#creating a nice graph

[petit-papillion]

Giving credit to original posters, creators, artists, photographers, and sources matters.

It matters to the person who put in the time and effort to create the content. Whether it's finding that photo and editing it to make it stand out. Or downloading that video, editing it, coloring it, turning it into a gif, adding subtitles, etc. Regardless of what you do (job/student), I'm sure you too would not like it if someone else takes credit for your work.

It matters to people who want to know context. Was it said by a fan, your favourite's bestie, a reputable journalist? Published by a tabloid or the New York Times? From last week or last year? Is it an original, or did someone get photoshopped in for a meme?

It matters to people who may want to explore more content of that particular publication, so they will continue to publish top-notch articles. Or give kudos to a budding artist for their outstanding art work, potentially encouraging them to create more. Or compliment that photographer on capturing their fave in just the right light.

It matters, because even though it may take you an extra minute or so to add on that name or link, it is the right thing to do.

[sleepy-bebby]

There’s a scientific journal called “Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List”.

In 2005, computer scientists David Mazières and Eddie Kohler created this highly profane ten-page paper as a joke, to send in replying to unwanted conference invitations. It literally just contains that seven-word phrase over and over, along with a nice flow chart and scatter-plot graph.

An Australian computer scientist named Peter Vamplew sent it to the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology in response to spam from the journal. Apparently, he thought the editors might simply open and read it.

Instead, they automatically accepted the paper — with an anonymous reviewer rating it as “excellent” — and requested a fee of $150. While this incident is pretty hilarious, it’s a sign of a bigger problem in science publishing. This journal is one of many online-only, for-profit operations that take advantage of inexperienced researchers under pressure to publish their work in any outlet that seems superficially legitimate.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Black Character Design Poll: Event Rules

I am an avid lover of graphs. I like numbers, I like trends and the absence thereof. I like the mindsets that make people make decisions, I like recognizing the biases, both conscious and unconscious, in sampled populations. I like how you'll always gain some sort of answer, even if it's not the one you expected (it's the scientist in me)! Best of all, I like making people question themselves! So... Why not a poll?

This is going to be a TWO-PART event. The first portion is going to ask the First Question, starting Sunday April 13th and I will stop taking submissions Saturday April 19th. The second portion is going to ask the Second Question, starting Sunday April 20th, and I will stop taking submissions Saturday April 26th.

See below the cut to find out all the details!

The goal is:

To see how different groups feel about the same character design, specifically Black audiences

To make participants question how and why their own beliefs may be affected

When I tell you "consider your Black audience when you create Black characters", that's not me pointing you to an amorphous concept- I'm talking about real people who are looking at a work! And very often, we find out that a creator's intent, versus a particular audience's perception, are not on the same page. That's not always a bad thing, nor something we can always control. But sometimes, it can reveal some lack of understanding, or biases we aren't aware of. So let's test that out! Let's have that conversation!

Submissions:

You will be submitting characters! There are three things requested in an ASK format:

A good, clear picture of Black Character from the Source Material

Black Character's Name

Title of Black Character's Source Material

DASSIT! No, I don't want leading arguments or why you love them in the ask. I will delete it. Let people make their own conclusions!

Responses:

Your options will be "Peak", "Mid", and "Nah".

Answer honestly and instinctively! If you thought it was great, choose that! If you thought it was ass, choose that! Don't let a need to "look nonproblematic" or "to be nice" affect your answer. Just take the time to consider why your opinion may be different from others. This is an opportunity to consider something new!

That being said! I'm not arguing or doing discourse with y'all in the comments or tags- I'd have to keep up with far too many conversations. Think before you speak! That thought that you think might be racist- you do not have to say it!

I will be organizing responses into three groups of viewers: "White", "Nonblack POC", and "Black". One, so that the Black voters have a little more chance to be seen (and we're not like, 97-3 every time 😅) and two, because sometimes I think people of color assume they are immune to antiblackness. I want everybody to think!

Do not send me an ask or message telling me why you're uncomfortable and why you think I shouldn't ask these questions. It's meant to bring people out of their comfort zone. Considering that you may have a different perspective on the presentation of Blackness than an actual Black person is not a bad thing, and no, it's not causing racism to have a conversation about why that may be an issue. Just don't participate.

I will add the questions and rubric in a reblog- stay tuned!

[imaginesleeping]

I return back with a NEW request. This time i am NOT feeling like a freakaleak so consider sevikaxreader and the reader is struggling at uni and sevika uses a reward system (kisses) to help her study(i just want this to be fluff i swearrr) thank you, love you <3

The Kissing System

authors note: anon I love your brain. I’m sure this would’ve been better closer to when you requested lol - however, I’ve had to do a lot of math this semester, so please enjoy reader crashing out over my personal problems

also don’t mind any mistakes it’s 1am and I’m writing this instead of sleeping 🙏

-

Sevika is making dinner while you’re sitting at the small dining table, a confused look painting your face for what has felt like hours as you look back and forth between your papers and computer screen. Sevika chuckles quietly from her spot at the stove at the sight before turning the heat to low under the pot and making her way over to you.

