#anyways I got adobe now

[sneakydraws]

i told you i fucking told you i'd finish it. well it took me like two years but i did it

[ebonytails]

sorry my post is just to complain but guys i literally hate adobe after effects. i can not explain to you the mental torture and how LOW it has brought my mental health because I *need* to use it for my post production class because it's "industry standard". ADOBE After Effects has made me write off the entire film and video production industry as a turn off and I never want to do it ever again.

The amount of times this has crashed on me where I lost everything? 5+ hours of work? 8+ hours of work? It's my fault for not saving sometimes but I also have auto-save on. it didn't save anything so im just left with nothing.

You want a trip to burn out town really quick? Use adobe after effects in an academic setting where you have no choice but to use this program.

I have never in my life TOUCHED a program SO TERRIBLE that it made me never want to do anything about that form of art/media EVER AGAIN

[crystal-clear-crystalline]

I don’t think I ever realized the missions the Kratt brothers go on as potentially being dangerous, even when it first debuted. I remember the debut episode and literally any episode that had the villains showed up but never really processed how dangerous/violent they are.

I woke up from a nightmare last night (well, very early morning technically) and I watched an episode to help calm me down. It was specifically the hawkmoth turtle episode and then the shark encounters popped up and it was like “OH”. I never watched National Geographic but I assume it is basically similar but more toned down for kids

[strange-aeons]

so I just finished school and got kicked off the school adobe account. Went to get my own and Photoshop is $30/ month now??????? IT'S WHAT?????

Anyway pls tell me your best free alternatives :)

[my-humble-abode]

eternally furious about the fact that my school has blocked the fucking app store on my laptop and the fact that i cant even ask to get it unblocked without downloading an app, which, obiviously, i cant fucking do, because they’ve blocked the fucking app store

[dduane]

From the Ditching Adobe ASAP dep't, a recommendation: Crazybump

People who've listened often enough to my rantings about digital art tools will know that I've been a Corel user for a couple of decades now —maybe even a few?—and that I've routinely only used Adobe PS (in one manifestation or another) when it's unavoidable—meaning, when it has a tool the effects of which I can't duplicate in some other way without spending a ton of time trying.

I've always loathed PS's bloat and (seemingly unnecessary) complications. Now, though, with the most recent distasteful corporate shenanigans and the unwelcome encroachment of AI, I've been moving to find ways to get rid of it entirely. This has required taking a good hard look at what I actually use it for, and actively seeking out ways to do those things using other tools.

Here's one I like which I've now worked with often enough to safely recommend it to other people.

One of the main things I was using PS for was the creation of bump maps and normal maps to overlay digital objects I was going to be rendering. Adobe has now mostly moved that function, along with most of its 3D tools, into other apps (for which they naturally expect you to spend even more money...). So I can no longer do this job in PS—possibly something to do with my video card (which PS insists is not set correctly, though it always was before...), possibly not.

So, my hand having been forced on this issue before Adobe started to get really loathesome, I went looking for a different tool that would do this job: and after some digging around, I found it. Let me introduce you to Crazybump.

This standalone program runs happily under Windows 10 and Windows 11, and there's a public beta for the Mac. It has the same kind of straightforward ease of use that you get from, say, EZGif, and what it does, it does really well. Better, I'm pretty sure, than Adobe PS does/did.

It is seriously configurable in terms of the quality of normal maps that it turns out. (Look at the top screenshot: the sliders will indicate what I mean.) It will cheerfully create all the major map types—normals, displacement, occlusion, specularity, and diffuse—with one click; and the created maps come out clearly and logically labeled in the filenames. You can also do extremely useful things like combine already existing normal maps—and if you've ever tried to square that particular circle by hand, you'll welcome this feature like a long-lost friend.

Anyway, if you do work that calls for these filetypes, I highly recommend Crazybump. I'm running on an evaluation version right now, but intend to license it as soon as I've got a little cash to spare.

More than this, deponent saith not. :)

[qc-wiggles]

they say write what you know and what i know is academic stress and yearbook pain. so anyways it's a yearbook club au!!!!

YEARBOOK CLUB MEMBERS:

supervising teachers: gertrude and leitner. they become uncontactable like a week into the project (do they die? do they resign? tim has a running theory that they eloped.)

elias: head of yearbook club. dips unexpectedly in the middle of the entire thing (something about an optical surgery) and forces jon to take over. his dad paid for the adobe subscription they’re using 

rosie: treasurer, she’s very efficient, they’ve probably exchanged like 3 emails in total and she’s gotten everything funded. knows well enough to stay out of the dumpster fire that is yearbook production otherwise

jon: de facto head of yearbook club. thinks it should have gone to sasha instead. hes a bit incompetent but plans like it’s doomsday the next week so they are always in a wealth of excel sheets. writer, editor

tim: joined partly because he wanted an excuse to get out of football fixtures. also because he is 1 out of jons 3 friends including his ex and jon asked him. he has a tiktok. marketing, editor

sasha: joined partly to impress gertrude (she’s looking for her to write her letter of recommendation as head girl in sixth form). also because she is 1 out of jons 3 friends including his ex and jon asked her. she still uses livejournal. designer, writer

gerry: sixth form, occasionally helps out with networking at gertrude’s behest. tim is a bit starstruck over him. he saves their asses many, many times

melanie and georgie: got unofficially roped in as photographers. why you ask? manuela dominguez may have the cutting edge cameras but she is simply too scary to approach. melanie has a youtube channel that all the girls and tim are apparently subscribed to. 

martin: there is not one single picture of him. apparently he didn’t turn up for photo day, neither was he involved in any school events. even the people who have shared half-remembered facts about him seem to forget about him when questioned a second time. where did he go?

