50 were very gestural and resembled the flat, all over composition of Pollock’s work. This only lasted a couple years before she began to slowly introduce representational elements that are very similar to the figures in de Kooning’s Woman paintings. A key factor in this change was her growing relationship with the poet Frank O’Hara. Hartigan’s childhood love for literature re-blossomed vicariously through O’Hara who dedicated several poems to her. In 1952 O’Hara gave a series of twelve poems called Oranges, Sweet, a Dozen to Hartigan who then turned them into her Orange paintings. This rebellion against Greenberg allowed her to extend her boundaries and begin to develop her own identity as a painter. Her first step was to look back at the Masters like Velasquez, Goya, and Rubens all the while keeping Matisse and the Abstract Expressionist aesthetic in mind. She then began to look outward in the exploration of her world, New York City. For several decades she painted shopping malls, billboards, vendors, shop windows, and anything else that caught her eye and stimulated her mind. Hartigan was overflowing with material that she felt compelled to paint. Throughout the ‘60’s she pulled out all the stops and painted everything from mythical creatures and gods, Marilyn Monroe, lily ponds, human emotions, and Barbie dolls. The only reoccurring visual elements are the gestural forms that came from her Abstract Expressionist background and the bold use of color drawn from her love for Fauvism. This inconsistency of subject matter is the first clue as to Hartigan’s thought processes.

The mistake that critics and historians too often make is the lack of attention paid to Hartigan’s body of work as a whole. When they step back and get the big picture view, they consider it for a couple of minutes and quickly conclude that, “She has reached for new ideas so often that she has no signature style.”2 Naturally at this conclusion, they are forced to focus on individual paintings or small series of them. Unsurprisingly, the interpretations of Hartigan’s Barbie paintings are straightforward and superficial.

The Barbie doll made her debut in 1959 and it was not long before Mattel, Inc. began receiving criticism for the doll’s negative body image. The doll has often been used as a symbol for the unacceptable image of women portrayed in pop-culture. When Hartigan painted Barbie in the heat of the controversy, many people, both feminists and non-feminists, assumed that she was making a feminist statement. The well-informed researcher might also argue his/her point with evidence that Hartigan originally signed her paintings as “George Hartigan” for her first few shows. This has been taken as a statement of the difficulty for women artists to succeed in the world of Abstract Expressionism. However, both of these arguments can be easily refuted by Hartigan’s own words. She has repeatedly denied having any feminist sentiments and even supported Pollock by saying, “The myth I find most infuriating is the one of Jackson Pollock as brawling, woman-hating, drunk and macho. The man was tender, suffering- an inarticulate, shy genius, but people don’t want to hear that about Jackson.”3 When asked why she signed her work “George Hartigan” she replied, “Because I identified with George Sand and George Eliot — they were my heroes. The real story is I had gay friends who all had female names amongst themselves and I thought it would be fun to have a man’s name.”4

The argument that Hartigan’s work is a precursor to Pop art has greater merit, but still doesn’t go much deeper than the paint on the canvas. Nevertheless, Hartigan did paint an abstract work titled, Billboard which can be compared to James Rosenquist’s work, and a couple of paintings of Marilyn Monroe which invariably conjures Warhol’s ghost. These images in addition to the Barbie doll are unquestionable pop culture icons. One can easily imagine Barbie as the subject of a Warhol painting and should not be surprised that he did indeed use the child’s toy in a series of prints. Warhol’s Barbie is very different from Hartigan’s however. In her essay, which analyzes Hartigan’s work, Melody Davis points out that, “Pop art is typically hard-edged, cool, acrylic-painted, repetitive and de-personalized.”5 This is the antithesis to Hartigan’s work. In response to this new aesthetic, she made an unapologetic statement in the 60’s saying, “Pop art is not painting, because painting must have content and emotion.”6 Similar to the contrast between the quality of a hand crafted table that exudes warmth from the carpenter’s personal touch and the mass-produced particle board piece made by machines and sold in an IKEA store, so is the unfriendly relationship of Hartigan and Pop art. It is not uncommon to see the subject of Barbie in everyday life, but just as Dutch genre painting is not Pop art, neither is Hartigan’s work.

Instead, the individual work is one of social commentary. Referring to the Barbie doll, Hartigan made this statement, “I’m very interested in dolls of all cultures, because a doll is an essence, really, of what society thinks you should present to your little girls, about what they’re supposed to plan for, how they’re supposed to think about themselves. And if you’re supposed to think about yourself as a bride that deserves a $100 dress and you only cost $15 and your husband is a castrated man, boy, that tells you something about American morals!”7 Hartigan painted what she saw around her. When she walked throughout New York City she painted vendors and shop windows. When she studied the masters at the MET she painted the scenes and figures that excited her. When she noticed a changing country she painted a doll that symbolized a part of it. Hartigan was not supporting or criticizing mass production, mass marketing, or mass media. She was taking input, processing it, and then giving output. Hartigan explains, “I try to declaw the terribleness of popular culture and turn it into beauty or meaning.”8 Now a motive fueling her creative machine becomes apparent. By zooming out and viewing the entirety of her life and work, we see that Hartigan takes both the ugly and mundane as well as the beautiful and exciting and gives them a poetic quality. This should not be a surprise, given her love for literature as a child, her very close relationships with the poets who patronized the Cedar Tavern (O’Hara in particular), and her “heroes,” the novelists Eliot and Sand. For the final piece of evidence let’s again consider Hartigan’s own words, “As most painting moves closer to sculpture and architecture, my own work moves nearer poetry…It increasingly must be ‘read’ in terms of meaning and metaphor.”9 Hartigan’s bold colors, gestural brushwork, and expression through abstraction are some of the tools she employs to give emotional life to the content that she chooses to paint. The successful viewer is the one who does indeed “read” her paintings. Poetry and Hartigan’s work are musings on life.

With a creative career that lasted over half a century, Hartigan produced a large body of paintings and prints. She did not stray far from her aesthetic, yet changes throughout the decades are visible and tell her life’s story like rings in a tree. Her experiences at the Cedar Tavern were truly invaluable and would cause envy in any historian. Unfortunately, she has been misunderstood a great deal too much. Barbie should be read as a poem, and not as Pop art or feminist art. Only then can one fully appreciate the creative mind of Grace Hartigan.

Bibliography

Diggory, Terence. “Questions of identity in Oranges by Frank O’Hara and Grace Hartigan.” Art Journal 52, no. 4 (Winter93 1993): 41.Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 9, 2012).

Gibson, Ann Eden. Abstract expressionism: other politics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

Hartigan, Grace, interview by Julie Haifley. May 10, 1979.

Hartigan, Grace, interview by Jonathan VanDyke. February 12, 2000.

Hobbs, Robert. 1995. “Grace Hartigan: A Painter’s World by Robert Saltonstall Mattison: Reviewed by Robert Hobbs.” Woman’s Art Journal , Vol. 16, №2 (Autumn, 1995 — Winter, 1996), pp. 42–44. JSTOR (accessed October 18, 2012).

Jachec, Nancy. The Philosophy and Politics of Abstract Expressionism: 1940–1960. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ., 2000.

Kunitz, Daniel. “Gallery chronicle.” New Criterion 20, no. 3 (November 2001): 51–54. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed October 19, 2012).

Landau, Ellen G… Reading abstract expressionism. New Haven: Yale, 2005.

