#literally every adobe software

[elis-corner]

getting educators to not get you to download programs that destroy your computers: impossible edition.

[bi-writes]

whats wrong with ai?? genuinely curious <3

okay let's break it down. i'm an engineer, so i'm going to come at you from a perspective that may be different than someone else's.

i don't hate ai in every aspect. in theory, there are a lot of instances where, in fact, ai can help us do things a lot better without. here's a few examples:

ai detecting cancer

ai sorting recycling

some practical housekeeping that gemini (google ai) can do

all of the above examples are ways in which ai works with humans to do things in parallel with us. it's not overstepping--it's sorting, using pixels at a micro-level to detect abnormalities that we as humans can not, fixing a list. these are all really small, helpful ways that ai can work with us.

everything else about ai works against us. in general, ai is a huge consumer of natural resources. every prompt that you put into character.ai, chatgpt? this wastes water + energy. it's not free. a machine somewhere in the world has to swallow your prompt, call on a model to feed data into it and process more data, and then has to generate an answer for you all in a relatively short amount of time.

that is crazy expensive. someone is paying for that, and if it isn't you with your own money, it's the strain on the power grid, the water that cools the computers, the A/C that cools the data centers. and you aren't the only person using ai. chatgpt alone gets millions of users every single day, with probably thousands of prompts per second, so multiply your personal consumption by millions, and you can start to see how the picture is becoming overwhelming.

that is energy consumption alone. we haven't even talked about how problematic ai is ethically. there is currently no regulation in the united states about how ai should be developed, deployed, or used.

what does this mean for you?

it means that anything you post online is subject to data mining by an ai model (because why would they need to ask if there's no laws to stop them? wtf does it matter what it means to you to some idiot software engineer in the back room of an office making 3x your salary?). oh, that little fic you posted to wattpad that got a lot of attention? well now it's being used to teach ai how to write. oh, that sketch you made using adobe that you want to sell? adobe didn't tell you that anything you save to the cloud is now subject to being used for their ai models, so now your art is being replicated to generate ai images in photoshop, without crediting you (they have since said they don't do this...but privacy policies were never made to be human-readable, and i can't imagine they are the only company to sneakily try this). oh, your apartment just installed a new system that will use facial recognition to let their residents inside? oh, they didn't train their model with anyone but white people, so now all the black people living in that apartment building can't get into their homes. oh, you want to apply for a new job? the ai model that scans resumes learned from historical data that more men work that role than women (so the model basically thinks men are better than women), so now your resume is getting thrown out because you're a woman.

ai learns from data. and data is flawed. data is human. and as humans, we are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, divided. so the ai models we train will learn from this. ai learns from people's creative works--their personal and artistic property. and now it's scrambling them all up to spit out generated images and written works that no one would ever want to read (because it's no longer a labor of love), and they're using that to make money. they're profiting off of people, and there's no one to stop them. they're also using generated images as marketing tools, to trick idiots on facebook, to make it so hard to be media literate that we have to question every single thing we see because now we don't know what's real and what's not.

the problem with ai is that it's doing more harm than good. and we as a society aren't doing our due diligence to understand the unintended consequences of it all. we aren't angry enough. we're too scared of stifling innovation that we're letting it regulate itself (aka letting companies decide), which has never been a good idea. we see it do one cool thing, and somehow that makes up for all the rest of the bullshit?

[simspaghetti]

This has been a long time coming, I've been wanting to make something like this for ages and I finally had some time over the weekend to get it done - I dunno how useful this will be for anyone else, but hopefully at least a few other people might find this template handy!

Here's a full size picture of what the blank template looks like:

I made a couple examples of what it can look like edited over screenshots - as you can see you can just resize the boxes & text as you like to get the ideal final product:

Instructions for use:

This is a .psd file, and as such it needs to be opened in an editing tool that allows that file format - I personally use photopea which is a free online alternative to adobe photoshop - Disclaimer: I haven't tried using it any other editing software like photoshop / gimp but it'll probably work in there too, if you have any problems in those apps lmk and I'll try and fix it!