PLOT:

it’s the month before the yearbook is due to be sent in for production, and the team have discovered numerous issues with the draft: pictures of random people keep getting swapped over like they’ve been photoshopped, some pages are illegible and distorted unless they are physically written out in hand and scanned, one paragraph is a leitner. and nobody can find martin blackwood so they can get his picture in the yearbook. what will they do.

SIDE CHARACTERS:

annabelle cane: current head girl

mikaele salesa: somehow knows literally everyone, involved in the funding of yearbook production

mike crew: uneasy alliance with gerry in their pursuit of jurgen leitner 

oliver banks: had a mental breakdown sometime during his gcses but hes fine now

david from research: nobody says it to his face but he has genuinely the most atrocious clothing choice in the entire school apart from michael shelley, and even then michael shelley makes work

grifter’s bone: the band of the school, except no one actually knows anyone who’s part of it. their shows are legendarily terrible. manuela says ambulances were phoned. 

daisy and basira: prefects, currently invested in making sure yearbook club remains LEGAL and not STALKING ANY STAFF OR STUDENTS, JON

jmag: principal. boo. what a creep

julia montauk: apparently her dad went to jail. but who is she living with now? i don’t know, manuela told me. how does manuela know? julia told her in a sleepover during year 6. and she’s telling other people? wow. that’s messed up. is that old guy her grandpa? why does he carry a rifle around

jared hopworth: prejudiced gymbro, but importantly, NOT a homophobe.

the admiral: what else needs to be said

FAMOUS ALUMNI:

agnes montague (campus celebrity from literally decades ago) (her relationship with jack barnabas is mythicised)

jude perry (allegedly caused some fire-related, agnes-related events)

edwin burroughs (allegedly commited atrocities during one year’s christmas dinner)

jane prentiss (left for uni a year ago, allegedly brought many live organisms onto campus) (keeps talking about this guy called jordan)

eric delano (he did WHAT to his eyes)

MISCELLANEOUS POINTS:

daedalus crew is astronomy club

breekon and hope are the manufacturers for much of the schools equipment and stationery

jon keeps finding notes from gertrude stashed in random places about yearbook difficulties its like a fun cool treasure hunt

they cant figure out where a computer they were initially using for yearbook club is from. it says ‘ushanka’ on the bottom of the display and the keys are slightly crusty

what the hell are the drama students actually up to 

[queer-ragnelle]

I hope you don't mind me asking. But how do you create PDF files that you can search through them? Your method is so unique, so I'm curious.

Hi anon!

After I scan a book and have a PDF saved, it can’t be searched. It has to be edited and made that way. So I open it up in Adobe Acrobat. There’s a tool called “Optimize PDF” which has a lot of different features you can fine tune the settings of but essentially what it does is:

Straighten out the text to be perfectly horizontal and level (I try to scan two pages at a time then crop, so raw scans can be a little wonky)

Recognizes the text on the page (which allows key word search, highlighting, commenting, everything you can do with a word document)

Reduces file size (I scan at 300 or 400 dpi, which makes a sharp image, but a huge file, so this compresses it to be easier to store and share)

I find this aspect of scanning to be very valuable, personally, as it can make researching and referring back much easier. Even though I’ve already read these books, searching through for a specific scene is vastly more efficient when you can pinpoint the exact sentence based on a remembered phrase. It’s also nice to be able to highlight those to emphasize a point. Furthermore by reducing the file size it’s much easier to share the information with others. I’m able to attach files to messages without going over limits and I can open the books right from the google drive mobile app wherever I go.

Like if I’m out and about wondering just how much Cherith Baldry loves Kay, I can crack open Exiled From Camelot and do this

2,387 mentions of Kay? Yeah. He’s kind of a big deal. ;^)

But real talk accessibility is an important aspect of my archival work. I try to provide the best version of a scan I can with my limited resources because I don’t know that the book will survive otherwise. Ruth PM Lehmann has passed away, so scanning Blessed Bastard, which only had a limited printing to begin with and now lacks a beneficiary, felt significant to me. The same goes for Peter Hanratty’s The Book of Mordred, which is an English translation of a German story and hasn’t been in print for decades. As for medlit, La Tavola Ritonda and my janky scanner tested my will to live but it ended up being so worth it to see everyone’s thoughts on it! I couldn’t find PDFs of these texts available anywhere, so I wanted to make sure they were preserved in the most accessible state possible for everyone to enjoy.