“What’s gotcha lookin’ all constipated over here?”

You look up at her and loudly sigh

“Because I don’t remember what a fucking parabola is and I have a whole sheet to fill out and all of the lessons I’m looking back on are boring as fuck and I can’t focus and I-“

She cuts you off with a kiss

“fucking hate math.” You finish quietly against her lips, making both of you smile.

“How can I help, baby?” Sev says while looking down at your papers with you as she plants a kiss in your hair.

“Go back in time to whenever some fucker created graphs and kill ‘em.”

Sevika contemplates for a few seconds before humming.

“What if, every time you get a problem right I’ll give you a kiss?” She says with a raised eyebrow.

You copy her expression, a smile slowly creeping up on your face. You narrow your eyes at her, slightly upset that she hasn’t agreed to the whole time travel thing, but you’ll let it go for now.

“Tempting…I’ll do it.”

-

Suddenly, you got this wave of motivation to understand and figure these answers out. As Sev makes her way back to the kitchen to continue cooking, you get to work. Yes, you had about 3 pages left to fill out, but now there was an actual reason to be doing this shit.

When you check the first problem you did and it’s right, you let out a “thank fuck” before leaning back in your chair and calling over to Sevika.

“Get over here, babe. I didn’t do this shit for nothin”

She laughs before jogging over to you and kissing you. You hold her face in your hand as you try to keep her there, but she pulls away after a small peck.

“Don’t get too ahead of yourself, doll” She says before walking away, leaving the smile you just had to drop. You huff and give her back a grumpy look before going back to the paper.

She continued her short, soft kisses for the next two pages, and it was driving you insane. It probably helped as you were practically growing desperate for more every time her lips left yours, making you work quicker.

You finish your last equation, which of course was the hardest and took the most time, and slammed your laptop shut before frantically making your way into your shared kitchen to plant a big one on Sevika. Her eyes widened at the speed at which you came to her, but she quickly closed them and matched your pace. After a few moments you pulled away with a smile and a breath of relief.

“I take it my reward system helped?”

You laughed as you nodded l and held her. You felt your body finally relax for the first time tonight. Looking over, you saw the prepared food sitting on the counter, already served and ready in two bowls for you and Sev to eat.

“The smell of the food was pretty nice too. Let’s eat.”

-

hope you enjoyedddd ❤️

[regular-gnome]

Absolutely /adore/ your art and overall take on the Demon Realm world + it's history and the Archivists. Especially coming from someone who adores speculative biology and trying to find logic/science in magic (I'm not sure how to word it so it makes sense - basically almost everything you are doing here)

Curious if you have any ideas on how the titans managed to inhabit the planet, because Papa Titan's hand managed to reach the atmosphere just from lying down. There's no way that planet was big enough for a bunch of titans to walk around comfortably.

Idk much about planetary stuff, but is there some way the planet may have changed? Maybe the Archivists did something?

Sorry this ask got kinda long, hope you have a lovely day doing little gnome things :}

glad you like them!:D

So, one of the gnome things is overanalyzing things and avoiding doing math, but here we are, you actually made me read my biophysics notes from 4 years ago. There are a few things to really focus on and think about, but I gotta preface this by saying I am very much not an expert on speculative biology xD I just have the internet and some books I am basing my theories on

Titans:

First the titans themselves. A while ago, I made an approximation of how large the Boiling Isles titan is and got that it would be around 27 km in height post-mortem. Buuut if the titan was this height during its life is another question because it would run into some biophysics issues

Issues like the atmospheric pressure. At ground level, it is 101.3 kPa, but at 27 km, it falls is 1.6 hPa (titan bless wolframalpha for counting this as exp funtions are the death of me). That is 63 times higher pressure on their legs than on their head! Blood circulation would be shot to the moon. The blood is liquid that in general transports gasses so travelling fron upper body parts to lower ones where there is diffrent dissoving of oxygen would end up in gas bubbles, which are NOT GREAT. Additionally, their ability to stand up or lie down quickly would be pretty much non-existant as that would be super fast change of pressure and more bubbles. But okay, lets say they are like some kind of abyss fishes and keep constant internal pressure.. that would still mean their hearts would need to be either massive or they would have multiple pumping mechanisms to handle their size (maybe like the single-chamber hearts in fish??) And the thing is we saw their heart, it was big but not THAT big so unless it was just one of many, maybe the last beating heart there might be diffrent explanation. And Im not gonna even go into how temperature changes every 100m around 0,6C, lets say their fur makes them warm and cozy and blue blood avoids freezing problems like some arctic critters