Each section of the template is separated into folders, open these up and you can edit the text / image elements for each section, you'll need to hide and unhide layers to be able to do this (the little eye icon next to a layer toggles it to be hidden / unhidden)

If you need to resize the boxes, make sure to hold down the shift-key so that you're able to do it more precisley

I have included icons for every career in the sims 3 including all of the expansion packs, however I have not included the skill images you might need as that would be a bit too extensive

For the skill images, I recommend downloading this ultimate icon collection from ModTheSims, as it'll almost definetly have everything you could possibly need to use :)

Terms of Use:

Please don’t claim as your own or reupload without my permission, I’d love to see you use them in your game if you do choose to tag me - but that's totally optional :) Alter and customize the templates literally however you want, but if you’re gonna reupload a downloadable variation of them I’d appreciate a link back to my blog

Download Here (Simfileshare, .psd file)

The font used for this template is DM Sans, it can be found in all variations here - I only used 'bold' & 'bold italic'

Credits: Heavily inspired by the gorgeous Clean UI created by JustMiha, as well as these promotion templates for TS4 by CupidJuice - and thanks to TheSpiritRealm on MTS for compiling all the icons I used - and total credit goes to EA / Maxis for the icon designs as well I did not make those lol

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cloudburst

Enshittification isn’t inevitable: under different conditions and constraints, the old, good internet could have given way to a new, good internet. Enshittification is the result of specific policy choices: encouraging monopolies; enabling high-speed, digital shell games; and blocking interoperability.

First we allowed companies to buy up their competitors. Google is the shining example here: having made one good product (search), they then fielded an essentially unbroken string of in-house flops, but it didn’t matter, because they were able to buy their way to glory: video, mobile, ad-tech, server management, docs, navigation…They’re not Willy Wonka’s idea factory, they’re Rich Uncle Pennybags, making up for their lack of invention by buying out everyone else:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

But this acquisition-fueled growth isn’t unique to tech. Every administration since Reagan (but not Biden! more on this later) has chipped away at antitrust enforcement, so that every sector has undergone an orgy of mergers, from athletic shoes to sea freight, eyeglasses to pro wrestling:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/07/09/the-importance-of-competition-for-the-american-economy/

But tech is different, because digital is flexible in a way that analog can never be. Tech companies can “twiddle” the back-ends of their clouds to change the rules of the business from moment to moment, in a high-speed shell-game that can make it impossible to know what kind of deal you’re getting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

To make things worse, users are banned from twiddling. The thicket of rules we call IP ensure that twiddling is only done against users, never for them. Reverse-engineering, scraping, bots — these can all be blocked with legal threats and suits and even criminal sanctions, even if they’re being done for legitimate purposes:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Enhittification isn’t inevitable but if we let companies buy all their competitors, if we let them twiddle us with every hour that God sends, if we make it illegal to twiddle back in self-defense, we will get twiddled to death. When a company can operate without the discipline of competition, nor of privacy law, nor of labor law, nor of fair trading law, with the US government standing by to punish any rival who alters the logic of their service, then enshittification is the utterly foreseeable outcome.

To understand how our technology gets distorted by these policy choices, consider “The Cloud.” Once, “the cloud” was just a white-board glyph, a way to show that some part of a software’s logic would touch some commodified, fungible, interchangeable appendage of the internet. Today, “The Cloud” is a flashing warning sign, the harbinger of enshittification.

When your image-editing tools live on your computer, your files are yours. But once Adobe moves your software to The Cloud, your critical, labor-intensive, unrecreatable images are purely contingent. At at time, without notice, Adobe can twiddle the back end and literally steal the colors out of your own files:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The finance sector loves The Cloud. Add “The Cloud” to a product and profits (money you get for selling something) can turn into rents (money you get for owning something). Profits can be eroded by competition, but rents are evergreen:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

No wonder The Cloud has seeped into every corner of our lives. Remember your first iPod? Adding music to it was trivial: double click any music file to import it into iTunes, then plug in your iPod and presto, synched! Today, even sophisticated technology users struggle to “side load” files onto their mobile devices. Instead, the mobile duopoly — Apple and Google, who bought their way to mobile glory and have converged on the same rent-seeking business practices, down to the percentages they charge — want you to get your files from The Cloud, via their apps. This isn’t for technological reasons, it’s a business imperative: 30% of every transaction that involves an app gets creamed off by either Apple or Google in pure rents:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

And yet, The Cloud is undeniably useful. Having your files synch across multiple devices, including your collaborators’ devices, with built-in tools for resolving conflicting changes, is amazing. Indeed, this feat is the holy grail of networked tools, because it’s how programmers write all the software we use, including software in The Cloud.