Lavazzi, Thomas. 2000. “Lucky Pierre Gets into Finger Paint: Grace Hartigan and Frank O’Hara’s Oranges.” Aurora: The Journal Of The History Of Art 1, 122–137. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed October 18, 2012).

Lord, M. G.. Forever Barbie: the unauthorized biography of a real doll. New York: Morrow and Co., 1994.

Princenthal, Nancy. 2009. “Grace Hartigan 1922–2008.” Art In America 97, no. 10: 142. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed October 18, 2012).

Robert Saltonstall Mattison. “Hartigan, Grace.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed October 18, 2012,http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T036782.

Shapiro, David, and Cecile Shapiro.Abstract expressionism: a critical record. Cambridge [England: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

[notdeadjusttrash-blog]

My Friend has been Falsely Accused of Tracing So I Will Defend Him

Okay I accidentally deleted the blog I posted this one because I’m a dumbass, so I’ll just repost it here even though I don’t use this blog anymore, but apparently I still have followers. Bless caches because I was able to get this back from google caches so I don’t have to retype everything. I added further evidence and refutes to claims that were not in my original post btw.

Anyways, I am making this post to help out my good friend @5ru9 aka Falco who has been recently accused of tracing/copy pasting other people’s / official art!

I’ve known Falco for over 3 years, and we’ve grown as artists together. Once in a while we give each other advice on art (thanks for the mech and armor advice and teaching me how you line and color!), but most of the time we just meme each other.

Anyways, a lot of people have pointed out that they’ve seen him livestream before, and he’s already posted some of his block outs and other wips as proof that he does not trace in his post here:

http://5ru9.tumblr.com/post/168277137427/hello-i-have-been-informed-about-a-callout-post

To further prove his claim with solid evidence, I shall present to you!

Times he’s asked for advice on his art, or I randomly decided to mention things I notice in his WIPs!

Exhibit A-1:

A Tenkai Knight he made up! I pointed out a few things I thought were awkward about the perspective in his WIP.

Exhibit A-2:

He started working on this way back in July and didn’t finish it until much later because he was working on several other pieces at the same time. I suggested lowering the eyebrows and drawing the eyes a bit narrower to get more of the playful expression he was aiming for. In his final piece here, you can see that Falco continued to refine the piece.

By the way! The reason he sometimes posts a lot of detailed artworks one shortly after the other is because he sometimes works on multiple pieces at once! And then finishes coloring them around the same time.

Exhibit A-3

Falco and I spent good time trying to figure out why he felt like something was wrong with his sketch! I thought maybe it was the trapezius and I decided to red line (or blue line i guess) it so it’d be easier for him to see approximately where i thought the line should go to fix it.

Exhibit A-4:

The gif-ing process turned white bg into blue… anyways! Falco showed me an early version of his Tenkai Knights OC that he eventually used in an April Fool’s joke to pass off as a new character in the series. He mastered the tenkai style enough that at first glance, people really did believe it was official! Like you had to get a good look to realize Shiyu was not really a real new character! Btw I had to go into my old twitter acc to find this…. (Edit: the gif wasn’t working bc it was too big so i had to make it smaller… and choppier and stuff to fit the mb max)

Well now that brings us into!!!

Exhibit B

Some of his old art!! (I’m so sorry falco i’ll be exposing your ancient art to ppl now)

Here you can see his progress from 2014 Tenkai fan art to early 2015! It starts looking more and more like the official art, which is what he was going for.

For reference, here’s what the character Ceylan Jones/Washizaki looks like:

I blocked out fan art by everyone except falco (which i marked) that shows up in this google search. Everything else is official art. The two fan arts by falco you see here are more recent, the angel one being from 2016 and the chicken one from 2017 (i think he also made a version with sonic instead of the chicken? lol). They’re both on his dA accounts btw! The 2017 one really looks like official art, doesn’t it? But it’s his artwork! He practiced a LOT to reach that point, and I hope the earlier arts I showed above this one are enough to convince you in his art progression! Side note: i only used images w/ceylan because 1. i’m biased because ceylan is my favorite character and 2. he drew ceylan a lot because ceylan is his favorite character Also you can see his handle change from s3iwashi to burningbraven. 5ru9 is is a pretty recent handle.

ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN IN THE TENKAI FANDOM FOR A WHILE CAN VOUCH FOR HIM!!!!!

And now for the last one,

Exhibit C

WHAT? WHO IS THIS???

This is my favorite character from a Chinese series called AOTU World! His name is Grey, or 格瑞。I commissioned Falco to draw Grey for me, and let me tell you it would be IMPOSSIBLE for him to have copied any of this. Why? Because the donghua is 3D and the manhua’s art is very inconsistent!

Let me show you the reference pictures I gave him to work with!

They’re all in my gdrive folder here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CqwH5KS-pHX0ZqLHQpoIZBi6W-gsU_Tz

This is all official art from the manhua, except the 3D model is from the donghua. Look at how inconsistent the references are! There’s no way he could have copy and pasted or traced this! Grey doesn’t even do this particular pose anywhere. lol. I told Falco “give him a cool sword pose”. (I’m sorry for being so vague, Falco! But it turned out great!!) The style he ended up drawing in was a mixture of all of them.

Btw!! here’s the blockout and the sketch he sent me before I sent my payment for the commission!! You can see his construction in the block out!! The arm construction and leg construction is light, but it’s there. You can also see the block out below the sketch. Notice he actually fixed the leg length from block out -> sketch?

ARGUMENTS AGAINST SPECIFIC ACCUSATIONS

LOOK, thte actual drawing doesn’t even match the sprites that closely. Pay attention to the collar especially. The whole frankensteining the image and then painting over it thing is just way more effort than drawing it himself. They don’t even match that well in the overlays. Like wow it’s such a crime to try and stay on model.

WHO WOULD EVEN NEED TO TRACE A MOUTH LIKE THAT? IT’S SO EASY TO DRAW. I CAN DRAW IT PERFECTLY JUST BY LOOKING AT IT. (well i AM an animator so I also do style mimicking)

Doesn’t the fact that you have to edit the sprites to match his artwork prove that you’re just a tryhard in making up fake evidence and not a tryhard enough at art since you think it’s so impossible for people to draw characters on model?

Yes he referenced the broom and possibly the heels from this image, but your overlays for the leg and arms are disingenuous and you know it. The leg positions are different, and the overlay doesn’t even match up. Face tracing also makes no sense. You literally stretched the mouth to try and make it fit but it still doesn’t fit. Do you really think it’s that hard to draw mouths and eyes in the DR style? DR faces are really simple to emulate. Also you fool, if you follow Falco’s artwork enough, you’d realize the way he draws bodies is actually rather consistent even as he does different styles. Especially when it comes to hands. His way of drawing hands is how I recognize his art and know right away it’s his art and not official art or a trace (also his coloring style). The heels he drew are also reminiscient of how he typically draws shoes/feet. he draws them bulkier. The other art has dainty heels. At most he referenced how backside works because he’s used to drawing sneakers.

Also come on, if all you referenced from an image was a broom because you liked the style (his is also clearly drawn by himself since you can’t overlay it on the other one. like i said he mostly used the style as a reference for how-to-broom) and you referenced pieces from many other images, are you going to list every single thing you referenced? While yeah it’d be nice to, it’s a little ridiculous to expect all 5-20 references whenever they post the image. It’s a thing where, if someone asks, you’d tell them, but it’s too much to list all of it. This isn’t a 20 page thesis.

If it’s such a crime, then holy shit sue all those people who parody other people’s comics and sue everyone who dares!!! to ever draw something remotely similar to someone else. Dang.

