#basically just a ref sheet for me for future sets that i want to make

[adorkastock]

Im an artist trying to take my own pose references for some difficult art, any advice on how to do it right?

Oh gosh I've been meaning to do a big post about this and I will at some point but for now here's the basic basics:

decent lighting - doesn't even have to be 'good' just decent. I used to use light through a slider door, directional will help show the forms. If windows aren't an option some directional lamps could help.

I do form fitting lightly colored clothing because I find it easiest to see what I need. Biking shorts, sports bras, fitted tanks, yoga pants, etc.

Contrasting solid colored backdrop - in my oldest photos this was a blue sheet hung behind me with thumbtacks. Make sure it contrasts both your skin tone and the clothing so you don't wash out anything.

Timer for your camera - most people will use cell phones which are all pretty good enough these days for ref. I know Android cameras have an option to open you hand and close it to set off the remote timer so check what your phone can do. Worst case set the timer and run back if there's not a remote setting. I did this for YEARS. :')

if you want a 'straight on' look with no foreshortening or perspective then you want the camera probably about 6ft away from you and as vertical as possible. Get fancy with boxes and books to prop it up if you need to.

The lens should be around or just above belly button height to eliminate foreshortening. If you WANT foreshortening just mess with the angle and placement of the lens. If you have a wide angle lens that can do some really cool stuff with low and high perspective.

Don't forget your face. Getting the pose is a nice start but future you will appreciate it if you can get a little into character with your expression too.

Okay I think that's all the very basics and I hope this helps! Obv if you have a friend, sibling, parent, roommate, s/o, whatever around they can help you get any very specific angle the way you need it. I hope you make great refs!!! Happy posing, happy drawing! 🕺🏻📸

[shrimsour]

Brand new rebrand WOOHOOO! Here's my new sona

Her official ref sheet ^

-Read more for more info and general FAQ at the bottom

She is powered by a lemon battery (like those potato batteries children make for science projects)

The lemon that powers her is a literal actual lemon, she is just that small that it appears big

Is still functionally a lemon

But also a mech example: tail and legs

Has a shrimp cove/aquarium in her torso/body skirt thing

She doesn't know she exists

Uses any pronouns just like me but I'm using she to avoid confusion as always grumbles

She is a glorified low poly ps1,2/nintendo gamecube,ds videogame character

Meet my silly little thang lovingly dubbed Shroomp by my friend. She is the new iteration of my persona Salty/Saltsour I've had for years atp, Salty was pretty outdated. It was very important to get Shroomp right since nonetheless Saltsour has established herself in several online spaces including this one and was honestly pretty iconic! I put a lot of effort into her successor since I wanna start being a storytime ytber in the near future and maybe even a vtuber on twitch.

She is basically a combination and a love letter to everything I love and everything I am.

She was originally supposed to be realistic and humanoid like Salty herself but I found her a bit too uncanny for a main sona. (And mainly rendering a realistic fish tank everytime I wanted to color in my persona would certainly prove to be hell, I needed something simpler, but also along the way I realized, something DIFFERENT)

Now to talk a bit more about what she actually represents that's so important to me. I packed her full of little things that make me happy.

Obviously the entire mecha genre, everything cyborg, machine, robot, give it to me. Especially if it's uncanny but also sometimes silly, a bit of both worlds.

The era of semi-early internet post 2010s. I hold Windows Vista and 7 in high regards. Things like notations on YouTube seem so far away now nobody knows what I'm talking about when I'm explaining how annoying click Xs on all of them was!

Probably the most glaring thing. The heavy addition of shrimp. I like shrimp. I like eating shrimp, I like watching shrimp and I'd love to have a shrimp cove of my own they are genuinely such adorable and helpful little critters, what's not to love?

Frutiger aero. Self explanatory. The future we deserved.

Nightcore, anime and manga culture during the internet's infancy. Her big beady eyes and poses aim to replicate the artstyle of anime girls from that era

Very old videogame character models. Early 3D model presentations from Nvidia, educational games, etc. I wish I still had my PS2 and PSP

My favorite colors and compelling thought out design instead of that ugly dress/set grey fuckass lookin thing on Saltsour

Divine machinery and uncaniness of computers and machines around us

Big ass black eyes with a shine are also meant to represent the autism creature lol since I very much behave like it often times

Skirt thing - I like wearing skirts, pleated especially

Whiskers, another reference to shrimp but I also think it makes her appear subconsciously like a cat, people love cats and so do I

Triangles. They are the best shape.

These are the first early concepts for Shroomp

She was meant to be a kreaczure™️ (creature) from the very beginning it was fate

THANK YOU for scrolling and reading so far I'm gen so impressed and thankful. I must've done smth right if I kept ur attention.

Now im gonna put stuff here that most ppl probably look for in a pinned post bc I'm devious

FAQ

Commission status: CLOSED for now

Program: Clip studio paint

Tablet: XP Pen Artist 15.6 pro

Brushes: eee will link soonish maybe remind me if you care

Art tag: #shrimposting for my original works

Old art tag: #saltsour arts for my original works before the rebrand

[niexigo]

Hey, I'm your SS and I'd love to know more about your Demon in A Daycare AU for a little something-something! Can you tell me more about Olive, the setting of the fic, Olive's dynamics with Sun and Moon, and their relationship/romance? Thank you in advance! <3

Of course! Sorry if this response is long or unorganized, I just have a lot about this story as it’s practically my baby.