If you want to know how good a tool can be, just look at the tools that toolsmiths use. With “source control” — the software programmers use to collaboratively write software — we get a very different vision of how The Cloud could operate. Indeed, modern source control doesn’t use The Cloud at all. Programmers’ workflow doesn’t break if they can’t access the internet, and if the company that provides their source control servers goes away, it’s simplicity itself to move onto another server provider.

This isn’t The Cloud, it’s just “the cloud” — that whiteboard glyph from the days of the old, good internet — freely interchangeable, eminently fungible, disposable and replaceable. For a tool like git, Github is just one possible synchronization point among many, all of which have a workflow whereby programmers’ computers automatically make local copies of all relevant data and periodically lob it back up to one or more servers, resolving conflicting edits through a process that is also largely automated.

There’s a name for this model: it’s called “Local First” computing, which is computing that starts from the presumption that the user and their device is the most important element of the system. Networked servers are dumb pipes and dumb storage, a nice-to-have that fails gracefully when it’s not available.

The data structures of source-code are among the most complicated formats we have; if we can do this for code, we can do it for spreadsheets, word-processing files, slide-decks, even edit-decision-lists for video and audio projects. If local-first computing can work for programmers writing code, it can work for the programs those programmers write.

Local-first computing is experiencing a renaissance. Writing for Wired, Gregory Barber traces the history of the movement, starting with the French computer scientist Marc Shapiro, who helped develop the theory of “Conflict-Free Replicated Data” — a way to synchronize data after multiple people edit it — two decades ago:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-cloud-is-a-prison-can-the-local-first-software-movement-set-us-free/

Shapiro and his co-author Nuno Preguiça envisioned CFRD as the building block of a new generation of P2P collaboration tools that weren’t exactly serverless, but which also didn’t rely on servers as the lynchpin of their operation. They published a technical paper that, while exiting, was largely drowned out by the release of GoogleDocs (based on technology built by a company that Google bought, not something Google made in-house).

Shapiro and Preguiça’s work got fresh interest with the 2019 publication of “Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud,” a viral whitepaper-cum-manifesto from a quartet of computer scientists associated with Cambridge University and Ink and Switch, a self-described “industrial research lab”:

https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/static/local-first.pdf

The paper describes how its authors — Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg and Mark McGranaghan — prototyped and tested a bunch of simple local-first collaboration tools built on CFRD algorithms, with the goal of “network optional…seamless collaboration.” The results are impressive, if nascent. Conflicting edits were simpler to resolve than the authors anticipated, and users found URLs to be a good, intuitive way of sharing documents. The biggest hurdles are relatively minor, like managing large amounts of change-data associated with shared files.

Just as importantly, the paper makes the case for why you’d want to switch to local-first computing. The Cloud is not reliable. Companies like Evernote don’t last forever — they can disappear in an eyeblink, and take your data with them:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23789012/evernote-layoff-us-staff-bending-spoons-note-taking-app

Google isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, but Google is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA program (“I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further”) and notorious for shuttering its products, even beloved ones like Google Reader:

https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social

And while the authors don’t mention it, Google is also prone to simply kicking people off all its services, costing them their phone numbers, email addresses, photos, document archives and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

There is enormous enthusiasm among developers for local-first application design, which is only natural. After all, companies that use The Cloud go to great lengths to make it just “the cloud,” using containerization to simplify hopping from one cloud provider to another in a bid to stave off lock-in from their cloud providers and the enshittification that inevitably follows.