Anyway I hope that answers your question. I’ve got two books on the way I’m going to scan next and looking forward to sharing! :^) Take care.<3

[radioactivepeasant]

Free Day Thursday:

"Responsible Adults", the sequel: Jak tries to do a regular Jak Stunt and is shocked that it doesn't go over well

(Roughly a week after this one ends. Long post warning, as most of these are lol)

Night terrors were not an uncommon experience for Jak. They may not have been his nightly companions anymore, but when he did have them, they were intense. He woke up in a corner of his room, wedged beneath the sink. There was a vague sense that he was taking cover from something, or someone.

Blessedly, he remembered no details of the nightmare. But the terror still sent his guts quivering the way they had in the prison. Huddled under the cot both for warmth and silently praying the boots wouldn't stop at his door. That he wouldn't end up Tyber's new punching bag when he got bored of the old man in the cell above Jak's.

Tyber is dead. Errol is dead. Praxis is dead. I watched them die.

Jak repeated the words like a mantra until he could move his limbs again. He crawled out from beneath the sink, but the lingering fear made his room feel claustrophobic. Smaller than it really was.

At least he hadn't woken Daxter this time.

Jak put on his boots, but didn't bother getting fully dressed. He didn't even know what time it was. Why bother if the doctor and the king guy were just going to nag him about being sleep-deprived anyway?

It must have been early morning, before dawn; the moon had vanished and people were outside doing repair work on houses and fog-catchers.

Early morning was the best time to get any outdoor work done in Spargus. A small girl led a flock of caprids out of the stables and towards one of the other districts to graze on the cactus there, and a gang of trainees only a little older than Jak were taking advantage of the temperature to do an endurance run around the city.

Personally, Jak didn't see the good of such things. You learned to be fast enough or smart enough to escape your enemies, or you didn't. He'd learned through life and death experience, not a footrace with no winners.

"Easy with the straps there!" A stocky man backed into Jak, calling up to a team of three people.

"Ope-! Scuse me there, pipsqueak." The Wastelander stepped to the side as if Jak was barely worth noticing.

"Howland, that thing ain't cinched tight enough!"

They seemed to be trying to remove a corroded beam from the supports of one of the multi dwelling houses. It was already leaning at a precarious angle, as big around as a grown man. If that beam came down the wrong way, it would take a lot of the adobe structure -- and probably a lot of people -- with it.

"It's fine, Daru!" Howland complained, "I just cinched it!"

"Well cinch it again! That sucker’s leanin'!"

Jak frowned, but let his curiosity wash away the dregs of the night terrors.

"What's wrong with it?"

The unofficial foreman tugged at a bushy red mustache and shook his head. "Don't rightly know yet. Could just be age. Sand storms and salt air will do a number on this kind of metal after a while."

Jak wondered if that had anything to do with Sandover using wood and stone almost exclusively. He was about to ask why it had been anchored to a mud wall when there was a loud metallic clang. The last bracket holding the beam snapped under the weight, and the straps weren't enough to hold it.

Jak didn't remember moving. But then he was there, with the beam on his shoulders and the foreman on the ground, having narrowly avoided being crushed to death. Cold metal dug into his hands, pressed down against his head, and Jak knew that by rights he should've been dead.

There was a thrill of revulsion in his chest when he reluctantly acknowledged that the only reason he was standing right now was that the dark eco experiments had lengthened his muscle strands to twice the size of a normal hu'men's. It wasn't just in his dark form. That element of...unnatural...was just with him. Every moment.

"Frith! Oh my- HOWLAND! GET DOWN HERE!" Daru roared, "YOU COULDA KILLED SOMEBODY!"

"I got it," Jak said through gritted teeth. "Is there a place to put this thing down?"

"Not yet," Howland admitted as he shimmied down a ladder.

"We were going to cut it into pieces once it was secure, transport it that way to be recycled."

Jak craned his neck, but the motion jarred the beam. Hastily, he adjusted his grip.

"What's- What's around me?"

"Too much," said Daru grimly. "Just- Hold on, kid."

He winced at the boy's flat stare.

"Er...no pun intended. We're gonna, gonna get you out from under there, I promise!"

"Get it cut up first," Jak grunted, "And you won't have to worry about getting me out."

"And what if your hands get sweaty, huh?" Daru demanded, "Fat chance, little man! We're going to find something to hold this up!"

The other two men hurried down from the roof with saws in hand.

Oh gods. Handsaws. This was going to take a while.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Honestly, Damas should have been expecting trouble when he didn't start his day with a free heart attack after seeing eyeshine in the kitchen. The kid was diametrically opposed to the concept of sleep, so he wouldn't have been in bed. If he was off his routine -- and by now Damas had learned to dread something interrupting the kid's self-imposed routine -- then there was probably going to be trouble later.

When he refilled the fuel in the Beacon, fed the birds, and actually had a cup of coffee uninterrupted, he was suspicious.