bringing those graphs up again cause they show the altitude change nicely

All of this to say the titans during life were probably smaller. They would still have been massive, but maybe not three times the size of mt Everest massive. So next thing to consider is their magic. Their powers are closely tied to life, healing and creation and so, the demons on the Boiling Isles are said to have originated from it and their evolution waas likely sped up a lot thanks to it. Next we saw size-changing spells affecting King in the carnival episode, so it's not a stretch to believe that all titans could be affected by this kind of spells, with the strength depending on the particular titan's magic. So anyway as the titan was activly dying, its magic could have desperately attempted to save it by rapidly generating more cells to repair its failing systems, ending up in expansion of all tissues and their overall size. (Maybe thats why the vains were so big and empty in the mines, you cant create more energy so maybe the magic going with simmilar concept expanded everything around but not made more of blood?) However, despite these efforts, the magic would ultimately fail to save them. When it reached a critical point, maybe after using up most of its magical energy, the process would stop or change focus. There are some fun grusome possiblities on how that might have went down but this is already pretty long

So in short, I think the titans during life were big but only got island sized after death, otherwise theyd have some wild biological mechanisms battling physics and them becomming bigger would explain where did most of the blood go after death. Not to mention how much food they would need

Planet:

Next the size of the planet. While we don't have many clues to determine whether it's bigger or smaller than Earth, one clue is Luz's lack of reaction to changing gravity after passing through the door. If the planet were larger (or denser I know), she would feel change in g-force, so like the feeling of being on a lift going up in case of bigger planet or down in case of smaller. If the diffrence was significant she would develop issues with circulatory system and fatigue. But thats not the case and I do not have the energy to calculate min change xD

So let's say the planet is Earth-sized. This is still a lot. We don't know if there are any continents on the planet or their sizes, but even if there were same like earth, the scale is immense. If the Boiling Isles were the size of New York (based on titan's height) or even larger, say the size of Hawaii, compared to the world map, that's tiny. If Earh is 510 100 000 km², while NYC covers 1213,3 km² to cover the same area, we'd need 420423 titans lied up neatly next to each other. And thats if they are isles sized their whole life. There can also be landmasses where they can lay on, oceans deep enough to cover bodies, they can be stacked.... I don't think the planet necessarily needs to be much larger to accommodate creatures of this size

TOH as a show:

One thing to remember while analyzing shots from the show is that we we will run into contradictions because it's a show, one that is not focused on speculative biology. While most elements are well-constructed, some details may show inconsistencies. For example, determining the direction of north on a titan becomes challenging when one shot shows the sun setting in one direction and later another. Finding the titan's height poses difficulties when one shot shows their arm reaching the atmosphere while another barely shows them reaching it while standing. But its not due to carelessness, its more about serving purpose of the shot, conveying the atmosphere. They both show the titans are giant, the view from above is beautiful and if they were more focused on keeping them some arbitrery size it might have taken away from it

And Im pretty sure that I'm wrong around a lot of aspects here, how it wasnt supposed to be interpreted like that or its more convoluted than I realize. Thats just my take on this. World we live in can seem small as we can only see a tiny part of it but Earth is so amazingly vast. It's larger than we can comprehend, and yet, it's nothing compared to the vastness of the universe. So, yeah, some of my thoughts on titans and the demon realms planet xD peace

[blizzard-nightlamps]

I've gotten a few people asking about how I did the bubbly slop slime material for the blender slime fox so heres a quick overview. the bubbles are the interesting part so ill go over those first

the bubbles are 100% geometry nodes. i use this big box just to control the bounds of where bubbles show up. i first spawn in a bunch of points randomly inside the box, and i use a 3d noise texture to set their radii.

i also have this simulation zone that just increases a vector by (0,0,0.1) every frame. i modulo (that vector + every point's position) with the bounds of the bubble area and i get a nice scrolling effect. (i also move the NOISE texture DOWNWARDS with the same vector and that causes the radii of the points to fluxuate.

in a separate geometry node for the mesh, i have it first check every point whether that point is inside the mesh or not, and delete it if it's not. you can do that by raycasting in some direction, getting the normal of the face you hit, and dotting that normal with the direction you raycasted in. if the result is positive then the point is inside the mesh!

i do a few extra checks besides that - i use a geometry proximity node to get rid of points too close to the surface of the mesh. finally for each of the remaining points i instance an inverted sphere with a radius given by the point's radius. originally I was using a boolean mesh node but i realized just creating a bunch of inverted spheres was way faster and gave the same result. heres the mesh without any kind of refraction so you can see the bubbles more clearly

okay now for the actual slime material. i just had a texture for the eye, and used an alpha(transparency) texture as well as a regular albedo(color) texture so i could edit the color of the goop in blender. one silly issue that this setup actually allowed me to fix was this.(refraction is off here but you get the idea):

the other eye is visible through the head! whadda hell! well, i had a node to check if the incoming ray was a camera ray (i.e. it's not light bouncing through the mesh) and by changing the alpha of the eye texture based on that i could make the eyes only visible on the outside of the mesh (as they should be. imo at least.