The nimbleness of containerization acts as a disciplining force on cloud providers when they deal with their business customers: disciplined by the threat of losing money, cloud companies are incentivized to treat those customers better. The companies we deal with as end-users know exactly how bad it gets when a tech company can impose high switching costs on you and then turn the screws until things are almost-but-not-quite so bad that you bolt for the doors. They devote fantastic effort to making sure that never happens to them — and that they can always do that to you.

Interoperability — the ability to leave one service for another — is technology’s secret weapon, the thing that ensures that users can turn The Cloud into “the cloud,” a humble whiteboard glyph that you can erase and redraw whenever it suits you. It’s the greatest hedge we have against enshittification, so small wonder that Big Tech has spent decades using interop to clobber their competitors, and lobbying to make it illegal to use interop against them:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

Getting interop back is a hard slog, but it’s also our best shot at creating a new, good internet that lives up the promise of the old, good internet. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I set out a program fro disenshittifying the internet:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The book is up for pre-order on Kickstarter now, along with an independent, DRM-free audiobooks (DRM-free media is the content-layer equivalent of containerized services — you can move them into or out of any app you want):

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Meanwhile, Lina Khan, the FTC and the DoJ Antitrust Division are taking steps to halt the economic side of enshittification, publishing new merger guidelines that will ban the kind of anticompetitive merger that let Big Tech buy its way to glory:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/biden-administration-corporate-merger-antitrust-guidelines/674779/

The internet doesn’t have to be enshittified, and it’s not too late to disenshittify it. Indeed — the same forces that enshittified the internet — monopoly mergers, a privacy and labor free-for-all, prohibitions on user-side twiddling — have enshittified everything from cars to powered wheelchairs. Not only should we fight enshittification — we must.

Back my anti-enshittification Kickstarter here!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad- free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

—

cdsessums (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monsoon_Season_Flagstaff_AZ_clouds_storm.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[scarefox]

I am checking for free music on pixabay atm and....

FUCKING HELL 99% of the new uploades..... in some you can even hear it's that one AI software you can put lyrics in to generate a song. (some youtuber used it for fun and memes so i heard it a few times by now.... it has a certain pattern)

But at least they have to mark it as AI generated.... This is such a pest now on every stock site, if it's free ones or professionals monetised ones like Shutterstock or Adobe stock... how they even accept AI stuff is beyond me.... it's literally killing their own creator userbase.

But like... bruh there are literally synthesizer softwares out there already that are easy to use... you juyt need to have a little feel for music.

[skykashi]

So I just had to turn off the reblogs of the Gai art, it seems like some popular blog reblogged the post with the ridiculous reblog of the baseless accusations that has absolutely no evidence or proof whatsoever and ppl have been reblogging it from them to point me out as the new villain on Tumblr, just because someone think they are too smart for this world and has a built-in AI detection sensors in their brain that they can throw serious accusations like that with literally nothing to back it up except that their Spidey senses are tingling!

I just can't believe how easy it is to destroy someone's reputation and years of hard work in seconds just because someone wanted to, you have no idea how discouraging this whole thing is, to work your butt off to create something just to be met with this at the end, am I supposed to record the process of every artwork I create and post it with my artworks from now on? How am I supposed to keep working on myself and challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone and improve my skills if the second I post something a little different from the usual I get attached like this? You have no idea how hard it is to have to work with such a crappy tablet, how time and effort consuming it is to keep trying to create something pretty on a lagging screen and no pen pressure sensitivity, but I have no choice but to be stubborn and determined enough to just keep trying anyway and spend 10x more time and effort than anyone else because that's what I love to do and it's limiting my creativity so much but I just have to make it work with what I can afford... and then the one time I had enough motivation coming from wanting to create something that will put a smile on my friend's @depressedhatakekakashi face just like they continue to put a smile on my face so I chose to do something different this time for them, something that I don't usually go for because of how extremely hard it will be on a stupid tablet like mine but my appreciation and gratitude for them gave me the push I needed to do it and challenge those limitations even further, not knowing that there's someone lurking in the shadows waiting for a moment like that to destroy all of my hard work.