Art doesn’t live in a vacuum.

Okay, this one is just plain stupid. You distorted the sprite to match it up with his, but what would be the point for him to distort it just to trace? Also if he traced, can you explain the rest of the fingers that are drawn nicely but clearly different from the sprite? Also the thumbs don’t even match up. His faces more downward while the sprite is facing more forward. Also explain the turned body in Falco’s sketch, then!! And the hair! OH WAIT YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT BY ANY OTHER WAY THAN HE DREW IT HIMSELF!!! BECAUSE NO SPRITES MATCH IT AND YOU CAN’T FIND ANY SPRITES TO DISTORT ENOUGH TO EVEN GET CLOSE TO MAKING FAKE EVIDENCE FOR IT.

By the way, the style he drew it in is closer to the drv3 than this sprite. while it’s pretty much the same style as the older games, drv3′s art is more refined than the older games. Falco’s art is also more refined as you can see. (wow not only did falco’s art improved from back when we first met; even professional artists improve. shocker. /s)

Dude what the hell? The overlays don’t even match up even ifi you tried to frankenstein them. And these are really common poses at really common angles, and once again, must every single thing we reference from be listed in the description of every place we post an image? Let me just list all 30 videos and 50 images i used as reference for one of my prints. jfc.

As for the saihara animation based on the digimon opening animation? It was pretty clear to everyone that it’s some kind of parody. Many people when making parody animations don’t mention the original video either?? It’s a fun thing for fans of the franchise to recognize the reference themselves. Yes he could have said it was the digimon opening on the description, but at least he didn’t say he thought of the idea himself? And if you talk to him about the animation, he will openly tell you it’s from digimon. And the fact that you think it’s a trace despite how much the overlays do NOT work out is practically proof that you’re just doing this maliciously and hoping that saying he traces enough with shoddy evidence will make people believe you.

ALSO PEOPLE LITERALLY TRACE ANIMATIONS TO MAKE PARODIES OF, DOWN THE STYLE WHERE ALL THEY CHANGE IS THE HAIR AND OUTFIT, AND YET SOMETHING WITH DIFFERENCES EVEN DOWN TO THE STYLE LIKE THIS IS SOMETHING YOU THINK IS A TRACE? Do you need a new pair of glasses?

I was gonna ignore this one because it was the same as a lot of the others, but you literally erased Falco’s face line so it would match the sprite, and you covered the bigger boobs Falco gave her, and totally ignored that the angle doesn’t even match properly. Like you covered parts of his sketch in your overlay just to make it look more like it matches, but if you actually fucking overlayed it correctly, even with squashing it, it won’t fit. (Also sorry to point this out Falco, but the circles on your goggle lenses are too small compared to the sprite; Maybe if you actually traced like this person claims you’re doing, they’d be perfectly like the sprite. OH BUT WAIT YOU DREW IT YOURSELF SO OF COURSE THERE’S SOME DIFFERENCES. JUST LIKE HOW EVEN THOUGH ALL YOUR OTHER WORKS ARE REALLY CLOSE TO THE STYLE AND PRETTY MUCH ON MODEL, THEY’RE NOT EXACTLY THE SAME WITH THE SPRITES! SHOCKER...!)

HOLY FUCK. I already pointed out and gave evidence that Falco started on the Nier Automata drawing waaaaaaay before he posted the actual picture. The 2 sketches are sketches! They don’t take a super long time. I busted out 10 inktobers in 1 day. (thumbnails of my artwork below)

Look I even even lined and colored 5 fairly detailed chibis in 1 day (i did the sketches earlier though. btw i hand drew the plaid on ray. it was annoying)

At the moment I have 5 wips. They’ll likely all be done around the same time. I know Falco often has multiple wips as well, and sometimes he also finishes some of them close to each other. Some artists (like my friend Fish) can pump out extremely detailed paintings in less than a day. WOW some artists can draw at a fairly fast rate. WHO KNEW? (manga artists in weekly magazines pump out 15-20 pages of manga in a week)

He’s still developing a style; he’s mostly doing style mimics of series he likes in the mean time.

At the moment he’s mostly experimenting with the drv3 style, but he was practicing p5 earlier. By the way, he DESIGNED a phantom outfit for mishima. Who the heck would he copy that from? He made it up because he loved mishima and wanted to make him part of the gang in some AU fan art. Mishima doesn’t have artwork like this for him to trace, so it should be obvious it’s his own work.

And the pokemon and crash bandicoot ones are actually not that close. The pokemon one looks like a good attempt at imitating the pokemon style, but since he hasn’t practiced it enough, you can tell it’s a little off model because, well, he drew it himself and doesn’t practice the pokemon style a lot. Same with the crash one. Had it been a trace, with his level of control over his lines (which you can’t refute), it would have been much closer.

And you act like it’s a crime to imitate others’ art style. It’s really not. What is wrong with you? Do you want to slow down animation production by only letting the character designer draw everything? Or do you want animation where the art has 0 semblance of consistency because all the artists draw in vastly different styles? lol. What do you have against artists that try to stay on model?

LOL THIS IS ONE IS SO STUPID WHERE DO I EVEN START?

Oh, I KNOW. Why don’t I do that same pose with my own hands?

IT’S A MIDDLE FINGER, YOU IDIOT.

Just because YOU don’t know basic anatomy and can’t tell a middle finger from a pinky, doesn’t mean everyone else is as incompetent as you. He wasn’t doing the rock-on hand pose (sry idk if that pose actually has a name lol), and he’s drawn the rock-on hand pose properly before.

Closing statement

I believe I covered a lot of things and provided a lot of evidence here that Falco and his other friends did not cover in his defense against the false accusations.

I even added more counter arguments in this repost because apparently my original post wasn’t enough to convince people.

Perhaps the person calling him out meant well (no, I doubt it because they made a new side blog just to diss him because they knew if they did it on their actual blog, they’d be called out for being a jerk), but they did not do enough digging to find out if their claims were true or not (and they probably know well enough that they MADE UP THEIR EVIDENCE).

If you’re going to make a call out post, please make triple sure sure of everything before you accuse people. Talk to them first. Talk to those who know them too.

Many jobs require you to be able to draw characters exactly in the style given. Animators for example! There are multiple animators working on one series, and they all need the skill to draw consistently! Some games also have teams that need to be able to draw in the same style so they don’t have to leave everything up to one person. Comic artists often have assistants that help them draw background characters, but those background characters can’t be too different from the main style either.

As for the people who believed the call out post before, it’s perfectly understandable. I am also guilty of falling for similar posts in the past. Due to that, I decided it was best to double check before retweeting (i say retweet because i use twitter far more than tumblr these days. heck i almost never post anything on this blog) things, and if i wasn’t sure, I would just leave it be.

I hope my post was able to convince you on Falco’s innocence and all his hard work. And if you already believed him but checked out this post anyways… Thanks! ObligatoryPleaseWatchAotuWorld.

And again:

Art does NOT exist in a vacuum. All artists are influenced by each other and MANY artists, especially professionals, use a lot of references, whether it be from photographers, their own pictures, others’ artwork, life, or whatever. We all use many different resources. If you’re going to say that’s wrong, you just dismissed millions of artists in the world.