the refracting light effect is due to the IOR being cranked up to 1.3 and also due to the noise texture normal map i applied, which makes the light bounces look WAY more interesting. it also causes the bubbles to appear to wobble as they pass through the mesh even though they're moving straight upward - kinda neat i think.

anyways heres the actual material graph i used if you wanna look at the specifics. i dont know why i connected the camera ray multiply bit to the transmission i think it looks kinda darker and worse that way but it's whatever. hope this was somewhat enlightening

[yumeka-sxf]

Regarding scans and watermarks

Yesterday, a SxF clear file scan made by my friend @xxscarletxrosexx (who had allowed me to share the scan on my blog here) was reposted on Twitter with her watermark clearly removed. She wrote an insightful post about how, despite what many people think, it does take a good amount of work to obtain and scan rare collectibles like this. As someone who makes a lot of scans with watermarks, I want to offer my thoughts on the topic.

For those who have followed me since my blog started, you may have noticed that my watermarks have "evolved" over time. This was in response to, of course, my scans getting reposted without credit (my old watermarks were easy to crop/edit out). I know some people take issue with putting watermarks on official art because we technically didn't "create" it. But that doesn't mean time and effort wasn't put into making the scan. To me, it's similar to people who take photos of exclusive events or people who make gifs...while they didn't create the subjects of these things, they still created the presentation of it. For people who take and share exclusive photos, they spent time, effort, and money not just on going to that location and taking the photos, but posting them in a presentable way online for others to enjoy. For people who make gifs, it again takes a lot of time and effort to create, edit, and present the gifs in an attractive way on social media. In both these cases, while these people didn't draw, animate, design, etc, the subject of their photos or gifs, there was still self-imposed work and creative effort behind it, which I think deserves some recognition. It's the same with making scans...I didn't personally draw the images I scan (and I make this clear by including "scanned by..." in my watermarks) but I still made the presentation of it - the scan - which does take time and effort; I bought a Canon TS6300 scanner a while back particularly for this purpose, I often have to finagle with the books I scan to make sure they're properly flattened so the scans aren't blurry or crooked (have to redo them sometimes when this happens), and if little pieces of lint or other blemishes get in the scanner, I either have to scan them again or use photo editing software to fix them. And while I paid for all the books, posters, etc, I scan with my own money, sometimes just obtaining certain rare collectibles not only takes money, but a lot of dedication to obtain! The Twiyor chara fine graph I recently posted about is a perfect example of how much work can go into acquiring a rare item...and I have no obligation to scan the merch I get. I could just enjoy them on my own and only share quick, low-quality photos from my phone. But I like making scans because I know other people enjoy them 🙂 I also know that many people don't have the means or funds to get this kind of merch, so it's nice to let them have enjoyment from it second-hand through my scans! Sometimes I buy merch only or mostly for the purpose of making scans because I know that artwork isn't currently available in an official artbook or anywhere else.

Since I make so many scans, I just accept the fact that they will get reposted without any mention of me or my blog...which I don't mind that much since that's what the watermarks are for - they're to show people who see the scan where it came from, and if they choose to go to that site, they'll be able to find even more scans to enjoy! But if someone actually removes a watermark, it's like they so adamantly believe that the person who made the scan doesn't deserve any recognition for their time, effort, money, etc, put into it that they're going to spend their own time to remove any trace of that person from the scan...I mean, I can't say it's the most heinous act in the world, but it's disrespectful and just plain not nice. I try not to let it bother me, but it is hurtful to see someone else get recognition for something you put work into. But I just keep things in perspective and tell myself that at least I'm not an artist whose creations are getting posted all over the place without credit (I always cringe at all the uncredited fan art I see on Facebook groups and YouTube music compilations. It's so out of control 😔)

Anyway, I hope I've properly illustrated here that it does take a good amount of time and effort to make scans. I don't think I deserve as much recognition for it as an artist who actually draws the images they post, but I still think this kind of content sharing deserves some credit, even if it's just leaving a watermark intact.

[starriknight]

Ways I’ve been creative and made art as someone who doesn’t know how to draw!

1.) decorate things with stickers! I find this really fun and a way to be creative and reflect more of my personality onto my surroundings

2.) wrapped my headphones! These things aren’t working too well these days so this acts as another way to express myself and to reinforce things to be more sustainable and try not to buy more stuff and create more waste

3.) created my own pins for bands I love! It’s a really fun craft for me to do and it’s a nice way to show my love for music without having to spend so much money on merch. It’s also unique merch that only I have!

4.) followed a pixel grid on some graph paper to make some album cover art!! It’s kinda a mindless activity for me to just chill out and again it’s unique merch for a band I love

5.) recycled soda tabs I’ve been collecting to make chains to spice up my outfits! It’s a good use of materials I already had and I love them

6.) (not pictured) my many crochet projects that I’ve been working on

This all goes to show that you don’t need to know how to or enjoy drawing or painting or what you might think of when you hear the word art or artist! I’ve always loved being creative but always felt weird calling myself an artist because I didn’t draw! Now I’ve found the type of art and creativity that I enjoy and I love it

[do-you-know-this-baby]

About the blog:

Here's a blog for people who play games, watch shows, read books and go "awww it's a baby" everytime a baby is on screen. For people with baby fever. For cute design enjoyers. We shall create a collage of fictional babies. I am ready for the realization that i'm the only one who finds this funny. I run the blog @do-you-ship-it-polls as well.