As for setting: This takes place in basically the same daycare as the game, just post game. The daycare and pizzaplex is still active and working, as if nothing is wrong. I’d say this is a way bit into the future or maybe a different location, as while this Moon was also corrupted, he is currently allows to work with the kids and Sun seems to have not words about that or him being let out. The most talk we see about that is by other staff saying they’re creepy and spreading minor rumors among the staff of Moon being dangerous, but they never really go more than that. There’s no set point in time this takes place in, as while in cannon FNAF timeline, we have pretty old tech mixed with advanced animatronics, here we have basically modern tech with advanced animatronics. iPhone and stuff like that.

So Olive is a Digital demon. She has the ability to hide her horns, tail, and grayish purple skin to look more human, but usually she keeps her horns out and ties a ribbon around them to make it look like a headband. She has pointy ears that almost always have gold jewelry dangling on them, specifically a crescent moon on one, and star studs on both. She has pink and blue eyes, and are able to hide them too but doesn’t, saying their contacts. I’ve also mentioned in the fic and ref sheet that she has tattoos on one of her arms, but I almost never draw them, and arnt really important. She almost always hides her back, as she lost her wings, leaving horrid scars and constant pain.

Outside of appearance, Olive’s demon type has the ability to enter and tamper technology. She’s uses her phone the most, listening to music, speeding through to her tablet or her friend’s phones. She’s also knows a bit of code and binary, so she’s able understand music man and mess with code to prevent her and her friends from getting detected by human society. She’s hasn’t used it to infiltrate Sun and Moon though, and I don’t plan her too. She can also mimic voices, but rarely used that power. She doesn’t walk usually, as while she lost her wings, she’s can still float. (But in here words, floating isn’t flying.)

When it comes to her personally, Olive is a very sweet by shy person upon meeting her. She barely spoke when she first met Sun and Moon. She’s horribly afraid of people, particularly humans, and avoids speaking to people she doesn’t need to. Her fear comes from her trauma, as when she was first summoned on earth, she was used as a test subject. I won’t go all into it, but that’s how she lost her wings, and out came the fear of chains, darkness, silence, people. (Also a struggle with sleep that particularly bugs Sun and Moon) Outside of her fears, she’s can be very snarky and funny. On a lack of sleep, she can be short tempered, but never really expresses it to others unless pressed. She likes teasing, but never takes it on far. She does struggle with guilt, shame, and anxiety, but she rarely lets it show.

I want to make it clear that she’s not evil, though she’s convinced that she’s a but evil. Not because she’s done anything bad without good reason (lying about her identity, age, and things like that to keep from being found out), but because she has a minor hatred about her being a demon. She doesn’t want to be human nor does she hate other demons, but she wants that freedom that humans have, being able to do a few bad deeds and not be defined by them. Honestly compared to most humans, she’s pretty alright, but she still feels could be better.

Her role in the daycare is as both Sun and Moon’s assistant and handler. She’s basically the only staff that’s close to them and treats them as people (outside of her friends who also work there), as almost no other staff even enter the daycare. Outside of that, her and her friends are out hiding as normal people that live together in an apartment and work at the same place. They don’t have any plans to go back to hell, but are still laying low.

On to Sun and Moon:

My Sun and Moon are a bit different from the cannon and most fan interpretations, mainly because I started this fic before ruin or help wanted 2 came out and we got to see more facets of their character, and because of my own head cannon.

Currently Sun and Moon still share the same body. And while that forms it’s own resentment, it also forms it’s own fears. Mainly that of lonelyness. But that won’t come up now, so let’s move to their introduction and personality.

For Sun, he’s a lot nicer and docile than both cannon and fannon. He still has some bite to him, still can get that manic stress, and still has a very very mild hatred for his brother that goes both way that they’re trying to get over, but he and Moon was a lot nicer to Olive when they first met her compared to most fics. It was more Olive being distant than Sun, but some of his excitement and welcomeness was an act. He’s a lot more honest with Olive now.

As for Moon, when first meeting, he was a lot more formal. Matching Olive’s distance and showing minor interest in her actions. Compared to Sun, Moon is a lot more calm and cool. He still likes to have fun, scares, jokes, and teasing are his favorite. Currently, Olive is his best friend, as he likes having fun with her, and she enjoys his antics. Maybe he hasn’t realized it, but it’s also because Olive is one of the few people who gave him a chance after showing the worst of himself.

As for their relationship:

Currently they are all just very close friends. Sun kinda knows he likes her though is a bit in denial/wants to not ruin their current relationship, and Olive in a chapter I’m currently writing will realize that they might like her (and her them), but moon knows and is just testing the waters. (Jokingly kissing her on the cheek and teasing her a lot more). None of them have explicitly said anything, and it usually just hovers around them when their alone, as when their together, they have to much fun to care unless explicitly brought up. They ain’t in their awkward phase, and really won’t get one.

Sun and Moon know that Olive is a demon, and are accepting. Olive knows that Moon was previously corrupted, is both accepting and honestly doesn’t care. (She ‘s a demon, and know worse. She also understands that he was forced to and not tempted into it. Him being sorry proves it enough for her.)

The glamrocks rarely appear in the fic, but they got the that knowing look when it comes to Olive and them of “oh they like you”. They’re encouraging, and are just happy for them.

Condensing down some of my favorite scenes-

- Sun puffing steam when Olive pats him on the head.

-Sun complimenting Olives art as she draws with the kids.

-Moon interest in Olive’s type of music and singing, particularly when she shared The Hearse Song with him.

- Moon giving Olive a bag of Dum-Dums and the resulting teasing she gives him every time she crunches on them. He finds her fangs and forked tongue attractive.

-Moon giving Olive a celestial themed collar.