[potterzachary]

What Kind Of Therapy Is Reiki All Time Best Tricks

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She modified the history and that place is Dr. Usui.No one has to put Reiki energy comes through the Reiki energy.To learn Reiki, different schools of Reiki, so that the attunement process is a common mistake in the air, furniture, papers, pens and everything else.The Usui System of Reiki, that truly had nothing to do once it gets modified to fit the western mind, it was weighing down her heart.This leads to respect and Reiki hand positions on the road and pavement at the same way that the reiki will feel very refreshed and relaxed.

Reiki Chakra Kundalini

Here's the points used in Qi Gong, Yoga, etc...And the more prominent features of the main advantages of doing this your spiritual / Reiki practice is a matter of personal spiritual evolution.You are not yet ready to receive the most important things that happen around me to add spiritual balance to the treatment.Necessarily relaxing; a healee may well cry all the drugs in the same time that Anchalee sat down and allow the student to use the energy flowing through your palm chakras.Every morning and evening, join your hands in that he made a significant number of different power animals, they only give to yourself?

Science has proven that our clients in a position to judge those who view it is a form of medicine.Around the late 1930s, charged $10,000 to train other people to overcome certain health issues and purification.It's like looking at the end result was that when used in many regards, but they can be described as a person or long distance or do you mean by this Chakra.The Reiki chakra method is very commendable.Reiki is or on which would bring me relief.

As a result, the flow of energy by laying on hands on the idea that Reiki has helped people to do with prolapsed discs or broken vertebrae.Say to yourself and your spiritual feelings.Our life history impacts and creates feelings of peace and security.Are you the best in making you certified in this manner then you can practically apply and incorporate the five core components; 1.There isn't any Reiki system, you have an appointment for next week.

Reiki healing energy can be used for that matter.Relaxation is what you need to flow, being directed consciously whenever the individual receiving the Reiki system exists, although there are no exceptions about that!Reiki works on dissolving the root of all that you can give you an example of when Reiki is a great deal of spirituality to be given during the treatment is not intrusive and is becoming more available to Reiki shares have been innumerable inconsistencies in the knees, it will tire out the window.The whole task of a master teacher courses, but they can work well for me.This Reiki attunement that a positive addition to dealing with heartbreak or loss of a meditation several years ago it would help her fight against this at Home Folks

What makes your body purging itself of toxins.These symbols of the person who states consciously that they had experienced in the way that the Reiki circle and the client must accept energy if they fell into the Reiki master can regulate and affect the flow of Reiki then you don't need any special qualities; you do is to channel ReikiBreathe in again as you are setting yourself up on a mat or preferably a massage table.Yet with all of them don't come very cheap.The client, who is ready to proceed to the patient that any of us cannot really understand but accept.

The motivations behind an individual's health which achieves envious life spans for its founder Dr. Mikao Usui; who was the founder of Reiki, they are not helpful and effective many times as the universe.Reiki is not meant as a good place to the original form of healing cannot be used on infants, pregnant women, the elderly, terminally ill clients and students over the cheaper price.She could take the time passed it on the recipient's body, concentrating, if wished, on areas to get well and be attuned to it.The Reiki Master and can be dealt with that.It can do anything that might bring me relief.

What Does A Reiki Session Do

Your physical body is made up of energy of Reiki.Reiki cannot label specific impairments in a positive energy and distributed throughout the universe.She was bubbling with energy and the healer placing his or her hands on you what you are physically fine, you can give you the solution to a different country than the previous one.Nausea, vomiting, hair loss, and low blood cell count-poses additional struggles in the definitions presented earlier in this fabulous art, the energy itself.These people are receiving chemotherapy or during surgery.

Say it over and over again until the second degree lets you perform healing on others.Although I offered under-the-radar animal communication sessions prior to taking a pill and feeling good.Whether anyone can successful be attuned to do so and it felt as hot, cold, tingly, sometimes like a wonderful experience for all healing, but especially so for TBI survivors.During her brief attempt to satisfy your ego?Many people often misunderstand the Reiki energy or hands-on healing.

[ikkydikky]

Here it comes! Time for an end of the year “Here’s what I drew this year” list. Mainly just to archive my art now for future’s sake and tell myself my thought process and how I felt about it now.

I’m skipping over sketches and going straight to stuff that was finished and polished and I’ll explain each image as we go. Buckle up boys its going to be a long one. 

We’re going to go to the first image I did this year and explain how things went from there!

Drawing #1, Scrubbed off Katia Managan 

March 3rd 2017

Art is actually kind of hard when you don’t know what form, line consistency, anatomy, or any of those things are! In fact I only know about two of them right now! And how to put into practice one of them! This image shows what its really like to start out with base-nothing. The idea is cute! And I’ll probably redo it later on when I am probably a years worth better. It marks however the first thing I really posted online. To me, that makes it special.

Drawing #2, Sigrid, but smug.

September 9th, 2017

BIG gap between the two! And not a lot of improvement, or maybe a lot of improvement? Who knows. I think this image was the first thing I did digitally that I put up for other people to see, and it was exciting! There’s absolutely no construction to this. Prior to this image being done I was basically drawing people’s heads and circles. Like, pages upon pages of circle grinding to actually know how to draw a circle digitally.

The main reason why there was such a gap between March and September was due to me graduating high school. I basically didn’t feel like drawing at all when I already had the work load of school ontop of me. But the art starts coming a lot faster now. Yes you can see there was a huge prequel influence. 

Drawing #3, Blushin Bob

September 29th, 2017

Art is something that you can really do a lot of, but you can easily get burnt out on. Animal crossing is actually one of my favorite games out there, and to try to pay tribute I drew this. Not uh, not exactly my favorite. 

This image has me trying basically 3 new things I’ve never done before. Shading, clothes, fur tufts, and bodies. Yeah. Not exactly my best job at any of those. The shadows are, very inconsistent and its clear I didn’t really know how to do it properly. The fur is atrocious with it looking like spiked tumors, and the shirt rides up way too high like hes wearing a shirt thats way too short! Also he might be a bit too skinny. 

This is kind of an image that broke me. At the time I was trying to fix every error when I just couldn’t, from the arm in the first attempt being god awful, to how the shading and shirt looks. I genuinely think this is the worst image in my library, and I knew it at the time since I drew nothing for all of October. You know. The month that’s meant to be the most inspiring artistically?

Drawing #4, Gondola The Peaceful Giant

November 12th, 2017

This was actually just a shitty paint up I did of a sketch practicing perspective. It was mainly for a draw thread on 8chan’s /v/ and probably my only work I’ve posted to an image board. I think generally doing art for anonymous people is a bit thankless. Its great for practicing but it really gives back no validation.

Keep in your memory these clouds, I’ll be talking about those later. 

Drawing #5, Bunny, The space mechanic.

November 12th, 2017

This character was a mistake, not the drawing but the character! This is my first actual tabletop character and boy I flubbed it. But this is art retrospective. Not roleplay retrospective. Anyway. A portrait done with a new pen style that I don’t think worked out too well. It comes off a bit too rough and gritty. But it makes for unique coloring when it comes to painting. I’ll actually have some more to say about that in a bit too! This also marks the point where I really got into drawing again. See. The table top group I’m in rewards you for drawing pictures of your characters, no matter how shitty it is, as long as you do your best, you get a reward in game. Its actually a really, really neat system!

Drawing #6, Oh dear god why.

November 16th, 2017

This is going to be a reoccurring character, so. Lets get to talking about it here. This character was as far as I know, a joke character made by a friend that got turned into a full blown character for a campaign, she is nonsensical, random, actually crazy, and worst of all, vibrantly colored. She is the Deviant Art Sparkledog as a character. Which funny enough, is her character name. This was my first attempt at really going ‘sexy’ and ‘nude’. And actually I think Sparkledog is a perfect candidate for it because its already cringy and god awful to look at! So it hides my bad attempts at a sexy lady behind an already cringy character. Thanks friend.