NO PEDOS!!!!!! otherwise Monaca and her gang are going to obliterate you. Please also DNI if you identify as a lolicon/shotacon etc.

Submissions rules:

Here's a graph to determine if they are a baby:

But you can submit whoever you like if they have the right vibes.

Submit either through the form below, or my ask box.

Only fictional characters

Any form of media is ok, like anime/games/tv-shows/books etc.

Harry Potter, Hazbin hotel and Helluva boss are currently banned.

You can include information/propaganda with your submission if you'd like to add extra information. It can be as serious or goofy as you want. Just be nice.

That is probably all. Go submit!

and here is a queue, doesn't look great but fulfills the purpose anyway, right? if you see one you want to add extra info to, you can. btw me skipping over them at first doesn't mean they won't be added.

[prettiestboytoy2]

Since i feel inspired today i am gonna touch on the problem of economic and finance education and why its part of the reason why we can't have nice things.

First thing first it has to be stated that contrary to popular belief, Economics are social and not exact science. No matter how many mathematical formulas and needlessly complex graphs one might add, it won't change. This has very severe implications for the field. In practice it mostly means results are up to interpretation and if you gather enough old, delusional people behind you, you can establish pretty much everything as an mainstream consensus no matter how many times reality proves you wrong.

Unfortunately majority of economist seems to subscribe to an "fuck the poor" philosophy and what is even more unfortunate is that those people are often in charge of the policies. Why is that?

What kind of people usually become an economists?

People born into wealth. Why?

Because they are naturally more inclined to study economics. Why is that tho?

Because those people seek something that allows them to excuse being born into comfort they didn't worked for and/or excuse living at the expense of others.

This is mindset that gets them into the field and they are going to look for everything that further validates it. They are taught by people who have exact same mindset and once they graduate, they are going to spread that mindset and supposed economic principles that back it up. This creates vicious cycle of radicalization and extremism in doctrines and policies despite mounting evidence against it. And what few people get into field without such prejudice, are marginalized, mocked and excluded because they don't fit the narrative.

Should i share all of that on my soft-porn-gentle-femdom blog? Most likely no, but reason is yet to stop me from doing what i want.

[luzzytheray]

Having an awful depressive episode right now over my status as an artist. Early on when I started drawing, I always thought that the reason I felt this depressed about being an artist was because my work wasn’t good enough, and that to get over this pain I had to improve quickly and constantly, becoming as good as I feasibly could become in the short time I’ve fully picked up art as a medium. And that extended to the type of work I could make too.

In my head I thought that If I could be as good and experience in every lane of art I thought I could learn it would fill this depressive void that makes me feel like I’m not an artist at all despite all the time and effort I’ve painstakingly put into improving myself over the course of what felt like a life time but was only 4-5 years. I think I’m starting to come to the conclusion that I may never get over that pain by myself, and its why being told that I’m any kind of artist by anyone else brings a kind of joy and bliss to my life that I don’t think I could ever receive from the process of creating itself. In that same vein, not being told that I’m an artist, and animator, a 3D modeler, that I’m any of the things I’ve poured my heart and soul into feels like a shot in the chest, and I know thats because I barely regard myself as an artist, and I should have been this whole, irregardless of the quality of my work.

I think I’m gonna start being nicer to myself as a creator, I’m going to call myself an animator even if I might not reach the standards of what anyone perceives that an animator should be, I’m going to call myself an artist despite the fact that my work as a character designer might not be strong enough for me to be considered a character designer., and I’m going ti call myself a 3D modeler even though blender fucking sucks to learn (god I dread properly learning how eevee or cycles works, or how to properly use node graphs when animating). I want to have more confidence in myself as a artist so that I don’t only view myself as an one when I’m around people who are nice enough to call me one (and a heartfelt thank you to anyone who might’ve, all of the support I’ve received on my works is like genuinely one of the only reasons I’ve stuck with being a creative for so long)

[bergdg]

Analyzing Invention: Year of 2024

It’s been another year for the Inventor's Fair, a Magic: the Gathering card design contest blog here on Tumblr. Like all the past years, each week there have been awesome submissions, stunning designs, and marvelous interpretations. I couldn’t be happier being a member of this great collective.

For the uninitiated, each week, a design challenge is announced on the blog and members of the community create cards meeting the design specifications. At the end of the week, a few winners and runner-ups are selected from the submission.

So let’s take a look at the data – what was 2024 like for the Inventor’s Fair?