Any extra facts / things not currently in the fic:

Sun and moon have the nickname Nebula for Olive. Olive dosent have a specific nickname for them, mainly variations on their names. (Sunny, sunshine, Moonie, Moonshine, things like that)

Demons are allergic to anything that messes with their sleep schedule, but mainly caffeine and melatonin. It hurts their body, and makes them manic and feral. Sun and Moon know this, but arn’t all too concerned about it, as they know she can handle herself.

There is an eclipse in this AU, but they haven’t been introduced and won’t be for a while. First time they meet is when Olive enters a game cabinet in the arcade and meets him. That’s after a bunch of trauma returns and leaves Olive basically emotionally incapacitated and spending a prolonged time away from the daycare, concerning both Sun and Moon, and her friends.

Sun and Moon will eventually get separate bodies, but they hide it in order for it to be a surprise to Olive, that sadly goes wrong as while they’re planning to finally show her, that’s when her the woman who summoned her returns and all that trauma comes back, and she losing another body part. Specifically a horn breaks off after being hit with a baseball bat.

Olive plans to give Sun a drawing and Moon a cassette with music that reminds her of him (he has a cassette player in his chest) in a recent chapter in an attempt to test the waters for a confession.

I do plan for spicy scenes in this fic, but they arnt really important to the plot, and is just a bit more of a relationship building moment, especially sense it’s before they find a word for their relationship, but after they realize they like each other. Plus it’s also just fun for me to write. (Adding this in case it helps contextualize their physical relationship. While they are sexual, a lot of their intimacy in the fic is and will be non-sexual. Holding and cuddling, things like that.)

I have a public playlist for this fic on Spotify, named Demonic Daycare did you’d like to search it. My Spotify account is the same as my others Niexigo.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of. I hope this is at least a good baseline for what you were asking for, but if you need something specific, feel free to ask me. My mind tends to ramble when it comes to my stories because if it’s not writing for a chapter, it tends to pinball to what I find fun to talk about, even if it doesn’t makes sense to others. And thank for reaching out and asking. Have fun.

[userkyle]

a list of quotes that I feel like fit with buddie, I personaly use them as gifset inspo and sometimes for writing. Have fun and please tag me in it I would love to see anything you make with these:

(some of these have female pronouns because I wanted to directly quote it but obviously those can be changed)

I got all these quotes from Goodreads (x)

“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”

― John Joseph Powell, The Secret of Staying in Love

“your hand touching mine. this is how galaxies collide.” ― Sanober Khan

“I choose to love you in silence… For in silence I find no rejection, I choose to love you in loneliness… For in loneliness no one owns you but me, I choose to adore you from a distance… For distance will shield me from pain, I choose to kiss you in the wind… For the wind is gentler than my lips, I choose to hold you in my dreams… For in my dreams, you have no end.” ― Rumi

“That’s what it feels like when you touch me. Like millions of tiny universes being born and then dying in the space between your finger and my skin. Sometimes I forget.” ― Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You

“Your memory feels like home to me. So whenever my mind wanders, it always finds it’s way back to you.” ― Ranata Suzuki

“Not only did I love her, but I could tell the universe loved her, too. More than others. She was different. After all; I would be a fool not to notice the way the sunshine played with her hair.” ― Christopher Poindexter

“For some people, “the point of no return” begins at the very moment their souls become aware of each others’ existence.” ― C. JoyBell C.

“I'm done. I don't need anything more out of life. I have you, and that's enough.” ― Alessandra Torre

“I love you," he murmured into my hair. "You are my night and stars, the fate I would fix myself to in any life.” ― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen

“He touched my soul long before I knew what his hands felt like.” ― Nikki Rowe

“You make me thank god for every mistake I ever made, Because each one led me down the path that brought me to you.” ― Pablo Neruda, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

“To me, you were more than just a person. You were a place where I finally felt at home.” ― Denice Envall

“I spend most nights at home falling in love with the idea of you.” ― Michael Faudet 

[archived-zombbean]

Yoooo do you have a post somewhere about your Gotham sona's info?

I have an official post on my RP blog but I can put it here! (I'm debating on removing the tattoos on the ref sheet tbh, but I'm not sure yet X'D)

Name: Sona Bean Xueen

Height: 5'0

Weight: 200lbs

Blood Type: B+

Education: Associates Degree

Which Batman Verse is she from?

My own universe called "Death's Child" I take a mixture of my favorite versions of Batman villains, and heroes and mix them.

Relationships:

Victor Zsasz (Sexual and Romantic)

Edward Nygma (Sexual and Romantic)

Jonathan Crane (Romantic)

Oswald Cobblepot (Friend)

Harley Quinn (Friend)

Waylon Jones (Friend)

Jervis Tetch (Friend)

Harvey Dent (Friend)

Victor Fries (Familial)

Pamela Isley (Friend)

Jim Gordon (Very rocky friendship; He would jail her if given the chance.)

Background:

Sona grew up in normal comfort for the first ten years of her life. The daughter of a low tier mafia henchmen, who ran a red light district building by the name of the "Bucking Bronco" where anyone could get their rocks off for the night, for a price. Her father was a man by the name of Jeorge King.

She was spoiled rotten, but never seemed to quite understand that she was. Clothes, toys, treats, and the like were given to her freely, even by men and women her father worked with. She was happy.

However, one day it all changed. She became ill.

Everyone at birth is scanned in this universe. When you are, it's determined what insurances will cover you, what surgery will be allowed to you, and how expensive treatment costs would be. Sona had contracted an easily curable illness, however her scans at birth showed that she stood a 5% chance of contracting said illness. Treatment was expensive, her father's insurance wouldn't cover the cost, and he began to seek out ways to get money to cover it.

This was the first step into a dark era.