When the sun rose and there were no echoes of truncated curses in the halls from guards running into Jak, he started to wonder if the kid had decided to work outside. Unusual, but as long as he didn't do anything that would make Dr. Petros yell at them both, more power to him.

But when the talking ottsel showed up in the throne room about an hour after dawn, frantically demanding to know where Jak was, Damas was concerned.

Those two were attached at the hip! Jak wouldn't have gone to look for work without Daxter.

There was a small crowd forming by the time Damas stepped outside. People were shouting encouragements, or conflicting advice about pulleys and snatchblocks. Had something fallen? Damas hadn't heard any impacts. As he began to pick his way through the crowd, the shouts took on new meaning.

"He's slipping! Somebody get under there!"

"How many more hands do you want? There's ten people holding the beam up!"

"Why won't he just let go?!"

"Standing this long, maybe his arms locked up-?"

A beam? People holding a beam-?

An accident. There'd been an accident and night watch hadn't caught it.

Thoughts of crushed citizens and mangled houses circled Damas’s imagination as he pushed through the rest of the crowd, close enough to hear the rasp of handsaws and the buzz of a lone angle grinder.

"Get the cart back in!" Someone yelled, "Next piece is almost off!"

From the looks of things, a crew of four had reduced a two-story high support beam by a third.

Ten Wastelanders were beneath the colossal pole, hands and shoulders braced against the metal as it shrieked and groaned. If even one of them slipped-!

Damas threw down his staff without thinking to join them, racing to catch the end beginning to slide.

"What happened?" he demanded, straining with the others to keep it from crushing the houses and themselves.

"Tie straps broke!" a man three people down called back, "If it weren't for the kid, it woulda come down right through the roofs of a couple houses!"

Kid?

Oh gods don't tell me...

Jak was standing in the very center of the line. His arms trembled, and sweat poured down his face. He didn't seem to hear anything happening around him, too focused on keeping his grip. He was beginning to pale.

"What's he doing here?!"

"Dunno!" A woman to the left answered. "He was already there when me and the girls showed up, but that was two hours ago."

"Hours?!"

Jak had been out here for hours, trapped, and Damas had been none the wiser?

"Why hasn't anyone gotten him out yet?!"

"We tried! The poor kid froze up!"

Damas gritted his teeth and pushed away images of the kid standing alone under that crushing weight for hours until help had woken up.

"Get a truck and winch out of the pit!" He ordered, "Forget damage to the streets, we'll fix it later! I want this thing taken care of now."

It took a full twenty minutes to get the Dozer through the narrow streets of the tower district. By that time, those who had been holding the beam first had cycled out for fresh arms to allow for water and eco. All except Jak. He'd accepted some water that someone poured into his mouth earlier, but still seemed to be unable to let go. He was at the fulcrum point, he insisted, and he wasn't going to let it tip. (Not that he thought he'd actually be able to move at this point.)

Fifteen people attached pulleys and cables to the beam from above, careful not to dislodge the hands of those below. When the cables had all been hooked to the Dozer's winch, the weight began, at last, to lessen.

There was a ragged cheer from the assembled Wastelanders as the end of the beam tipped up and the rescuers eased the other end to the ground. There would be extensive damage to infrastructure to deal with. But nobody had died, and there were no major injuries, and Damas would count that as a victory. Shaking out aching arms, he hurried to the center of the line, where someone was physically holding Jak upright. Damas took hold of the boy's stiff arms carefully.

"It's gone," he said, easing the limbs down, "It's gone, let go, Jak. Come on, you're done."

The kid made a sound, a soft rasping whine that might’ve been words. Then he collapsed.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When the world drifted back into focus, Jak didn't know where he was. The smell of eco lingered around him, confusing the other scents that could have identified his location. He couldn't move his arms. Why couldn't he move his arms?!

It took a massive effort just to pry his eyelids up. Jak’s breath caught harshly between his teeth as he forced himself onto his side.

Well, that explained the lack of mobility in his arms. He ached like he'd been fighting beyond his limits again. The injection sites would be agitated again, he knew without looking. The pain radiated from his shoulders to his fingertips, skin, muscle, and bone.

The room was a blur. Brown and yellow slowly settled into more colors, ending in something either white or pale blue in front of his nose. The longer he stared at it, the more detail he could see. Pills of thread, clinging to loosely woven fabric. The texture and shape of the warp and weft shifted as he tried to move his hand.

He hissed in pain.

"Well that's what happens when you try to make a career as a load-bearing wall."

Jak tensed. Not alone. Not with Daxter.

Biting down on the pain, he dug his fingers into the pallet beneath him and forced himself upright.

This wasn't the hospital -- small blessings -- but it wasn't his room either. There was a low wooden bedframe on a wall a few feet away, on the other side of some kind of half partition full of plants.

"Where...?"

"Well you're about to think of it as prison," Damas answered from the opposite direction.

He was sitting at a table, hunched over a cup of coffee. The empty pot beside him was a story of its own.