Art. Katerina of Myra's Marvels. Illustrated by Gaboleps

The Contests

This year, there were a total of 50 contests (51 if you include that the last contest of 2023 started on Dec 31). Most of the year, the contest was judged by either the veteran @abelzumi or by @spooky-bard, who made their judge debut in February 2024 in a contest known as “The Origin.” Together, they helmed 38 of the contests, with the remainder being led by @loreholdlesbian, @follower-of-liliana, @gollumni, and @mistershinyobject.

Throughout the 50 contests, there have been a total of 1,108 entries, which averages to 22 entries per contest. This is down from the previous 2 years, with a grand total of 1,367 entries in 2022 and 1,234 entries in 2023. The contests with the highest number of entries were “Common Wonders” (June 30th) and “Submit” (Nov 17th) with 30 total entries. The contests with the lowest number of entries were “My Better Half” (Feb 11th), “War Never* Changes” (Mar 10th) and “Spoiled for Choice” (June 16th) with 16 total entries.

The title for Most Submissions goes to @nine-effing-hells, who managed to submit a design for EVERY SINGLE contest this year. Additional shout-outs go to those who submitted 40+ times (@bergdg, @izzet-always-r-versus-u, @helloijustreadyourpost, @hypexion, and @misterstingyjack) as well as those who submitted for the first time or returned this year (51 entrants!): a quick hello to our most recent: @justicefortyvarkell! In total, there were a total of 119 unique entrants this year.

Line Graph of the Number of Entries Per Contest. Blue dots represent the number of entries for a contest, and the green line represents the 3-contest average.

The Submissions

As mentioned above, there were a total of 1,108 submissions this year as part of the 50 contests. Let's dig into some of the details.

Card Type (Submissions can be in multiple categories)

Creatures: 528

Enchantment: 184

Sorcery: 171

Instant: 150

Artifact: 107

Battle: 16

Land: 11

Planeswalker: 3

Once again, Creatures takes the crown. Enchantments got a nice boost with Rooms being a new subtype, helping push Enchantments into 2nd place this year.

Mana Value

MV 3: 311

MV 4: 253

MV 2: 236

MV 5: 107

MV 1: 82

MV 6: 61

MV 0: 23

MV 7: 22

MV 8: 7

MV 9+: 6

It's always fun to see a bell curve happen in real life. Here, we have it centered on Mana Value 4. This is similar to previous years.

Rarity

Rare: 475

Uncommon: 358

Common: 152

Mythic: 123

Once again, Rare entries were the ultimate winner. It's always fun to design those splashy cards. But, you can never count out Uncommons, the workhorses of any deck, who came in second.

Color Identity (At least partial of the listed color)

Black: 372

Blue: 344

White: 340

Red: 329

Green: 251

Colorless: 45

Once again, Green is the least designed for color, way behind the rest of the pack. The rest are within 50 entries of each other, with Black keeping the Monarch for the second year in a row (Red last held the crown for 2022). Mono-colored designs held to almost the same pattern, with just a swap between white (120) and blue (117).

Color Identity: Pairs Top 3

Orzhov (WB): 60

Dimir (UB): 53

Rakdos (BR): 49

Color Identity: Shards and Wedges Top 3

Esper (WUB): 10

Grixis (UBR), Jeskai (URW), Mardu (RWB): 8

In both the 2 and 3 colors, it's also comes to no surprise that Black played a major role.

Finally, let's take a look at folks who have been selected as Winners / Runner-Ups this year. Instead of looking at total times selected, I'll be listing it by the "batting average," or the number of times selected by the total number of their entries.

Top 5, by "Batting Average" (And selected at least 5 times)

@reaperfromtheabyss: 0.53, with 40 entries

@nine-effing-hells: 0.52, with 50 entries

@bergdg: 0.47, with 45 entries

@corporalotherbear: 0.47, with 36 entries

@izzet-always-r-versus-u: 0.45, with 44 entries

Special shout-outs to a few of the participants who, although they didn't submit many times, they sure packed a punch!

@nyxbird: A perfect 1.00 batting average, with 3 entries

@deg99: 0.75, with 4 entries

@brookeuwo and @genericaura: Both 0.500, with 4 entries

Art. Team Pennant. Illustrated by Anna Fehr

Special Request: Legendary Cards

At the request of @xenobladexfan, let's do a little deep-dive on the Legendary Cards submitted this year.

Out of all the entries, we had 190 submissions (~17% of the total) that were Legendary (or partial Legendary, such as The Intrepid Albamarl // Find the Scoop from @reaperfromtheabyss).

Let's do a quick break-down!

By Type

Legendary Creature: 152

Legendary Enchantment: 10

Legendary Artifact: 8

Legendary Artifact Creature: 7

Legendary Enchantment Creature: 4

Planeswalker: 3

Legendary Creature // Other Type: 2

By Rarity

Rare: 100

Mythic: 71

Uncommon: 17

Common: 2

And by Color Identity (At least partial of the listed color)

White: 83

Red: 78

Black: 72

Blue: 70

Green: 64

Colorless: 3

The most designed color identities for Legendary Cards were Mono-White, Gruul (RG) and Orzhov (WB), each at 14 entries. Looks like Green got a little win here!