Her father began stealing money behind his boss's back, trying to hit up places that wasn't on the list, and even began selling drugs and illegal weaponry to rival gangs.

One night when Sona was asleep, she awoke to gunshots in her living room. Scared the, now thirteen year old, girl walked down the hall and into the room to see three men in black over her fathers body, a bullet through his head. She held in her scream, her voice a whimper between her fingers. But their ears were sharp, and their voices like venom.

"Hey there little girl," one purred, advancing on the young girl who could only cry, "It's okay... I'm not gonna hurt you... okay well, that's a lie... you see your father's been very, very naughty~ Which means you have just as much to pay for as he does, you know? No hard feelings~"

That night the screams that ebbed from her lips were muffled by the rough assault of her intruders. It ended with a bullet to her gut, in hopes she would suffer as a final 'fuck you' to the King line.

As she lay in a mess of blood, sweat and tears, she choked back her whimpers. It wasn't fair. None of it was fair!

She got up, shaking on her hands and knees, crawling over to her father's corpse. She shook him, desperately trying to wake him, but to no avail. She shook harder.

"Please! Please.... dad, wake up! Please.... I... I need you... I can't.... I can't breath..." she felt blood in the back of her throat, but she refused to die. She had to live. She had to!

The memory is a blur, but that day she was rescued by a young man. A police officer of all things. Peter Gordon. She was alone. She had a decent amount of wealth left behind by her father, an inheritance of sorts. she had to change her name. Leave the old behind. They'd find her if she didn't. So she changed her name to Xueen.

It took six months to repair the damage. She was told she would never be able to have children, but it didn't seem to phase her. She didn't care about starting a family. To hell with what little future she had left. What she craved was revenge.

Revenge came on her 16th birthday. After a few years of underground training, paying hired guns to teach her to use high caliber weapons, and pistols, she finally shot her shot. The men that raided her family home and murdered her father died at her hands. She shot out their knees, broke elbows with sledge hammers, gutted one and slung his entrails over another, she pulled eyes from their sockets, used adrenaline to keep them alive for 48 hours. When the screams finally faded, she sobbed. She finally killed the people that murdered her father.

She had no purpose. She was still going to die. It was just a matter of how long it would take until she died.

But a thought occurred. Those three were just following orders. They were just pawns on a much larger board. There was still a king to overthrow. Her hands clenched into fists, and a snarl laced her lips. There was more to do. She had nothing to lose. Death was already at her doorstep, might as well greet him with an open hand.

She no longer feared death.

Sona invested in stocks which only served to increase her wealth, but by this point her illness had progressed to the point of no recovery. If she'd just gotten the treatment as a child, it wouldn't have progressed this far. She was eighteen.

She hired her own group of thugs, her own gang beginning to form. But they weren't quite up to snuff. She needed someone with more experience in killing... someone who wouldn't hesitate. Someone who would be loyal, and follow her every command. She was getting sicker. She needed someone to be her weapon when she was unable to lift one herself.

A few weeks later she hears of a serial killer. Very proficient. Very lethal. He's taken out a few of her men already, so she dared to see just whom this man was.

And it was then she came face to face with the mass murderer himself. A man decorated in scars along his arms and chest, a sadistic smile trailing over his lips. His eyes had a murderous lust to them, but she could only smile back. He was perfect.

"Hello there, my name is Sona Xueen. Did you know you've been causing me a lot of trouble lately?" she hummed, resting a hand on her chin.

The man advanced slowly his curiosity piqued. Why wasn't she afraid of him? Why wasn't she running?

"Hmm..." he looked her over, a glimmer of a knife in his hand, "Aren't you cute~ what would bring a vulnerable, sweet, young woman all teh way out here~?"

She grinned even wider, "I have a proposition for you... you work for me, you get paid, and you get to kill more than just junkies and my men for a living... work for me and you'll never have to live in filth again! You'll be able to live out any perverted violent fantasy you set your sights on!"

He paused, glancing over the other, then at the knife. After a long train of thought he tossed the knife to the side.

"What'cha got in mind boss?" he chuckled, a dark tone to his voice.

"How does targeting corporate heads sound? They've been very, very naughty, and I think it's about time we send those pig headed shits packing," she smirked.

The other's eyes widened, "A challenge~? I like it!"

"What's your name?"

"Victor. Victor Zsasz,"

She was twenty one.

She now stands at the epiphany of her career. There are ten corporate heads that need to roll, and five have already crumbled. There are five left to snuff out. She grins at the thought. The thought that her revenge will not only satisfy the violent lust in her stomach, but that there will never be children that are forced to go through what she had. Parents will never have to suffer losing their children. Parents will never be forced to resort to extreme measures to ensure their safety and well being. People won't have to die over a system designed to kill them.

She coughs. Her chest hurts. A pain shoots through her entire body. She's surprised she's lived this long. Perhaps it's spite? Or anger? Perhaps it's her wanting to live just a bit longer so she can spend time with the friends she's made along the way.

She feels a hand on her shoulder as she's lifted into a strong pair of arms. It's Victor. He wears a goofy smile as he always does around her. She lets out a satisfied sigh. For now everything is okay. For now everything is normal. One day she'll die. One day Victor will make sure that he's the one to do it. He's vowed. He's promised.

She's somehow made it to thirty.

That's basically everything I have on her so far! I have a few comics planned to go into detail of her relationships with some of the rouges she's closer to. Like Victor as her lover and weapon, Riddler as her informant and occasional sex partner, Mr. Freeze as her father figure, Penguin as a very dear close friend, and her strange friendship with Jim Gordon because of his father saving her life. There's a lot of puzzle pieces I'd rather fill in with art and pictures rather than story format, but I hope you enjoy her lore!