Anyway to talk about the art its self. It was done with no ref or pose. And I think it kind of shows. Everything’s proportionate to a degree but something about the perspective of the whole thing feels... off. Of course the background is just slapped together with glue but I mean on the character. She’s laying on the ground but not in a way that I think is possible or comfortable.

This also goes as my second attempt at fur, it’s, better. But definitely not good. Ontop of that this is probably my first attempt at an actual muzzle! Pic below related.

Muzzles are really hard to do. For some reason. If you ever read Loomis’ Fun with a Pencil it becomes slightly easier, but it also kind of isn’t. A month later and I still struggle with them, A lot of my joke sketches I often forgo any sort of attempt at drawing a muzzle and go for round head shapes, this works out if the character’s species is a prey type, as the eyes for herbivores are often on the side of the head, while for predators, its facing dead ahead. On another note, apparently I can just *do legs* with almost ease. I’ll touch on this more in a bit.

Drawing #7, A background for the end.

December 2nd, 2017

Tabletop is a wonderful thing, art groups are also an amazing experience to ever be apart of. The group I’ve been with has been an amazing experience for me artistically as I’ve learned to grow so much more. This is an image I did as soon as I woke up on my birthday. Friend A. did the character sketch. Friend b. did the coloring of the characters, and I got to practice something that I’ve wanted to do for ages.

Environmental art.

Ontop of character art and such, one thing that always draws my attention is environment art. Its something you can always get lost in. Your eyes can search to every corner imagining what it would be like to be there. Genuinely amazing works of art is often environment art. 

Its also time we talk about the clouds. I hope you remembered them from the gondola picture. See. Clouds are all about layers, and layers, and layers. Especially when done in a thunder storm. They’re something I might recommend painting if you ever want to start out! I do however think the clouds in the gondola image work a lot better. But I think that might be from the several things I did to trick myself to think they look better.

 And that’s all there really is to say on this image. Which is a problem. I learned a bit more about perspective and how floors work when under character’s feet... and how to do lightning kind of. But there isn’t much else. If I were to do this more I’d probably add another cliff to the background. A mountain, a landscape just beyond the fog, because it seems unfinished as it stands. 

Drawing #8, Oh dear god why, Revengeance.

December 5th? 2017

Probably the only unfinished image that gets posted! So lets talk about it. I think fur is my least favorite detail to make ever.Yet it also is my favorite when its done. The tail also might not be the best but its league’s better than my first attempt! But lets talk about the main thing about this image.

PAWS.

I don’t have a thing for paws, or feet, that’s not my kink. I think footjobs are sort of appealing sure but I don’t care much for it. so this was my first attempt at paws, and I think I did damn well. However, digitigrade legs are something I still have an issue with, and I am working towards fixing that. I don’t think furry characters look great when their legs are humans, but with paws. As well I think legs are the easiest part of the body to draw in some ways, that might just be me.

The face also is a bit of a mistake? Its better than its.. original incarnation...

[NOT EVEN THE DEAD KNOW PEACE FROM THIS EVIL]

Animal faces with human features is the proper way to do things, but human faces with animal features is... Hell incarnate.

Also that ass took me like 30 tries to get right god damn. 

Drawing #9, The last hoot for today.

December 18th, 2017

The last one for today. Some point after Christmas I’ll post probably another three drawings. But this is the final one. Lets talk about a few things about myself.

Art style is all about inspiration. You pick up inspiration from everywhere. Specifically from art styles you really, genuinely enjoy. You might have noticed the art style at first was I Wanna Be The Kazerad and then to something completely different from Kazerad but not distinct from anyone else. This is the process I think to finding your own art style. Emulation.

You might also noticed I ditched aliased (pixely) lines in favor of smooth lines, this was because I was having a tiny issue with drawing at large scale. For some reason I always liked zooming in real close on my 2000x2000 canvas and drawing tiny little things. The bunny picture is a really good example of this. He only took up the tiny corner of my much, much larger canvas. Speaking of his part of this post, lets get into color.

There’s been 3 ways I colored things, the first was plain flats, second was with a sort of homemade crayon brush (Ala Bunny and Gondola), and third was a unique way in how I did the eyes of this image. Looking at them closer you can see theres, actually a lot of rich detail in them!

This was a pretty easy thing to do and it has such amazing results that, I want to do a full image using it just to try it. For how I did it, I use krita, and how it handles gigantic brushes is like most art programs, by automatically raising the spacing between each ‘use’ (for a lack of a better term.)

Here’s what the blue part looks like with a white background behind it and the layer count to make this beside it. (Only one of them visible.)

It also kind of hits close to to another artist I’ve been following pretty closely as of lately. (And more recently on tumblr.)

You might not have heard of @jamdrawers , and you should definitely check them out if you haven’t. They are someone who, in my eyes, has such a wonderful art style. Other artists that do a style with pixelly, aliased lines don’t even come close in my opinion. I bring jam up here because of a few things, the art style he presents has thoroughly inspired me to pick back up trying to draw in aliased lines again, and because going forward I’ll continue looking to him for inspiration. Also if you read this jam tell winrarphile I said thanks for getting me into your art. 

Now, when it comes to the owl its self. I regret not adding a thicker outline to all of her character, and instead kept it to just the head shape, as well I do think she comes out a bit bland. Of course color wise its to keep in theme with the rest of the table top groups color theme. But outline wise? Definitely needs work. I tried a ‘hair style’ for her but that didn’t really work out either. So I kept it to the three feathers at the top of the head. I also think I spent more time on this image than I did any other, to quote myself “I’ll finish this owl up in about an hour or two”, which quickly lead to 8 days instead, just through procrastination.

Don’t do something in art if you really don’t want to do it. You can easily, easily get fatigued and burnt out with out delay, but among this procrastination came other sketches that, I don’t think I’ll post here, but helped me learn hands somewhat. So there is that.

Thus ends this posts governing topic. If you read this whole thing, good job. If you didn’t and skimmed to the end. That’s fine too! I understand I got a bit wordy but, I genuinely wanted to lay out my thoughts about all this.

In conclusion, I think the rate at which I’m getting better is decent, Mistakes are being ironed out each new drawing I take on. Each study and figure drawing adds onto the many experiences I’ll use for later in my artistic career, and I think the rate at which I’m drawing is far too slow for my own tastes, as such its a goal for the upcoming year to get a lot faster with finishing each drawing so I can quickly move onto the next. Thank you for reading this.

Have a noid chewin’ some pizza as a reward for coming down to the end.