First, they said "oh, I think it's AI because some parts look pixilated" so I recorded a video showing how things get pixilated when I move them between Adobe Illustrator and Clip Studio Paint and why I'm forced to use both software together for a piece like this so they then say "I don't understand how what you said is relevant" then changed their reason to "because the art style in this piece looks different from your usual art style" and um, my usual art style is meant to look like cartoon and this one is meant to look realistic HOW COULD IT NOT LOOK DIFFERENT?!!!, like I don't understand, am I stuck with only one type of artwork now because that's what I usually do? Am I not allowed to try something new for a change or try to challenge myself or develop my skills? Can someone tell me where I can get a permit to have freedom with my creations? Or am I supposed to just stop trying all together?!!!

[thewinterwolf99]

today marks exactly 1 year since I switched to linux

I'll be completely real, I do not miss windows, like... at all. it's honestly kinda funny. I used to be linux's biggest hater, I literally made this meme myself

boy, it's kinda ironic looking back at it. like, I was full microsoft for a while there, had an xbox, used the microsoft store on my laptop, everything, now I fucking detest microsoft. anyway, I've never been happier with my computer since I switched and can confidently say I'm never going back now. pretty much every single thing I did on windows can be done on linux, seriously, the only thing linux can't really do is professional level software, shit like FLstudio or adobe's dogshit software, but don't worry, linux has several (free) alternative just as good if not better. if you still use windows I highly advise you jump ship, it's so fucking worth it. I feel like I actually own my computer now.

[merrigel]

the wenis video gives me such joy also what do you use to draw/animate you’re literally inspiring me to take up a new hobby lmao

OMG thank you so much, you're too kind!! And HELL YEAH JOIN ME IN THE DRAWING THE SAME THING 1000000 TIMES MINES 😂 (But truly!!)

I use all kinds of software for different things so I'll just make a little list:

RoughAnimator! For ipad, costs like 7 bucks to own forever. Super lightweight, super effective, genuinely where I do like 99% of my animating these days- if you have an ipad I couldn't recommend it enough

Procreate! 99% of my non-animating drawing happens here lmao, also for ipad, also really cost-effective

TVPaint! For PC/Mac- on the more expensive side, but I saved up and got it when I was in college for That Sweet Sweet Student Discount™️... Most of my like, Actual Job Animation has been done with this one!

After Effects! Kind of a bonus here, but it's where I do all my compositing; most camera moves, lots of the lighting and stuff, any layers on multiply/add/[insert blending mode], etc. Every day I wish I could replace it so I could stop paying adobe but here we are

If you're just starting out and you're working on a computer, I think Clip Studio Paint can do animation? And it's way cheaper than trying to grab TVPaint or anything adobe or An Entire Ipad, so it might be a cool place to start experimenting! (There's also Opentoonz, which I think might be free?? But also I will be real with you I opened it once and got overwhelmed and scared so I have no guidance there jksdklfsd) It's also good for drawing, but there's also Paint Tool SAI (my beloved companion thru all my years with a PC) and Krita for regular old drawing as well!

Whatever you end up using, GOOD LUCK!! You're gonna do great!!

[crtter]

Reminds me of how desperate Adobe is for me to buy their products because I’ve looked up how to solve this or that issue on After Effects at work on their Adblock-less browsers and literally every single ad was trying to get me to subscribe to their Creative Suite bullshit. Little do they know that I’m immune to being advertised software because I’m Brazilian.

[unichrome]

AI and the value of labour (but only if it's yours)

Few of you have missed the whole AI/AI-art/ChatGPT-debate by now and even though few have the technical literacy to actually know what it is and its implementations, it hasn't stopped people from having opinions on it, and wow they sure are Opinions. It's mainly about how it's art-theft and will put already struggling artists out of business because now there's a chance that their dandelion found in a deviantart furry artwork they made using GIMP once will now be seen made sort of in the same style on a 250x250 pixel generated picture from a free online generator. And now I'm going to be snarky about it but also highlight a problem seen from the other end of this - the value of labour, and I'm not talking about the artists labour here.