[raespark]

That Allister cosplay is outstanding!! How did you make the mask and the gym symbol+endorsements? I'm planning on doing an Allister cosplay in the future myself

Thank you so much, and happy to answer! I took lots of pictures through the process so I’ll answer this in two parts.

“How did you make the gym symbol/ endorsements?”

So the first thing I did is take a TON of screenshots I have almost 300 screenshots of reference images of allister and the gym league trainers and the pokejobs logos and so on to get good references for all the logos I needed.Once I was done taking all the screenshots I spent hours tracing them to the best of my ability to create these images: (Not all of these were the final versions which were modified right before printing, apologies)Gym Logo - QUAY/ Gym Logo

XXA - Sponsor (This is the logo for MC Insurance, Allisters Sponsor)

291 - Number

ASTSA - Name (This is the new pokemon language for Onion, Allister’s japanese name)

The square with the diamond - This I nicknamed the “NIKE” cause its the logo for the spotswear company in game

Galar league logo - Galar League logo (this is the logo thats the red and blue pokeball with white marks, and “galar league written underneath it)

And then I put together this ref sheet to make sure the logos looked good together color wise, and some of the colors were still altered later but it all looked pretty good

And then once the logos were all set, I printed them onto heat transfer vinyl and let me explain why I did that specifically. The fabric I used was polyester, which is the kind of fabric that sports jerseys are made of. I did that because the gym’s uniforms are based on soccer jersey’s so it felt fitting!IT WAS A HUGE PAIN I DONT RECOMMEND ITbut now because of the fact that it was polyester paint wouldnt’ work on that fabric because of how stretchy it is and the fact it doesn’t absorb moisture easily. So we printed it onto heat transfer vinyl with my cheap ink printer and then I ironed them onto my clothes! I made sure they were placed correctly by first taping them to my clothes and making a note of the location before ironing it, and then once I was happy with a placement I’d carefully iron it on. This vinyl seems kinda cheap and like the ink might come off with too much water so watch out if you choose to use it. There are also printable iron on paper for other types of fabric as well and are cheaper iirc!

Same goes for the dots, thos were all cut using a CNC/ off brand cricut (just a bunch of circles all at once) and I placed them by hand using painters tape and trimmed as needed to make the designs:

Hopefully that was helpful!

“How did you make the mask?”

So this ones a little more complicated to answer because its not complicated but its not something everyone can do.

So we started on this one before the game came out, and before I’d gotten to Allisters battle in the game but we had enough reference material to figure out the general look of Allister’s mask, so we made a 3D model of it that we planned to 3D print (my bf has a 3D printer and a CNC and helped me a TON for this project) and did a test print of a tiny mask to start to make sure we were happy with the 3D model (here is the tiny mask in my tiny hand, we affectionally nicknamed it “mini mask”)

Now after we had the 3D model we had another issue of how big does it need to be? I have a round head on my own so I didn’t need to modify the shape of the mask thankfully (one time my fat head came in handy!) But we needed to figure out how big to make the mask to make sure it “fit” correctly.

So we tried cutting out a circle with paper in a few sizes until we thought we found a good size for my face (which for me was a little over 7 inches)

went and bought a styrofoam dome from the craft store in that size to make an EVA foam dome and then checked if that fit my face (later this worked fantastic as a way to transport the mask as a protective shell around it) I don’t have a picture of this EVA foam dome but all it was used for was putting it on my face and making sure it went over my chin and such. Once we had that we were ready to start printing the final mask. 

Once the 3D model was scaled for the final mask, it was too big for my bf’s printer to print all in one go so we split it into 4 pieces. Each piece took about 9 hours to print, and a few of the prints failed and had to be redone, so after a few days of printing it looked something like this:

for those who don’t know much about 3D printing all those beams are the supports that lets the printer print raised surfaces like that and have to all be removed. So after about 2 hours of pulling plastic with pliers it looked more like this:

so we left small gaps in the edges of the mask so that we could put metal pins between each piece to help hold it together so we cut our metal pins and assembled the mask and it was starting to come together!

So from here we melted some plasitc onto the seams (plastic welding!) with a wood burner and - wow that looks gross

but trust me its better than gaps in the mask. so after a bit of sanding here we entered the rounds of priming it with spraypaint primer and sanding it for like an hour and doing that again, occasionally using bondo putty to try and even out those seams and those rounds tended to look like allister just murdered a village:

but you can see compared to the previous image that the mask is a lot smoother! This was the final round of sanding and you can tell that most of the layer lines from the printer have been sanded down! You can almost not see the seams anymore! (though now they’re also very red but they’re very smooth in comparison to the beginning trust me…I sat there sanding for many hours for this)

But after this all that needed to be done with a final priming in grey, and then painted it gray!

While the paint was drying, we prepared some masking in the design of allisters mask which if you don’t know what the full mask looks like I wanna reference this from the collectors guidebook (which I just now got my hands on today but saw these on twitter)

So we cut out a sticker sheet in that design and placed it down with some painters tape to keep that part of the mask gray and then it was painted white, and that was the painting done!

For the black in the eyes, I got a scrap of black fabric for cheap at joann’s that I picked up and pulled and it was a very soft polyester/spandex material that you’d use for pantyhose so i’m sure you could also cut up some of those for a similar effect. But when stretched you can see out of them. 

So we made small rings the same shape as the inside of the mask behind the eyes, glued the fabric using super glue to that ring (and the mouth as well) and viola:

and then the final step was to get that mask on my face, and basically we had some rings on the left and right sides of the inside of the mask that I attatched some elastic too, and then needed to glue a third strap over the top of my head. and sewed it all in place and put some craft foam along the forehead and chin inside the mask for some cushioning and it was done! 