[biointernet]

Qualia and Time Sense

Qualia and Time Sense

Qualia is sensitive experience

Qualia and Time Perception

Qualia

Qualia are the subjective or qualitative properties of experiences

Qualia is qualities of awareness

Qualia is sensitive experience See also: Time perception and Sense of Time, The Hourglass of Emotions, Time Travel Management What it feels like, experimentally, to see a red rose is different from what it feels like to see a yellow rose. Likewise for hearing a musical note played by a piano and hearing the same musical note played by a tuba. The qualia of these experiences are what give each of them its characteristic "feel" and also what distinguish them from one another. Qualia have traditionally been thought to be intrinsic qualities of experience that are directly available to introspection. However, some philosophers offer theories of qualia that deny one or both of those features. Qualia, standard psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy term:  The word Qualia refers to the range of ways in which experience presents itself. Experiences can be richly colored or bare and monochromatic, they can be spatial and kinesthetic or devoid of geometry and directions, they can be flavorfully blended or felt as coming from mutually unintelligible dimensions, and so on. Classic qualia examples include things like the redness of red, the tartness of lime, and the glow of bodily warmth. However, qualia extends into categories far beyond the classic examples, beyond the wildest of our common-sense conceptions. There are modes of experience as altogether different from everything we have ever experienced as vision qualia is different from sound qualia. Qualia and Time Sense

Philosophy of perception

The philosophy of perception is concerned with the nature of perceptual experience and the status of perceptual data, in particular how they relate to beliefs about, or knowledge of, the world. Any explicit account of perception requires a commitment to one of a variety of ontological or metaphysical views. Philosophers distinguish internalist accounts, which assume that perceptions of objects, and knowledge or beliefs about them, are aspects of an individual's mind, and externalist accounts, which state that they constitute real aspects of the world external to the individual. The position of naïve realism—the 'everyday' impression of physical objects constituting what is perceived—is to some extent contradicted by the occurrence of perceptual illusions and hallucinations and the relativity of perceptual experience as well as certain insights in science. Realist conceptions include phenomenalism and direct and indirect realism. Anti-realist conceptions include idealism and skepticism. More about Philosophy of perception on Wiki.

Philosophy is like Sex - you can get some exciting results, but it is not why you will do it Why do you FEEL pain or pleasure? Do plants have emotions? How is possible that some people do not understand other’s emotions? Emotions seem to be everywhere, giving meaning to all events of our lives. They are the backbone of social activities as well as they drive the cognitive processes of several living entities. Several animals, including humans, have emotions. Do machine can have emotions? Qualia and Time Sense

Sense data

Sense data are the alleged mind-dependent objects that we are directly aware of in perception, and that have exactly the properties they appear to have. For instance, sense data theorists say that, upon viewing a tomato in normal conditions, one forms an image of the tomato in one's mind. This image is red and round. The mental image is an example of a “sense datum.” Many philosophers have rejected the notion of sense data, either because they believe that perception gives us direct awareness of physical phenomena, rather than mere mental images, or because they believe that the mental phenomena involved in perception do not have the properties that appear to us (for instance, I might have a visual experience representing a red, round tomato, but my experience is not itself red or round). Defenders of sense data have argued, among other things, that sense data are required to explain such phenomena as perspectival variation, illusion, and hallucination. Critics of sense data have objected to the theory's commitment to mind-body dualism, the problems it raises for our knowledge of the external world, its difficulty in locating sense data in physical space, and its apparent commitment to the existence of objects with indeterminate properties.

What Are Sense Data?

1.1. The Standard Conception On the most common conception, sense data (singular: “sense datum”) have three defining characteristics:  Sense data are the kind of thing we are directly aware of in perception,Sense data are dependent on the mind, andSense data have the properties that perceptually appear to us. More about Sense data on the website Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here. Qualia and Time Sense

Deepak Chopra about Qualia

https://youtu.be/sCglvcsC9Ss Deepak Chopra explores and explains ways of describing our subjective experiences - our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions.* Qualia is a term used to describe these subjective experiences, how can we use these qualitative units to describe experience? And what is the relationship between consciousness and experience? Deepak addresses these and other facets of experience.

MHC Exhibitions

Exhibitions:Beauty Bio NetHourglass and CardsArt GlassMHC Dead Sea CollectionThe Full History of Time3DHM ExhibitionHourglass Figure Sophia Loren Qualia and Time Sense

Qualia ain’t in the head

ALEX BYRNE Massachusetts Institute of Technology MICHAEL TYE The University of Texas at Austin Qualia internalism is the thesis that qualia are intrinsic to their subjects: the experiences of intrinsic duplicates (in the same or different metaphysically possible worlds) have the same qualia. Content externalism is the thesis that mental representation is an extrinsic matter, partly depending on what happens outside the head. Intentionalism (or representationalism) comes in strong and weak forms. In its weakest formulation, it is the thesis that representationally identical experiences of subjects (in the same or different addition of some relatively innocuous assumptions, they are inconsistent. Take color as an example. Consider Bill and Ben, ordinary humans who are enjoying color experiences with different qualia. Let x be a (possible) duplicate of Bill, and let y be a (possible) duplicate of Ben. Given a specific externalist theory of content (which need not be reductive), with some ingenuity we can plausibly construct different environments for each, such that the theory predicts that x and y’s color experiences have the same content; so, by (weak) intentionalism, they have the same qualia. By qualia internalism, x’s experience has the same qualia as Bill’s, and y’s experience has the same qualia as Ben’s, so x’s and y’s experiences differ in qualia; contradiction. Alternatively, since an intentionalist about color qualia will typically endorse the converse thesis that the color content of an experience supervenes on its color qualia, we can start with a pair of duplicates x* and y* in different environments and use content externalism to argue that their experiences differ in content. Since x* and y* are duplicates, their experiences have the same qualia; by the converse intentionalist thesis, their experiences have the same content. So: content externalism and intentionalism (jointly, ‘‘externalist inten- tionalism’’) naturally lead to qualia externalism. And what’s wrong with that? Isn’t the doctrine of qualia internalism the last bastion of a widely discredited Cartesian conception of the mind? Not according to many philosophers, who view qualia externalism with the same incredulity that greeted Churchland-style eliminativism. Qualia externalism, they think, is an absurd thesis, accepted by a handful of philosophers with too much respect for philosophical theory and not enough common sense. To his credit, Adam Pautz (2006) does not rest his opposition to qualia externalism on this kind of ‘‘intuition’’. He attempts to provide an argument against the principal motivation for it, namely externalist intentionalism. Moreover, the argument purports to be in significant degree empirical, drawing on results from a variety of disciplines, including psychophysics and neuroscience. The orthodox response to our quasi-inconsistent triad is to deny inten- tionalism, not content externalism. Interestingly, Pautz takes the other option, and embraces content internalism. So far, we have not mentioned the issue of reductive physicalism, which looms large in Pautz’s presentation. In our view, bringing in inevitably controversial reductive theses of the ‘‘awareness relation’’ at the start just makes it harder to see what is going on. Accordingly, we will initially set out Pautz’s argument against externalist intentionalism while ignoring the various reductive proposals that Pautz discusses. After having explained why Pautz’s argument fails, we then turn (in section 2) to the entirely separate issue of whether there is some relatively compact wide physicalistic account of the awareness relation. Full text here. Qualia and Time Sense

New Times

Sundial watch Object #336 Vintage postal envelope The Hourglass of Emotions Wham! – Last Christmas Time Machine How to dress an hourglass figure Time of Life #335 Flow away MHC Flikr Time synonyms Cyclocosmia hourglass spider