But first let's look back a little bit for some well-needed perspective:

The logic for this is nothing we haven't seen before; you can't copy art and have it made available for just everyone to use like this! In the early 2000's it put musicians out of business and destroyed music forever with the introduction of napster. Pirate bay is why movies no longer are being made. It has destroyed art as we know it when people tauntingly right-clicked on a cryptobro's NFT and clicked "save as" (which I assume is also very problematic for the people who are vehemently against AI art? It's a literal 1-to-1 copy of your work). Media corporations are dying because intellectual properties are no longer protected under the copyright laws after 70 or so years. In the 90's there was even some video star who literally murdered a radio star. With the introduction of vinyl, it even killed live music forever.

So technology has been destroying just about all forms of art as we know it for a while now and each time it's the same doomsday predictions from the newly formed kind of art-christianity where some art has soul (Good, Skilled Laboured artists) and others hasn't (Evil, of course).

Now for the informative part of the post:

In the 1970's, computers as we know them today began forming, and with it, the value of a computer programmers skill and labour. Alongside with this, they saw a growing problem: Corporations owned everything they made, and corporations will also have the whole say about what will be present on a computer and the price of everything present on it.

This was not very appreciated by neither the programmers, and nor the customers (although few saw this growing problem coming). So in a weird twist of fate, programmers became one of the most left-wing labour-rights occupation you could find by forming Free Software Foundation, GNU, and essentially setting the stage for you to be able to use the free GIMP software instead of buying a staggering price for Adobe's Photoshop. It enabled you to download firefox instead of buying a copy of internet explorer. Because yes, before this kind of software activism formed, and the general environment of software development became to make it as freely available as possible - and having an outright despise for corporations like Novell and Microsoft for taking such huge amount of money to their own pockets instead of the developers, literally every piece of software cost money. A LOT of money.

This kind of 100% for free software usage we're used to has also led to us no longer being appreciative of the work and skill that goes behind keeping a software not only developed and updated continuously for decades, but also spending money on keeping it hosted and delivered to you for free. We even joke and scoff about the mere thought of having to pay 0.99 Euro for an app we'd use daily and a developer spent 2 years in the making. Meanwhile, when someone offers to pay someone merely 10 euro or so for a handmade blanket, there's an outrage about the value of labour and skill. And rightfully so! I support that, and so should you, even if it's labour that you weren't the one making.

And it doesn't end there either - we all know corporations has no trouble finding new ways to charge you money. Organisations like Free Software Foundation, various Linux projects and Mozilla have campaigned for a freer usage in general, leading to fair-use laws, campaigning for the right to repair your technology instead of having to buy new one all the time, as well as preventing corporations from banning every other piece of software on a computer that they don't want you to have (from a competitor or free alternative of their software).

I mentioned Adobe specifically, because in the wave of anti-AI-art outcry, artists are campaigning for a ban on making software that uses other peoples artistic similarities (not copies mind you, similarities, meaning making it a copyright infringement to have art that is similar to yours, since that's what AI-art algorithms create), and I'm sure right off the bat many of you can see the huge problem with that, but Adobe sure isn't. They're also gladly in on this, because that would mean that free alternatives of Photoshop like GIMP would also become a copyright infringement. So would a lot of our other free software we use daily and take for granted.

That's all I wanted to say about this I think. The TL;DR version is basically to value labour even if it isn't yours, and to not take it for granted. As a final part to remember about AI is that it is a tool, and like any tool it can be used for good or evil. AI is what made it possible for us to make sense of the large hadron collider data and made enormous leaps in scientific discovery in just a few years, that would otherwise had taken 500 years to sort through by humans, and with a much higher rate of error.

[dawnlotus-draws]

hi!! i love your animatics! i wanted to start making some of my own and was wondering, if you dont mind me asking, how do you get the audios for the scenes you animate? i tried a couple of yt clips to mp3 converters but like its not really working for me for some reason :')

Thank you so much Anon! :D there are a couple different ways I scrape my audios, the first way that I did it was literally opening the entire several hour audio file downloaded from Patreon with Adobe Audition and cutting the part that I wanted but I don’t recommend that one XD

The ones I do recommend v

The way I get audio from anything YouTube is by using Y2mate WITH ADBLOCKER. This is important because without adblocker it only downloads correctly like 30% of the time and sends me to a new page to get a virus like 70% of the time. It likes to play games like that. But you can beat it with adblocker then it will give you what you want 100% of the time. I’ve got Ublocker origin but unfortunately idk how to install it cuz a friend installed it for me XD

Idk if you have tried this converter yet but it’s worked great for me so far and can download a video with visuals or only audio and everything.