"By the way, you're grounded."

"What?!" Jak sputtered. He started to get up, but fell back onto the pallet with a grunt of pain.

"Like rot!"

Damas glanced back over his shoulder. "Take it up with the doctor. He put you on bedrest, not me. Better yet, blame your own self! You could've let go at any time once the rest of the district turned up to help!"

"The whole...district?"

Jak blinked.

"I don't...remember that..."

Damas sighed and peered into into his mug.

"You've been sleeping most of the day, I'm not surprised. Even with the eco you'll probably be sore for a while."

"How -- ow! -- long was I out there?"

Jak cringed at the look in Damas’s eyes when the man turned around fully.

"Four. Hours. Four hours! Why didn't you let go when others arrived?!"

Was this a trick question? It had to be a trick question.

"Be...cause...I'm not supposed to let other people get hurt?" Jak answered with slow confusion.

Damas stared in complete silence for several seconds. Then,

"You're insane. My foster-son is insane. That's insane! In what world is "throw the youngest under the pillar" a rational solution?!"

"Uh. Haven?" Jak muttered peevishly. He tried to sit up again. "Look, just. Tell me which way my room is and I'll get out of your hair."

Damas pushed his chair back with a scraping sound.

"Mn. No. What part of "bed rest" didn't you hear?"

In brusque motions, he knelt and pulled the blanket back over Jak.

"You are not to do anything even mildly strenuous, or Petros will strangle me. And since I apparently can't trust you not to willingly walk into harm's way unsupervised, you get to camp out in here, and I get to work from home for the next few days to make sure you don't go try to lift a car or something!"

Jak was appalled. "You can't do that!"

Dry as dust, Damas retorted, "First of all, I'm king. Secondly, I'm your legal guardian. Yes I can."

Jak groaned in frustration.

"Where's Daxter?"

"Not grounded."

"Oh come on!"

[signor-signor]

The Star Nomad - Animated with After Effects!

I recently finished the online master’s program in art and technology, and I’ve been having fun with with an Adobe software I used for some of my projects called After Effects.

While Disney has long denied WOY its third and final season, my determination to make it a reality persists. Neither Mercury Filmworks nor Boulder Media got the opportunity to animate the Star Nomad, so I thought I’d do it myself.

Using a previous file I made on Illustrator, I took the graphic of the ship, split some of it into layers, saved it as a PDF, imported the PDF into After Effects, and animated components that needed to move to create the illusion of flight.

Definitely a step up from the microgame I made on WarioWare: DIY, which I feel is now outdated, considering Craig McCracken implied that the Skullship wouldn’t be in flight throughout S3. The reason I added text to the video is that I didn’t want other fans to mistake it for the real thing.

Every person who’s ever worked on the show MUST see this.

Anyway, enjoy! Hold onto your ambitions!

[bright-and-burning]

dropping some treats from this au onto the dash Very Carefully. enjoy!!!

“Pierre just started work at Esteban’s firm, you know,” George says, setting his beer down on a coaster. A signal, that his monthly update on their friends (and enemies, after a few drinks) has begun.

“Got him the job, or failed at keeping him from getting it?” Lando asks.

It’s all public on LinkedIn, he’d even dropped a like on Pierre’s post last week, scrolled the comments for Esteban’s name, but it’s more fun, letting George put on his show. Playing up his reactions, setting George up for the reveals. Alex never checks LinkedIn, anyways.

Alex elbows Lando lightly, drink swishing dangerously close to the edges of his glass.

“Hey, maybe they’ve changed, you never know. Three years, that’s a long time.”

Lando’s face scrunches up in disbelief without his permission.

“To go from screaming at each other on the quad to pleasant coworkers? Think they need more than three years, mate.”

Alex laughs.

George knocks his knuckles against the table, drawing his audience back in.

“And they’re in the same department. Bridge design, or something.”

“Guess I won’t be driving over the river any time soon,” Alex says. “Anything else? Still no news from Logan?”

“No, he’s still offshore somewhere. Pretty sure he’s back in the land of the living next month, though.”

“And, uh,” Alex pauses, eyes darting towards Lando.

Lando’s good at this bit. Ignoring the awkward pauses in George’s monthly updates on their friends (and, after a few drinks, enemies) from school. He tips his chin down, junk email from Adobe suddenly riveting.

The silence stretches, longer than normal. Lando is learning quite a bit about the webinars Adobe offers. They’re going all-in on generative AI from the looks of it, the morons. Weekly fifteen minute conversations on how they’re using it and everything.

There’s quite a lot of cut-off motion in his peripheral. George’s face is going to get stuck like that if he doesn’t stop.

Lando puts down his phone.

“And Osc-ar is moving back to start his masters in CS. Same program as me. I check my email too, you know.” Lando clears his throat, ignoring the way he’d stumbled over his name. “Drinks, anyone?”

He doesn’t wait for a response, standing and walking to the bar. Lando could rattle their drink orders off half asleep anyways. Doesn’t need to sit around while they frantically communicate with their eyes, trying and failing to act normal. They can whisper-scream at each other when he’s not at the table. His gift to them. Drinks on him, and a few minutes to pull it together.