I really hope that was helpful and I tried to make sure I took lots of photos along the way so I hope they were helpful. If you have other questions feel free to ask! Sorry for the novel but just wanted to be as detailed as I could be!

Thank you for your nice words and best of luck!! Allister is a detailed boy but he’s very fun!

[jessiewre]

Day 31

Tues 4th Feb

Two spanish omelettes were consumed in record time as we aimed for our agreed meeting time of 8:45am at Soft Power.

Leaving our camp at 8:42 was a bad start.

Thankfully we found a boda straight away and we were only 4 minutes late and Agre was chilled, getting himself a rollex for breakfast. He took us into the office for a brief intro to other staff, tried (unsuccessfully) to locate a pen for us to sign the paperwork, and then we walked round to the local pre-school we would spend the morning. The school had 3-6 year olds and there were normally about 90 a day but Agre explained that the holidays had just finished and many kids were still in ‘holiday mode’ so just hadn't turned up. Wouldn’t mind taking on that approach whenever I got back from a holiday, ‘Sorry boss, I’m still in holiday mode so I’ll see you when I’m ready yeah’.

As it was many of the children's first day at school, there were some kids who looked rather apprehensive and teary. Same as in the UK then! However, I have to say that the parents looked extremely chilled out and relaxed about the whole thing - maybe slightly different on that side of things.

There was one kid called Caesar who looked like the world was ending. 

And as soon as one would cry, another one would remember that they were sad too and start crying. The kids had to remove shoes before going inside and Caesar stood balling his eyes out while two of us tried to get his shoes off. It was comedic and heart-wrenching at the same time, and Agre told us that in between his tears, Caesar was saying in the local llanguage 'I WANA GO TO SCHOOL! I WANA GO TO SCHOOL!'. Which made no sense at all.

All the kids were told to wash their hands using an ingenious contraption of an old container tied up with a hole in, then tied to a stick on the floor to create a sort of pedal to tip the water out, and all the toilets were hole in the ground cubicles. Proper toilets with seats are a unnecessary luxury I guess.

The lessons were quite casual as it was still only the 2nd day of term and first up, the teacher got a box of toys and emptied them onto the floor for some play. Most of the toys were basic plastic Happy Meal rejects as far as I could see, with the odd doll in there. Lots of the toys were broken so didn't even work properly. But the 45 kids all took something and played, no arguments about who had what or what was available. I sweat there was not a whiff of a spoilt child here.

Lots of the kids played with their friends and some of them were keen to play with us so we got involved while trying to involve and distract some of the sad kids. Phil had Caesar looking extremely glum sat next to him, crying on and off throughout as he forgot he was sad and then remembered again. 

After this was playtime outside and the kids went WILD. There was a slide that the kids FLEW down at high speed and sometimes they would land so awkwardly in the dry mud that I was sure they'd cry - but no. Honestly they are so much tougher than muzungu kids! From what we have seen, they seem to be brought up with a lot more freedom with no mollycoddling meaning they seem stronger and more independent. They are way more physically confident and tough - naturally this means it takes more for them to complain. I'm not saying it's definitely better, but its interesting as the kids are so different. I’m generalising massively and only talking about our own experiences, but we have not seen one African child have a tantrum since we got to Africa, and there are children EVERYWHERE you look. The only children we've seen having a tantrum have been muzungu and it stuck out like a sore thumb. 

I am only sharing what I am observing and I am not saying that I won't also have a tantruming muzungu child. Obviously I will. It's going to be a little twat I'm sure. But I like to think that these experiences will serve as a constant reminder to us that spoiling children is actually spoiling children, and that we must let children fall over in the mud without immediately scooping them up & encouraging tears. Let them see if it even hurts before we tell them it should. Its not about saying you need to like in a shed in poverty to have nice children, but spoiling children does them absolutely no favours at all. And also, kids want the simple things and can make fun out of ANYTHING if given the chance. If they are used to getting whatever they want whenever they want, they will probably be twats when they grow up, and who wants a twat kid? I certainly don’t. Mum & Dad if you are reading this and wondering how you ended up with 3 twat kids then I really don’t know what to say apart from I’m sorry 😂😂😂.

We went down the slide with some of the younger kids a few times and Phil went to the swings. Even Caesar had a go, though it was hard to tell if he was enjoying himself or not. 

In the final class, the teacher asked the children if anyone wanted to start off a song for the visitors. Quite a few kids put their hand up, then the teacher would choose one who would stand up shyly and look at us, then begin to sing. The class would join in and it was sooooo cute. Then everyone sang songs with the teacher about numbers. Everytime someone did something good, they would stand up and put their hands on their hips while dancing side to side and everyone would sing together ‘Lovely, lovely and nice!’. Ok its probably hard to imagine it, but hopefully we got a video of it somewhere and I’ll share it! It was too cute.

One child found the whole thing all too overwhelming and I saw that she was completely falling asleep while sat up cross legged. I told one of the teachers who grabbed her a little mat and let her sleep at the back of the room. First day at school is tough eh.

Some of the children were so keen to sit with us and a little clingy that I worried about us leaving at the end and them feeling abandoned the next day. But I needn’t have worried as most of them walked straight off when the day finished at 12:30, not even a glance behind them. One kid was putting his shoes on all fine, but the moment he spotted his sister at the gate he remembered he was sad and began to cry and try to put his shoes on super fast, which did not work.

It was only 3 hours and we didn’t really do much to help compared to what other volunteers would have achieved with the charity, but we donated $30 each and will definitely donate more in the future. I could really see where the money was going and how much had been achieved already. If anyone has any doubts about giving money to charity, then give to this one as I can vouch for it!