(Link : https://www.y2mate.com/en899)

The second way I clip audio is the one I use the most because you can turn screen recordings directly into audio, but I’m not sure if it works on every phone I think it only works on iPhone.

If you don’t have an iPhone or this Shortcuts tutorial is just being annoying and not working skip this and just upload your screen recording video to YouTube as a private video to your own channel, and then rip your own audio off YouTube with the previous Y2mate method XD

Shortcuts Extract Audio tutorial below

If you wanna skip my scuffed screenshots here is a video version tutorial.

The two apps you need are Google Photos and Shortcuts.

Step 1. Screen record the clip you want.

Step 2. Open Google Photos and press the Share option on your video. We will be using a shortcut we make to rip audio. Once you make it you can always use it here at the bottom of the share options.

Step 3. Idk why I’m numbering these steps, basically this is where you start to make the shortcut lol. Open the app and make a new shortcut.

Step 4.

Rename ur new shortcut there is no preset Extract Audio shortcut available you have to make it. Then press the i at the bottom.

Step 5.

Flip the Show in Share Sheet toggle. Then press done

Step 6.

Click the “Images and 18 more” (it may also say “any”) input thing and clear all the toggles and flip only media.

Step 7.

Now go to add action button and search for Encode media.

Step 8. Press the down arrow on Encode media and toggle for Audio Only

Step 9. Press the down arrow on Save and toggle on Ask where to save.

Okay now you are done! Press done. You can leave the app after this.

Now you have a button in ur Google Photos share option to rip audio!

You will find your saved MP3’s wherever you sort them in your files from here. I usually toss mine into a folder in downloads. Then I go ahead and send myself the MP3 to my computer and put them into whatever software I’m using to animate from there!

Hopefully this made sense. If that doesn’t work just go back to option 1 : Y2mate with Adblock. Good luck! I am sure there are many other ways,, this is just the way I do it…

P.S. if you do make your own animatics I would love to see them so feel free to send me a link sometime! :D

[horizonlock]

as editor to editor / what software u use for editing and why / how your work process goes / what , who motivate you / where or how did you studied this craft //// ur works is amazing btw , really into new sah mv

Adobe Premiere Pro

I grew up using Windows Movie Maker, then Sony Vegas for a few years. I switched when I was around 17 just because I had seen on YouTube that it was "more professional" or something. Have used it ever since and think it's pretty standard.

So process with a music video is I'll take one day to sync all the performance takes (for the Sah video there was something like 28) and do a selects timeline for b-roll. So I'll look through literally all of the footage picking out any useable moment I see and getting familiar with it. Next day I'll do a cut of only the performance takes, trying to find a rhythm introducing the setups and picking the strongest performance moments. Then I'll add b-roll on top of the performance sequence and start actually finding the edit of the video. (I honestly think this is what a lot of my friends do also)

From there I'll go through tons of versions of the edit. Me and Trey (who directed the Sah video) did 3 calls for a few hours each where we just pushed and pushed the edit a lot, trying different things until he was happy with every moment.

Um in terms of study I learned almost everything I know from YouTube videos and just trial and error in terms of the technical skill. The feel/taste for things is just something that develops over time as you watch a ton of stuff and start paying attention to edits. I've always edited growing up, it was just something I did because it was part of making videos - but I didn't become an editor for work until this year.

A director I look up was the one who suggested that I do it - I'm very glad that he did.

[owl-liberation-now]

🧙‍♂️ FELLOW TUMBLR ANIMATORS:

If you're using Adobe Animate on an iMac and you have the issue of frameskipping/lag when using the timeline, YOU ARE NOT ALONE AND ALSO I BRING HOPE AND AN END TO YOUR PLIGHT!!