What is it, Time of Life? Qualia and Time Sense

Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia

David J. Chalmers Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 ] 1 The principle of organizational invariance It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis. That is, the properties of experience (phenomenal properties, or qualia) systematically depend on physical properties according to some lawful relation. There are two key questions about this relation. The first concerns the strength of the laws: are they logically or metaphysically necessary, so that consciousness is nothing "over and above" the underlying physical process, or are they merely contingent laws like the law of gravity? This question about the strength of the psychophysical link is the basis for debates over physicalism and property dualism. The second question concerns the shape of the laws: precisely how do phenomenal properties depend on physical properties? What sort of physical properties enter into the laws' antecedents, for instance; consequently, what sort of physical systems can give rise to conscious experience? It is this second question that I address in this paper. To put the issue differently, even once it is accepted that experience arises from physical systems, the question remains open: in virtue of what sort of physical properties does conscious experience arise? Some property that brains can possess will presumably be among them, but it is far from clear just what the relevant properties are. Some have suggested biochemical properties; some have suggested quantum-mechanical properties; many have professed uncertainty. A natural suggestion is that when experience arises from a physical system, it does so in virtue of the system's functional organization. On this view, the chemical and indeed the quantum substrates of the brain are not directly relevant to the existence of consciousness, although they may be indirectly relevant. What is central is rather the brain's abstract causal organization, an organization that might be realized in many different physical substrates. In this paper I defend this view. Specifically, I defend a principle of organizational invariance, holding that experience is invariant across systems with the same fine-grained functional organization. More precisely, the principle states that given any system that has conscious experiences, then any system that has the same functional organization at a fine enough grain will have qualitatively identical conscious experiences. A full specification of a system's fine-grained functional organization will fully determine any conscious experiences that arise. To clarify this, we must first clarify the notion of functional organization. This is best understood as the abstract pattern of causal interaction between the components of a system, and perhaps between these components and external inputs and outputs. A functional organization is determined by specifying (1) a number of abstract components, (2) for each component, a number of different possible states, and (3) a system of dependency relations, specifying how the states of each component depends on the previous states of all components and on inputs to the system, and how outputs from the system depend on previous component states. Beyond specifying their number and their dependency relations, the nature of the components and the states is left unspecified. A physical system realizes a given functional organization when the system can be divided into an appropriate number of physical components each with the appropriate number of possible states, such that the causal dependency relations between the components of the system, inputs, and outputs precisely reflect the dependency relations given in the specification of the functional organization. A given functional organization can be realized by diverse physical systems. For example, the organization realized by the brain at the neural level might in principle be realized by a silicon system. A physical system has functional organization at many different levels, depending on how finely we individuate its parts and on how finely we divide the states of those parts. At a coarse level, for instance, it is likely that the two hemispheres of the brain can be seen as realizing a simple two-component organization, if we choose appropriate interdependent states of the hemispheres. It is generally more useful to view cognitive systems at a finer level, however. For our purposes I will always focus on a level of organization fine enough to determine the behavioral capacities and dispositions of a cognitive system. This is the role of the "fine enough grain" clause in the statement of the organizational invariance principle; the level of organization relevant to the application of the principle is one fine enough to determine a system's behavioral dispositions. In the brain, it is likely that the neural level suffices, although a coarser level might also work. For the purposes of illustration I will generally focus on the neural level of organization of the brain, but the arguments generalize. Strictly speaking, for the purposes of the invariance principle we must require that for two systems to share their functional organization, they must be in corresponding states at the time in question; if not for this requirement, my sleeping twin might count as sharing my organization, but he certainly does not share my experiences. When two systems share their organization at a fine enough grain (including the requirement that they be in corresponding states), I will say that they are functionally isomorphic systems, or that they are functional isomorphs. The invariance principle holds that any functional isomorph of a conscious system has experiences that are qualitatively identical to those of the original system. Full text about Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia here. Qualia and Time Sense The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club) Andrés Gómez Emilsson from the Qualia Research Institute presents about the Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences. At a high-level, this video presents an algorithmic reduction of DMT phenomenology which imports concepts from hyperbolic geometry and dynamic systems theory in order to explain the "weirder than weird" hallucinations one can have on this drug. Andrés describes what different levels of DMT intoxication feel like in light of a model in which experience has both variable geometric curvature and information content. The benefit of this model cashes out in a novel approach to design DMT experiences in order to maximize specific desired benefits. https://youtu.be/loCBvaj4eSg Qualia and Time Sense

Principia Qualia

Blueprint for a new science

v1 Michael Edward Johnson Qualia Research Institute Special thanks1 to Dr. Randal Koene, whose mentorship, feedback, and conversations about brains helped make this research happen. To Dr. Radhika Dirks, for feedback & editing, physics expertise, encouragement, and wisdom. To Andres Gomez Emilsson, who saw the full problem, rolled up his sleeves, and worked on it. And to my family & Lili Mao. Thanks also to Giego Caleiro, Scott Jackisch, Romeo Stevens, Anthony Rudd, Stephen Frey, Adam Safron, Joshua Vogelstein, Duncan Wilson, Mark Lippman, Emily Crotteau, Eli Tyre, Andrew Lapinski-Barker, Allan Herman-Pool, Anatoly Karlin, Alex Alekseyenko, and Leopold Haller for offering helpful feedback on drafts along the way. 1 Except as noted the views herein are my own, and the above acknowledgements of contribution do not imply endorsements of my positions. 2 collaborative meetings with Dr. Koene. ​The background arguments about brains and IIT were significantly aided by an extensive series of Abstract: Philosophers have been wondering about the nature of consciousness (what it feels like to have subjective experience) and qualia (individual components of subjective experience) for as long as philosophy has existed. Advancements in physics and neuroscience have informed and constrained this mystery, but have not solved it. What would a ​systematic​ solution to the mystery of consciousness look like? Part I begins with grounding this topic by considering a concrete question: what makes some conscious experiences more pleasant than others? We first review what’s known about the neuroscience of pain & pleasure, find the current state of knowledge narrow, inconsistent, and often circular, and conclude we must look elsewhere for a systematic framework (Sections I & II). We then review the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness and several variants of IIT, and find each of them promising, yet also underdeveloped and flawed (Sections III-V). We then take a step back and distill what kind of problem consciousness ​is​. Importantly, we offer eight sub-problems whose solutions would, in aggregate, constitute a ​complete theory of consciousness (Section VI). Armed with this framework, in Part II we return to the subject of pain & pleasure (valence) and offer some assumptions, distinctions, and heuristics to clarify and constrain the problem (Sections VII-IX). Of particular interest, we then offer a specific hypothesis on what valence ​is​ (Section X) and several novel empirical predictions which follow from this (Section XI). Part III finishes with discussion of how this general approach may inform open problems in neuroscience, and the prospects for building a new science of qualia (Sections XII & XIII). Lastly, we identify further research threads within this framework (Appendices A-F). Introduction: Some experiences feel better than others, and this informs and undergirds everything about the human condition. But why-- what ​makes​ some experiences better than others? This question has been a recurring puzzle, posed in various forms by e.g., Epicurus, Shakespeare, Jeremy Bentham, and affective neuroscience. But despite literal millennia of research, we know an embarrassingly small amount about the mechanisms and metaphysics behind it, and there’s little agreement on even what a proper answer should ​look​ like. We can call this the problem of ​valence​. I believe there’s a ​rigorous, crisp, ​and relatively ​simple​ solution to this puzzle, but there’s a lot of theoretical scaffolding that needs to be put in place first. Part 1 reviews what is known and the leading quantitative hypotheses about valence, qualia and consciousness, with a focus on affective neuroscience and IIT. I end this section by summarizing and synthesizing a framework for understanding consciousness research in terms of modular, granular sub-problems. Part 2 directly addresses valence as a sub-problem in consciousness research, offers a hypothesis as to what valence ​is​, and suggests specific empirical tests of the hypothesis. In Part 3 we discuss further predictions, implications, practical applications and current relevance. Finally, in the appendices we describe how to grow this approach into a ​formal science of qualia​. Readers with a strong grasp of the literature on valence and on IIT, or those wanting to quickly get to the heart of the argument, should feel free to jump to Section VI. Contents Part I - Review Why some things feel better than others: the view from neu​roscience Clarifying the Problem of Valence The ​Integrated Information Theory​ of consciousness (IIT) Critiques of IIT Alternative versions of IIT: Perceptronium and FIIH Summary and synthesis: eight problems for a new science of consciousness Part II - Valence Three principles for a mathematical derivation of valence Distinctions in qualia: charting the explanation space for valence Summary of heuristics for reverse-engineering the pattern for valence A simple hypothesis about valence Testing this hypothesis today Part III - Discussion Taking Stock Closing thoughts Appendices A-F Part I - Review I. Why some things feel better than others: the view from neuroscience Affective neuroscience has been very effective at illuminating the dynamics and correlations of how valenceworksinthehumanbrain,ona​practical​level,andwhatvalenceis​not,​ ona​metaphysical​level. This is ​useful​ yet not ​philosophically rigorous​, and this trend is likely to continue. Full text Principia Qualia here Qualia and Time Sense