In total, 66 entrants submitted Legendary designs, with a special shout-out going to @misterstingyjack, who made the most (13).

Art. Heroes Podium. Illustrated by Willian Murai

Finale

Well, I think that sums up this year. As always, it's always fun participating in the @inventors-fair. If you've wanted to try your hand at designing cards for Magic, come join us! And if it's been a while, come on back :).

See you in 2025! Maybe it will be the Year of Green. ;)

[jabbage]

When people talk about which fictional characters are most like their parents or have the same dynamic, I'm always like - Moominpapa and Moominmama, and Nigel and Mary-Anne Thornberry.

My Dad is the oddball eccentric who always has a new scheme, and my Mum is the calm practical pragmatist who says "Yes dear" and goes along with it.

Although they spend a lot of time together, my Mum and Dad have their own hobbies. My Mum likes to paint and birdwatch. My Dad is a super smart tech whizz and constantly latches onto a new weird project.

A modified Billy Bass. He made a tank for it, and has it singing about freedom, because he wanted it to be free.

He figured out how to make his own little spaceman action figures out of thermoplastics to recreate one he had as a child

He had a phase of renovating 1950s radios.

He's got a full suite of tools for measuring the weather, which then upload that information to a website he designed.

I know some people on this website will know me as the scary Furby lady, I want you to know it is genetic and my Dad is the one who has done truly scary things with Furbies.

Now, my Aunt and Uncle have a different dynamic to my Mum and Dad. They're kind of joined at the hip - they do art classes together, they play the ukulele together, they took up sailing lessons together.

And I know sometimes, my Mum is a little jealous.

So recently she said to my Dad, it would just be really nice if we had a hobby we could do together. My Dad agreed, and said he'd join her in her birdwatching. Ok. Great.

Two days later and my Dad emerges from the garage with a device which records birdsong and matches it against an internal database of recordings of common UK birds, and then transmits that information to the internet so that he can create maps and graphs and charts of all the birds they encounter.

And my Mum, aware that this is both a beautiful declaration of devotion to her and absolutely not what she wanted, just nods and says "Yes dear."

[evaskjew]

HL headcanon : life in the 19th century

I was doing some historical research in order to make a family tree (for an OC for a fanfiction in the Hogwarts Legacy universe) because I'm a stickler for historical detail (It's not at all because I'm a history professor) and I thought it might be nice to share this for anyone who's interested.

Social transformations of the 19th century

HL takes place at the end of the Victorian era in UK, a historical period marked by the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to this revolution, many transformations appeared and developed in Europe:

The railway network in UK in the 1840s (at the time of HL, the Hogwarts Express was still something new and must have caused a scandal among the purebloods, who were no doubt scandalised that one of the latest Muggle technical innovations was being used to take students to the castle).

The gradual disappearance of proto-industry and the decline of workshops, particularly in the textile industry, which were replaced by the emergence of factories (spinning mills) in the towns. In addition to economic and social upheaval (emergence of a new social class: the working class), the Industrial Revolution was marked by a major rural exodus. People left the countryside to go to the cities to find work.

Cities then grow by welcoming a whole new population (whole families leave the countryside for the city). To meet this demographic challenge, we note the emergence of working-class neighborhoods that are developing in large cities. These neighborhoods are usually located next to factories.

The living conditions in his neighborhoods were not the greatest luxury (insalubrity, pollution of factories, poverty wages, etc.). It is enough to read some social surveys carried out at the time (such as that of Villermé in 1840 for France) to realize that living in the nineteenth century marked by this industrial revolution was not necessarily the best. In fact, the city of London was so polluted that a permanent fog hung over the city. In 1858, The Great Stink took place, which was the origin of the installation of sewage systems throughout the city (here again it can be assumed that in HL, the system of pipes to evacuate waste water from toilets and toilets is almost a novelty (toilets having become standard from 1840)). 

In short, all the transformations linked to the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century suggest that life expectancy at that time must not have been very high.

Life expectancy

For my OC, I chose to make her a member of the French wizarding family Rosier. And then being French myself, that’s it.

The situation in France in 1891 was essentially the same as in England (the Industrial Revolution having spread throughout Europe, what happened in England was observed elsewhere).

I managed to find graphs showing the evolution of life expectancy in France. I guess it was more or less the same for the UK.

Graph showing life expectancy at birth in Switzerland, France, Germany and Austria. In the 19th century, life expectancy was around 43 years.

Source : Swiss Life, La révolution de la longévité, 29 mars 2016.

Graph showing life expectancy in France from 1720 to 2020. The blue curve shows the life expectancy of men and the orange curve that of women. Here too the average is around 43 years.

Source: INED (French national institute for demographic studies)

Motherhood in the 19th century

To create the family tree, I had to look up the average age at which women gave birth. As life expectancy is low, women give birth at higher rates. In addition, the infant mortality rate was high at the time (medicine wasn't really that good, plus questionable hygiene standards).