We got a boda back to the hotel as the rain was due any minute and agreed to meet at 3pm to head to another site for another few hours of volunteering.

We were meant to pack up our things ready for check out but luckily the hotel said we could eat before packing up our room - so we went to Black Lantern for tomato soup with garlic bun, and cheese tomato toasties. The rain went crazy and we called Agre who confirmed that it would be too tricky to get to the volunteering ‪at 3pm‬. But as our money was super low (mysteriously), Phil had to go and get our dollars and bumped into Jimi on the way. They returned to BL and Phil was like Wait till you hear this Jess. 

Jimi then told me what had happened to him the night before when he'd left us. 

He was walking home and was not far when he heard a strange noise. He moved closer to the noise and it sounded like crying. He then found a BABY less than a year old in a sheet, abandoned on the side of the road near a bush. He took it to a police station and they took it in. The next morning, he heard about a lady in the village who was shouting that her baby was missing and was desperately searching. He went to find her and they went to the police station and then the hospital together and she was reunited with her baby girl, Alice. Turns out there was a robbery in her home and they took lots of stuff and the baby too but then just left it on the roadside. 

Jimi was a little in shock you could tell. Such a crazy story. 

We went back to the our camp to finally check out of our room ‪at 4pm‬ oops and Phil was straight into the pool, where a frog soon joined him for a swim.

We got bodas into town with Jimi and I told him we wanted to go a sports shop. We’d learnt from him that he had started a youth coaching club himself called Castillo. Castillo was partly set up also by Jimi’s late brother Abel who tragically passed away from cancer a few years ago and the aim was to help vulnerable children and give them more purpose, strength and confidence.

So we offered to buy some items to help out.

We definitely got overcharged cos we is muzungus init,  but we bought this lot for about £40:

- Two goalkeeper gloves

- A full set of team socks 

- 4 ref whistles 

- Set of ref cards

- 10 training cones 

Jimi was super grateful and we celebrated with a trip to Java Cafe - Jimi needed one final burger from us of course. I managed to speak to Emily on the phone and we accidentally ordered a chicken curry (was delicious dammit) plus had an apple, cashew, carrot salad...with masala fries.

Our bodas cut across the highway onto the central reservation then to the correct side of the road (!) and we got to the bus station on time, hoping that it was not super delayed travelling from Kampala. Ended up being 45 mins delayed but in that time we were able to achieve many things:

- Phil enjoyed more beers with Jimi and at one point buggered off to a bar while I sat with all the bags wondering where they were

- Jimi fixed my sexy walking boot with some superglue

- Jimi fixed his own flip flop with superglue

- Jimi fixed Phil’s trainer with superglue

- Jimi recorded a video message for Buj & Jenni

- We pee’ed before the bus in some MANKY toilets (essential)

- We bought water before the bus (ESSENTIAL ALSO)

Phil - the man, the athlete, the legend - had only gone and booked us VIP seats on the bus that were approximately DOUBLE the size of the other seats what an absolute win, so we had no seats in front of us & leg stretching was 100% available. Phil tried to pie me off with the aisle seat but I managed to swerve it and nab the window seat obvs and the journey was pretty comfortable. At least for me.

We were at the Kenyan border by midnight and our East Africa visa made it easy to enter.

Annoying that they charge you to use the loo though, and Phil argued with them about it saying he had no cash yet and just went and pee’d without paying. He then walked straight up to the guy selling snacks to see what was available AWKWARD. When the man offered us some Shitcake I decided I wasn’t hungry. On closer inspection, I believe he was referring to the shortcake.

[josephborrello]

Moment of Inertia, Issue #7 | A Time of Matter

When we think of programming, we usually think of software and computers, but there's a whole field of programming out there that uses nothing but inert materials and geometry.

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A Time of Matter

We take matter for granted. So much of our existence, especially our technological existence, can be credited to what are essentially little quirks in chemistry and physics impacting the properties and behaviors of materials most of us pay no mind to, even though we interact with them every day of our lives. It's pretty much a guarantee that if water, in its solid phase of matter, didn't have a molecular structure that was more spaced apart than its liquid form (i.e., ice floats in water), life on Earth would have never taken off. If concrete wasn't so good at withstanding compressive loads, we probably wouldn't have skyscrapers (although maybe we would, except they'd be made of wood, which has it's own unique and desirable mechanical properties). These properties may not seem like programming to you, but I would argue that's exactly what's going on in all of these scenarios. A program, or function, takes in some input, performs some kind of operation on it, and then gives back a result, frequently modified in some way. In the case of all the above examples, the inputs aren't a series of electrical signals (as they are in computer programming) but various mechanical inputs. Just as different computer programs are designed to complete different tasks and work with different data types, different forms of matter are suited to different tasks. The inert nature of glass makes it great for storing chemical compounds, but it's also a crappy thermal insulator (at least on its own). Furthermore, it doesn't make for the best of building materials, since it's so brittle (gorilla glass aside). All of these examples just assume you have a block of the material in question sitting on your desk. Many more interesting things start happening when you beging to modify these materials with specific geometric patterns and/or additional materials/chemicals/etc. (ref. below ⬇⬇⬇)

A door handle made from a mechanical metamaterial. There are no "moving parts", per se, but the entire lattice structure is designed to selectively bend in specific regions, thereby executing a door handle "program". In fact, it's my belief that you can break down all of materials science into the fundamental engineering bins of hardware, firmware, and software. Below, I break these concepts down and compare them to the way we typically think of each concept with respect to a device like a computer.