Lando closes his eyes as the bartender pours their drinks. He can act normally about this. He’s going to have to act normally about this, if he wants to survive it.

God. Back to school with Oscar Piastri.

Like being nineteen and fucking stupid again. Or twenty-two and even fucking stupider.

The sound of their drinks hitting the bar top shakes him from his thoughts.

“-eaves the room whenever he’s even mentioned, and now they’re gonna be in the same-“ Alex cuts himself off as Lando returns.

[ashlynniis-bracketeers]

Shrimple {Limbus Company}

(please full view, this is only sketchy so I didn't cut out the individual panels)

Got Meursault brainrot right now, but he's so much of an engima that none of my thoughts are coherent. Send help.

Also, since Adobe is... well, being Adobe at the moment, I'm messing with various free drawing programs to find something other than Photoshop, so this is a super sketchy test with Krita. The program feels rather... unwieldy, though the default brushes are fun lmao.

Anyway, I saw a video named "[Limbus Company] Shrimp in-fighting" showing two Corrosions of the Soda E.G.O in-fighting, and the Soda E.G.O is humanoid shrimp... and I remembered that Meursault treats cooking and food Very Seriously™ (dragging the other sinners in pun [Korean]/rhyme [English] in the Hell's Chicken event), so my brain went "he'd probably eat the most edible Corrosions of his teammates considering how badly his teammates cook" and I decided to use the most Shrimple choice. They're krilling each other, but Meursault is seeing them through Food-o-Vision and would probably take them both out if he thinks he can get away with it lmao.

I hope you like it!

[nothoughtsonlytrance]

Hey everyone! Here is my submission for the Dan and Phil Phasquerade Tumblr Event! First off, as a surprise, I made not one, but TWO songs for the event!

The first one is the main theme song for the event as requested by @wdapteo! 生き甲斐 (Ikigai)! It’s not fully orchestral but I put a bit of strings and horns in there, so I guess it counts lol! I decided to go with a theme that was mainly based around guitars and synths. I also put in a few Asian instruments such as the koto to represent their trips to Japan. The title “Ikigai” is a Japanese concept that refers to one’s sense of purpose or reason to live and is a combination of the words “iki”(to live) and “gai” (reason). This concept can include people such as friends, families, and partners, as well as activities such as one’s hobby or pastime. It basically means that one can find joy in their life by being aligned with their purpose. I thought this concept would be perfect for the phasquerade because Dan and Phil’s ikigai or reason to live is each other. 🥰

As for the background image, I found a picture on Adobe Stock Photos of two masquerade masks that looked PERFECT for Dan and Phil. (The black one is Dan’s and the white one is Phil’s, obviously, lol 😂) Phanartists, feel free to use those masks in ur art! 👌🏻

The second song I made is an orchestral ballroom version of JVKE’s Golden Hour! It took me around two days to do, along with constant listening to the song to get the chords right and then add my own bits on top of it 😂 I’m really proud of this version because lemme tell ya, making orchestral music on Garageband IOS is harder than it looks 😭😅 I still can’t believe how far I’ve gone with making music on this app bc I started using it in 2018 and back then, I had a hard time navigating everything but I slowly worked my way up to where I am now, and tbh I still have far more to go! The background image I used for this is another stock image I found on Pexels that fit the vibe of the song! (Also the two men in the picture looked like Dan and Phil haha 😂)

Anyways, here's a little introduction of me: I’m Kristy, aka @nothoughtsonlytrance. My pronouns are she/they and I am pansexual! (Fun fact, I found out I was pan around the same time that Dan and Phil came out in 2019 lol) I’ve been watching Dan and Phil since around 2012/2013 (so when I was around 12 or 13 years old) because that was the time when I really started watching YouTube and eventually found their channels. I vividly remember watching the Photobooth Challenge video and crying with laughter because it was so hilarious. I continued to look forward to seeing their videos after school and finally got to see them on stage in 2018 for their Interactive Introverts tour when they came to Richmond, VA. (didn’t get VIP tickets for the meet and greet tho so I still have yet to meet them in person 😭🤞) It continues to be one of my favorite memories of them and I remember crying when seeing them on stage. Their videos mean so much to me and I even made my quote for my college graduation cap “Embrace the void and have the courage to exist” because their videos got me through the last two semesters of college!😎👌🏻(Which got noticed by Dan and Phil in their Phan Twitter Memes 2 video!) Words cannot express how proud I am of them, especially after their coming out videos and how they feel more free to be themselves! And I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for them! (And also us haha)

I think the song that will be playing when I take the stage is “Once Upon a December” from the musical Anastasia! It is one of my favorite musicals and I even got to see it in NYC with my family a few years back! Also, as someone who was adopted from Russia, this song really speaks to me personally. I don’t speak Russian fluently, only a few basic words and phrases that my parents taught me that they learned when they were adopting me, (I only speak English) but I’ve been trying to learn the lyrics to the Russian version of the song so I can sing along with it too. (Pronouncing Russian isn’t easy haha)

Anyways, here’s my post for the phasquerade! Hope you all enjoy the music! I had so much fun being a part of this and thank you so much to @serendipnpipity for planning and organizing this!