Table showing the average age of childbirth among single women. We note that during the second half of the 19th century, women gave birth most at ages 20 and 24.

Women in the 1830s had their first child at age 23 (compared to around 24 in 1870), their second at 26 (compared to 27 in 1870). We also note that in 1830, women had more children than women in the 1870s/1880s (10% of women had a 3rd child in 1830 compared to 6% in 1870; 6% of women in 1830 had a 4th child compared to 1% in 1870).

Source : BRUNET Guy, « Célibataires et mères de nombreux enfants. Parcours de femmes à Lyon au xixe siècle », Annales de démographie historique, 2010/1 (n° 119), p. 95-114. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2010-1-page-95.htm 

Sorry if the documents are in French, but I am French and I am used to doing my research in French university databases.

I hope this could have been useful for those who write fiction in the HL universe and who want to remain consistent with the society of the time. (Well then I think that wizard families lived longer because magic had to help with health problems linked to pollution or other. Thanks to Wiggenweld potions)

I hope my English is clear, I mostly use a translator.

[ohseumi]

hi! it's theo aka user worldoutlaw and for 500 followers i wanted to share my coloring/sharpening process ! i've been getting a few notes recently complimenting my coloring and sharpening lately (ty all so much they make me smile every time) and i thought some people might be curious in my process so here we are ! :3 this is just coloring and sharpening so if you're looking for a general gif tutorial i suggest you check out usergif! now without futher ado let's start (color coded for my fellow adhders/neurodivergents who find reading hard)

i do most of my process through actions; of which i have several for different gif dimensions ie 540 width (typically for fancams where i keep the width of the file the same but change the height), 540 height (which i use the most for gifs like the above), and 850 height which i use for my sets that have side by side gifs like my pinned

actions make the beginning of making a gif a lot faster and especially save time when you're rushing to make comeback gifs lmao

after i've converted to the video timeline and selected all of my frames and converted them to a smart object, i apply userdramas's camera raw filter action which can help gifs look higher quality and create the illusion of skin texture when there isn't any

after this i convert the layer into a smart object again and apply my sharpening as follows (partly from anyataylorjoy's action pack)

smart sharpen 1:

smart sharpen 2:

smart sharpen 3: (this one is optional)

smart sharpen 2 duplicated

gaussian blur:

and i click this button on the far right to change the opacity of the blur (usually i set it around 10-30)

it may look funky but noise at the end will always fix it :p

after i sharpen i start on coloring!

my coloring process starts with editing values with curves, brightness & contrast, and sometimes levels

this helps to achieve the high contrast look i really like on my gifs and below are my settings for this specific set

i find that the marker in the center of the curves graph can often help darken skin tones if the subject appears too light

after i have my values down i move on to the actual colors

i start with adding a selective color layer; adjusting the red values, followed by yellow, then black, white, and any other colors i would want prominent in the gif

for example, with this set i wanted the blues to look really nice so i increased the cyans and decreased the yellows to my liking

changing the black values adds to the dimension i like in my gifs; these are my settings

forgot magenta whoops

next i add a hue/sat layer where i mess with the red and yellow values which often adds extra help to skin tones (i also recently started using hue/sat on colors like the blues here)

now these gifs didn't need it thankfully, but if needed i will also do color balance and channel mixer layers

after all my coloring and sharpening is done and i'm satisfied with how a gif looks i will convert all layers to a smart object and add noise (typically 1.5-3)

then the gif is done and i save it! these are my save settings

and that's how i turn this

into this!

hope y'all enjoyed and found this helpful and thank you again for 500<3333

some tags for fun and also to thank my supportive lovely mutuals @solojihyo @twiceland @97chwe @jeonwonwoo @sanchelinz @applejongho @hwanswerland @kyubins @minchanz @seonghwasblr @get-lit @jjongho @userwoosan @strhwaberries @dqmeron (ty for looking over this for me 🫶)

[frenziedcrescendo]

New splatoon theory, the cephalopods are 4D organisms. I have but one evidence to back this up, but I'm bored so here we go.

Remember this moment in Splatoon 2's hero mode?

Nice gag, eh? But in universe, there should be no way for Marie to realise that Callie is holding the phone upside down with audio along. Unless... there is.

You see, when we 'hear' something, our eardrums are simply hit by molecules moving parallel to the direction of the sound, and that's why you can't turn an audio upside down, as they are moving in a straight line, effective containing the energy in a 2-D form.

So to distinguish sound that are skewered, how inklings and octolings vocalise needs to have another property, a displacement from its center, to make sound waves created at different orientations different.

(god damn it this graph is incomprehensible, as is the entire essay)

Such a displacement would mean sound in the splatoon universe essentially is 3 dimensional, and with it, our player characters, as well as anyone in the game, probably need to be inherently 4D to comprehend this.

Do you understand now? No? Good. Me neither.