Hardware

For the laptop I'm writing this article on, the hardware is the physical components that comprise all of the laptop's systems: the display, the motherboard, the fans, the disk drive (yes, my home laptop is so old it still has a disk drive). It's important to note: the hardware isn't the systems themselves but the physical bits and pieces that go into them. So for the display, the hardware includes my laptop's LCD screen, the display board (and all the integrated circuits and circuit board traces that connect them), as well as the cables connecting those pieces together. Each of these hardware components can do only a handful of things (carry current, compute a particular set of inputs, deliver a voltage differential to an array of thin film transistors), but together they produce a highly complex system. For matter, I would consider the hardware to be the intrinsic properties of the material. Things like density, elastic modulus, and conductivity (both electrical and thermal). These are properties that are set by the atomic and molecular nature of the materials. While there are lots of ways these material behaviors can be tweaked, those "tweaked" behaviors are still derived from the intrinsic material "hardware". An example: you can make a sheet of wood more flexible by cutting a living hinge pattern into it, but you can't make it sink in water, no matter what you do. The way I think of it, "hardware" in a materials sense (since, technically, it's always hardware) is the set of material properties that limit what you can get any given material to do through physical modifications (the "firmware" and "software" components I'm about to discuss).

Firmware

Going back to our laptop example, the firmware is the code that is hard written to the read-only memory. This is the code, which runs on the hardware, that enables the most basic of computer operations to happen. It's firmware that enables the disk drives, web cams, and network cards to properly operate. While firmware can be modified, the vast majority of us are neither doing that, nor even thinking about the firmware executing when we perform activities like connecting to a wifi network. In the case of materials, I can think of no better example than the living hinge. A mainstay among laser cutting designs, living hinges can make sheets of wood an plastic dramatically more flexible and bendable than they would otherwise be. To do this, the material is only physically changed in a small way: think parallel cuts are added, perpendicular to the axis the sheet is supposed to bend along. I would also classify the flexures featured in the latest Magnitude and Direction as a type of material firmware. By creating dramatic variations in cross section, otherwise rigid materials can become flexible and serve as hinge mechanisms that move but are made of only one part (in contrast to typical door hinges, which have upwards of 3 or 4 different components, at least). A flexure made from laser cut wood designed to linearly translate a region in only one direction.

In any of these cases, though, it's important to note that the additional features conferred to the material through modifying its geometry are also restricted by that geometry. A living hinge can improve the bendability of something, but it can only improve the bendability. The same goes for firmware on my laptop: the code that allows my disk drive to operate can't be ported over to operate my network router. Despite the limitations of geometric patterning (which is very "firmware" in nature), being able to dramatically change an object's behavior through nothing more than a few well-placed cuts is very powerful and opens up an entirely new design vocabulary. For me, especially, this new way of thinking about design is important. Being able to give conventional materials unconventional mechanical behaviors is a large focus of my PhD research. In my case the goal is to take synthetic materials that are frequently used in surgery today (e.g., PTFE, silicone, polypropylene) and geometrically modify them to behave more like the human tissues they're used to repair. On first pass, you might think that it would be desireable to repair bodily tissues with the strongest materials possible, but that doesn't necessarily alleviate the problem so much as it transfers it somewhere else - the stress shielding of bone implants is a very common example. Stress shielding: Titanium is much harder than bone. When a titanium hip prosthesis is implanted, it can remove load away from the femur, which actually needs a certain amount of pressure to heal and function properly.

Furthermore, in the case of many tissues in the body, the fibers and proteins that make up their structure are not arranged in a homogeneous manner - that is, the tissues respond to force or pressure differently in one direction than it does another. The promise of mechanical metamaterials, and the "firmware" layer of materials science is that we can, without creating new compounds from scratch (i.e., the molecular/formulation level) develop systems that can better replicate the natural behaviors of human tissues, among other mechanically heterogeneous compounds we encounter in everyday life. If you're still a little confused by what I'm describing as a material's "firmware" then check out this video from Disney Research, which gives a great example of using a single material to produce a model with mechanically distinct regions.

Software

Continuing our computer analogy, software is the part of the computer you most often interact with. Like firmware, it is a collection of code, but unlike firmware it is much more "generalist" in nature. Firmware controls hardware and specified how that hardware performs just one set of activities. Software, on the other hand, while still leveraging much of the same hardware, defines more abstract operations that we subsequently add our intentions to in order to get the outcomes we want. Our browsers, word processors, and photo editors are all software. I'm not going to lie, in the materials world, we're only just getting to this level of development. The vast majority of our efforts so far have been dedicated to the discovery of entirely new materials ("hardware") and unique methods of manufacturing said materials into structures that confer unexpected properties ("firmware"). Fields of study like self-assembly and metamaterial origami are some of the best examples I can think of where materials are designed in such a way as to be able to perform several different tasks depending on the stimuli provided. Even the most advanced metamaterials, however, can only handle a few distinct operations at best, currently, far less "abstraction" than many of our most simple computer software.

I do believe we are moving towards a time, though, where we will be able to control matter to such a degree that whether a given piece of furniture in our house is a table or a bed depends only on the kind of light we shine on it, or the voltage we pass through it. And, no, any of the slick, modern, space-saving furniture that's out there today doesn't count, because it achieves these tasks through complex mechanical systems comprised out of many discrete parts. I envision a future where mechanical complexity is not tied to a parts count, but rather inversely related to it. Where the inherent patterning of a material - from the micro to the meso - determines a wide range of functionalities, just as a complex code base determines the functionality of the browser you're using to read this. Will it take a while for us to get there? No doubt. But I do think it is something we will achieve. This is a time of matter, and it'll only be a matter of time.