[multimuseticles]

You know... I've been drawing ever since I was like 5 years old. It's something I've spent pretty much my entire life doing. The longest I'd ever really go without drawing is like a couple of months maybe, and lately I've been drawing on an almost near daily basis. But if I'm being honest, I'm fairly close to actually quitting.

I still love to draw and I don't really want to stop, but it's getting to a point where AI slop is just entirely taking over the internet. Finding even reference images these days is so difficult because google is filled with AI crap and a lot of actual art sites allow AI art(looking at you Pixiv and DeviantArt).

I used to get a couple of commissions a month just a few years ago. Then covid hit and I got a little less work because people didn't exactly have the same amount of money to spend, which makes perfect sense. But getting closer to the end of covid when people could actually go back to work etc, AI decided to creep its head up and now I'm lucky to get one commission every few months. Originally, AI art was laughable and it was only able to make really stupid shit that was basically illegible. Like that Dall-e thing.

Putting the rest under a read more because it's somewhat long.

But nowadays, a lot of people prefer to use AI than give actual artists attention. Especially now that a lot of big companies are pushing their own AI crap(looking at you Adobe and Meta). Instagram used to be a great place for artists, now its filled with AI crap that Instagram seems to fucking love and is basically training their AI on your own posts. They say you can opt out, but if you live in the USA? You seemingly can't. In the EU you can because of laws, so I was able to opt out. However. I don't trust Meta not to train off my shit anyway.

Then you've got Adobe, which y'know, was a thing for artists to create stuff, be that through Photoshop, Illustrator or even their video editors. But now they're just pushing their lame AI crap to do everything for you, and still charge a ridiculous amount for their service.

Now I'm not just complaining because I'm getting less work. It's just depressing that creativity is dying. Generative AI is being used in video games, movies, tv shows, music, youtube videos, voiceovers and pretty much EVERYTHING else. It's impossible to avoid these days. Sites that allow AI but ask you to tag it so people can hide it doesn't work either, because people just don't tag that shit.

Due to all this AI crap, artists are being accused of using AI to create their art, regardless of if they show proof or not. It hasn't happened to me yet, but I feel it's inevitable simply because I absolutely suck at drawing hands and I can just barely get the hang of them most of the time. A ton of actual artists have been essentially bullied to the point where they don't post their art online anymore, or are forced to change their art style.

It's so much harder for artists to get their work out there anymore because AI is taking over all of these sites so the majority of the stuff you see is generated bullshit. It has led to people being like "Why would I pay someone to do this when I can just write a prompt and get what I want in seconds?" and no matter what you say to people with this line of thought, they just do not give a single shit.

I'm fine with AI to an extent. I think it's fine to just use it for dumb shit between friends, or helping to get a design idea for an OC or something. But the moment you start making money from AI or posting it online and claiming it as your own(and saying that people should credit you if you used it???) is the moment I think it's not okay. Have you seen Facebook or Twitter lately? Filled with really messed up AI images and AI responses. Facebook is rampant with weird and disturbing looking AI generated images and Twitter is 90% bots these days.

This whole post was spurred on by a conversation I saw between two of my friends. One of my friends wanted to get into graphic design, and being the artist of the group and having experience in graphic design, he came to me for advice. He got some very basic stuff done and he was really proud of it. He was showing some of the stuff he made to our other friend who simply responded with an AI generation of the same thing saying "Just use AI man, it's quicker and looks better." It was super depressing to see, especially since I've had conversations about how much I hate generative AI with these same friends.

So at this point I'm on the edge of just stopping. I probably won't, but I'm starting to lose motivation because I feel like there is no safe place to upload my art anymore. Will I stop? Probably not, but the temptation is there. I dunno, fuck generative AI man.

Sorry for the long ass rant, but I'm just getting so fed up with this crap.

[clonewarsarchives]

Hello there!

I just wanted to write in to express my gratitude and ask a couple questions.

Long story short, I gave up on both the EU and Disney Star Wars canons some time ago, instead choosing to vet the works myself and add them to my own list. This has brought me much joy and breathed new life into this franchise for me, because now, anything I don't like, I can just ignore.

My focal point for vetting is involvement from George Lucas, and so naturally The Clone Wars (Seasons 1-6, anyways) got accepted, and is a huge part of my own canon.

But in doing the research for this project, I have discovered so much more Star Wars to take in than I ever had before. Case in point is the webcomics for The Clone Wars, which I had no idea existed before doing the research for all this in the past year or so.

I was looking for these webcomics in an idle way for a little bit, and finally sat down with Google, and what should I find but your blog?