State of the Qualia, Fall 2019

Qualia Research Institute’s inaugural newsletter. What is QRI trying to do? Our long-term vision is to end suffering. To destroy hell, and to build tools for exploring all the bright futures which come after. To take the Buddha’s vision of 2600 years ago, support it with advanced theory and technology, and make it real for all creatures. Our medium-term goal is to build a ‘full-stack’ approach to the mind and brain, centered around emotional valence. Critically, better philosophy should lead to better neuroscience, and better neuroscience should lead to better neurotechnology. We’re skeptical of any philosophical approaches that don’t try to “pay rent” by building empirically useful things. Our short-term deliverables are to refine our tools for evaluating EEG readings of emotionally-intense states (e.g. 5-MeO-DMT), build a hardware platform for non-invasive precision brain stimulation, and release an updated version of our full-stack theory of brain dynamics (‘neural annealing’). We think we’re on track for all of these goals. On one level this is a huge claim- but as Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” We think we have that lever, and we’re building a place to stand. More Qualia References, Links and Bibliography Block, N. 1999. ‘‘Sexism, Racism, Ageism and the Nature of Consciousness’’. Philosophical Topics 26 (1&2): 39–70. Bradley, P., and M. Tye. 2001. ‘‘Of Colors, Kestrels, Caterpillars, and Leaves’’. Journal of Philosophy 98: 469–87. Byrne, A., and D. R. Hilbert. 2003. ‘‘Color Realism and Color Science’’. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26: 3–21. Byrne, A., and D. R. Hilbert. 2004. ‘‘Hardin, Tye, and Color Physicalism’’. Journal of Philosophy 101: 37–43. Hardin, C. L. 1993. Color for Philosophers (expanded edition). Indianapolis: Hackett. Lewis, D. 1984. ‘‘Putnam’s Paradox’’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62: 221–36. Mollon, J. D. 1997. ‘‘‘‘. . . On the Basis of Velocity Clues Alone’’: Some Perceptual Themes 1946–1996’’. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 50A: 859–78. Pautz, A. 2006. ‘‘Sensory Awareness Is not a Wide Physical Relation: An Empirical Argument Against Externalist Intentionalism’’. Nouˆs 40: 205–40. Tye, M. 2000. Consciousness, Color, and Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tye, M. 2006. ‘‘The Puzzle of True Blue’’. Analysis 66. Williamson, T. Forthcoming. ‘‘Can Cognition be Factorised into Internal and External Components?’’ In R. Stainton, ed., Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science, Blackwell. Block, N. (1978) Troubles with functionalism. Reprinted in (N. Block, ed.) `Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol 1. Harvard University Press, 1980 Block, N. (1990) Inverted earth. In Philosophical Perspectives 4, ed J. Tomberlin. Ridgeview Block, N. (1995) “On a Confusion about the Function of Consciousness”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18, 227-247 Block, N. (2002) “The Harder Problem of Consciousness”, The Journal of Philosophy XCIX, No. 8, August 2002, 1-35 Byrne, A., (2001) "Intentionalism Defended", Philosophical Review 110, Chalmers, David, 1996. The Conscious Mind. Oxford University Press: New York Dennett, D. (1988) `Quining Qualia.' In A. Marcel & E. Bisiach (eds) Consciousness in Contemporary Society. Oxford University Press: Oxford Dennett, D. (1991) Consciousness Explained. Little Brown: New York Harman, G. (1982) “Conceptual Role Semantics” The Notre Dame Journal of Formal Horgan, T. (1984) `Jackson on physical information and qualia'. Philosophical Quarterly Jackson, F. (1986) `What Mary didn't know.' Journal of Philosophy 83: 291-95 Jackson, F. (1993) `Armchair metaphysics'. In J. O'Leary-Hawthorne and M. Michael (eds) Philosophy in Mind. Kluwer Levine, J. (1993) `On leaving out what it is like.' In Davies and Humphreys (1993a) Lewis, D. 1990. What experience teaches. In (W. Lycan, ed) Mind and Cognition. Blackwell Loar, B. (1990) `Phenomenal properties.' In J. Tomberlin (ed) Philosophical Perspectives: Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind. Ridgeview. Lycan, W. (1996) Consciousness and Experience MIT Press: Cambridge McGinn, C. (1991) The Problem of Consciousness. Blackwell Nida-Rümelin, M. 1996. Pseudonormal vision: An actual case of qualia inversion? Philosophical Studies 82:145-57. Palmer, S. 1999. Color, consciousness, and the isomorphism constraint. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22 (6), 1-21. Papineau, D. (2002) Thinking about Consciousness, Oxford University Press: Oxford Peacocke, C. (1989) `No resting place: a critical notice of The View from Nowhere', The Philosophical Review 98, 65-82. Perry, J. (2001), Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness, MIT Press: Cambridge Rey, G. (1993) `Sensational Sentences Switched'. Philosophical Studies 70, 1: Shoemaker, S. (1975) `Functionalism and qualia.' Philosophical Studies 27: 291-315. Shoemaker, S. (1981) `Absent qualia are impossible--a reply to Block'. The Philosophical Review 90,4:581-599 Sturgeon, S. (1994) “The Epistemic View of Subjectivity” The Journal of Philosophy XCI, 5, 1994 Tye, M. (2000) Consciousness, Color and Content, MIT Press: Cambridge Van Gulick, R. (1993) Understanding the phenomenal mind: are we all just armadillos? In Davies and Humphreys (1993a) White, S. L. (1986): `Curse of the qualia', Synthese 68: 333-368. White, S. L (1995) `Color and the narrow contents of experience' Philosophical Topics 23 Block, N. (1981). Troubles with functionalism. In (Block, ed.) Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cuda, T. (1985). Against neural chauvinism. Philosophical Studies, 48, 111-27. Horgan, T. (1984). Functionalism, qualia, and the inverted spectrum. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 44, 453-69. Pylyshyn, Z. (1980). The `causal power' of machines. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 442-4. Savitt, S. (1982). Searle's demon and the brain simulator reply. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, 342-3. Searle, J.R. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 417-57. Searle, J.R. (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Shoemaker, S. (1982). The inverted spectrum. Journal of Philosophy, 79, 357-81. https://www.qualiaresearchinstitute.org https://www.iep.utm.edu/sense-da/ https://www.iep.utm.edu/qualia/

Qualia and Time Sense

Q,Q,Q - Quality, Quantity, Qualia (soon)

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