It's a treasure trove of all materials related to The Clone Wars, so I wanted to say thank you! I am especially grateful to get to read these webcomics, since they were tied to Adobe Flash in some way on the official website, and cannot be viewed there any more within the limits of what I'm willing to do, and so I had accepted that that was lost for me. But your blog has made it not so! So thank you very much! And now, my questions:

Do you mind if I save the webcomics from your blog onto my computer?

Do you happen to have, or know where I could read, copies of Bait, Act on Instinct, or The Valsedian Operation? These were the only complete comics that I could not find on your blog.

Could you tell me more about the UK Magazine? This is another thing about which I know nothing and would love to learn.

Are you aware that the last two pages of webcomic #6, The Fall of Falleen, seems to have the last two pages swapped?

Is there a page missing from your post of Hunting the Hunters, Part 1? Parts 2 and 3 have the pages with the game tease lines at the bottom, but then have another page afterwards, whereas Part 1 does not.

Regarding both the Dark Horse monthly series and the graphic novellas, do you know if these have been collected anywhere, if they remain in print, and where I could buy them online that isn't Amazon?

Thank you very much, and clear skies!

Thank you for the message! Glad to be of help. To answer:

Is it okay to save posts from this blog on my computer?

Yes! Please save anything you like on this blog rather. I started this to offload my hard drive and prevent them from being lost media lol

post issues:

Bait should be the S1E11 accompanion? I did post it just forgot to tag 😅

I swear a few years ago Act on Instinct and The Valsedian Operation were availabe just on dubious free read comic online sites... don't seem to be anymore. here you go

Fixed the pages in Q4 & Q5. Thanks for telling me!

UK Magazine

Its proper name is Star Wars: The Clone Wars Comic. UK got a Clone Wars magazine because the publisher, Titan Comics, is a UK-based company, the one that makes Star Wars Insider.

The monthly issue features episode guide, games and an original comic strip. It was later reprinted in the US as a bi-monthly. The blog followed the UK publishing order since that's chronological and collected in full. Some issues were left out in the US reprint.

Dark Horse series

Both the monthly series and novellas started in Sept 2008 but the monthly series only lasted to Jan 2010 while novellas continued every few months until after the Disney buyout.

No omnibus were made or planned. So if you want a print version, you could only look in the library or the second-hand market.

dubious free read comic online sites have the full set fyi

[threshasketch]

Bye Bye Photoshop

So, yeah, Adobe is pushing the generative AI stuff more and more (and their "ethically sourced" AI engine Firefly uses around 1.25 million Midjourney images in its dataset, e.g. made with scraped stolen art, and opted all of the stock it offers in for training without asking the creators.)

Seeing Kyle T. Webster, the guy who made the 1000 free amazing brushes that PS Creative Cloud users get, quitting PS and being outspoken about his stance against gen AI around social media was an eye opener. (He offers some brushes on Gumroad apart from Adobe as well, thank goodness!)

When I first got Photoshop and switched from Krita to it, I found the brushes incredibly bad and unusable until I got the Kyle's brushes sets. You might say PS only worked for me so long because of Kyle's brushes, and that's not an exaggeration!

Anyway, my annual Photoshop Creative Cloud subscription was about to renew next month on July 6th, my birthday, as it has since 2017. I was already considering switching to something else when I saw it: Clip Studio, on sale for 60% off! I had literally downloaded the demo the week before to try it out and consider whether to invest $54 in a copy to switch from PS.

The perpetual license was under $25 USD now, but the subscription for an entire year was $10.79—cheaper than one month of my Photoshop subscription—and I'm already used to a subscription with constant updates. So I ended up getting the CS subscription and quit PS cold turkey.

So now I'm saving $109/year on art software, not giving money to people contributing to the biggest art theft in human history (literal billions of images scraped), and as a bonus, CS has a great community with tons of free brushes and textures and such up for grabs all the time!

I'm happy to say that all of the PS brushes I've purchased from Gumroad loaded right into CS and work perfectly. All of my Creative Fabrica fonts load in and work perfectly.

To be sure I could use CS before I committed to the switch-over, I whipped up a book cover (cannot tell it's made with anything different than my previous ones), and I illustrated and colored a piece of character art (looks super clean!) I opened PS and copied down my favorite fonts short list (minus the Adobe fonts, of course, which came with my subscription.)

And then I uninstalled Photoshop and Creative Cloud entirely, including their fonts. And it felt good! I sincerely thought switching to CS would be going to slightly worse software to be ethically okay using it, but after getting used to CS and customizing it with some very shiny brush sets (oil paints, watercolors, ink pens, gorgeous pencil, all free), I think it's just as good.

And CS won't shove "generative fill" AI tool garbage at me, or load my account with "generative credits" without ever asking.

It felt so gross logging into Adobe after ages to cancel my subscription and seeing those credits on my account, knowing they offered the option to buy more of them, taking money for things generated by using (among many other things) every art piece I've ever posted in the past 21 years for their scraped dataset training. Good riddance, Adobe!

Anyway, yeah. I'm using Clip Studio Paint now, and I'm excited to get to play with my new brush sets! ♥♥♥