So I switched to Animate 2021 from Flash CS5.5 last week because the autosaver took 45 seconds to back up and using my laptop while hotdesking I realised its only 6 seconds save time on AA2021. That really adds up when you autosave every six minutes because Animate is unreliable and crashes frequently.

But alas. My woes were just beginning. Specifically the woes that look like this:

I thought this was because my iMac has only 8gb of RAM and unfortunately its the kind you can't install upgrades to, so I basically thought I was just fucked. But it turns out this is a problem with all 4k/5k Apple computers, because Animate is terribly optimised and its vector system was never designed to run on HD machines. Because Animate is worse than Flash and keeps getting worse with every successive build.

BUT FEAR NOT!!! there IS a workaround:

If you go to apps and get info on Animate, then and then check open in low resolution, THEN when you reopen Animate it'll run buttery smooth again (though it will look slightly soft-focus because of pixel interpolation). AFAIK this option is only available on Catalina-Ventura, however Ventura onwards allow you to change your native resolution to be lower (Catalina, for whatever godforsaken reason, does not have this option).

FINALLY, if you're still on beautiful beloved Mojave, DO NOT UPGRADE UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO!! Catalina ended 32 bit program support which means you can't run Flash CS5.5 anymore (you can install it on the latest Mojave even if it gives you an out of date error, you just gotta open package contents on the installer -- the files are on archive.org and there's at least one good jailbreaker out there in the usual places for Mac).

DOUBLE FINALLY, if you're not a veteran of Flash/Animate who pairbonded with it from childhood, USE KRITA or TOONBOOM HARMONY or LITERALLY any other software. Adobe software legitimately keeps getting worse and worse and Animate is by FAR the worst of all of them. It is so much better to learn a new workstation and be a bit slower for a couple months than locked into the worst company of all time that uses predatory pricing tactics and keeps getting worse and worse with every build. and also if you don't use Animate or Mac computers, please share this anyway so no one else has to skulk around on the internet feeling like giving up, looking for cheap busted iMacs with cracks on the screen because they think they need to shell out to continue making cartoons. Thank you for listening 🧙‍♂️✨💖

[rogha]

I think a lot of subscription services would be doing a lot better if they were more flexible for people to build super custom packages for their needs. like especially software packages like Adobe - like you can get in touch and they’ll sort something out alledgedly but literally if they pushed even something like buy one get one half price without having to reach out I think they would find a lot of people who are like using one Would Get Another if it wasn’t so expensive and are getting by on something else or a moveable license where you can switch to a different software once every 28 days.

This transcription software i was recommended has a certain number of hours per month depending on the tier but allegedly you can get in touch to buy more hours? Like that is a better service. I am using the free version because the only thing I need this software to do is transcribe audio recordings but as soon as my hour for the month is up a window should pop-up directing me to where I can buy more time. I don’t need ten hours a month I need 4 hours every six all at once. I’m tired of looking through long lists of features per tier to see what Paid Tier Gets Me The Handful Of Features I Actually Want Plus A Million I Don’t.

Some of these companies are hoping I’ll use a free trial and forget to cancel so they can have 24 euro or whatever off me per month of my forgetfulness whereas if they were offering closed short term contracts or more personal packages they would have that 24 euro and also. some goodwill. like I don’t wanna jump through so many fucking hoops to use a software for one project and not pay for it for the rest of my life if we are renting these things at least let me say ‘hey I will give you 24 euro to use this for one month and after the month is over revoke my access.’

Maybe it’s all back end stuff and I’m not computer literate enough to understand that all this is far to complicated to execute on in reality and Celtx is actually three different softwares pretending instead of one in-browser software where features could be turned on and off for individual users depending on a personal package they build, but christ on a bike must i be fighting for my life for every single service.

And not to be working in customer service but quality service comes not just from individuals on the metaphorical/actual floor dealing with people but the policies and structures put in place to make accessing that service and that service meeting my actual needs as easy as possible.

[wangleline]

How is adobe software SO BAD

Literally every adobe product I've tried so far wants to kill itself the instant I use it

[skykashi]

It's wild bc I can see that you did the lines first, then colored over them omg, not every art needs to have a bunch of layers, especially when you want to blend colors together. I hope your rest of the day treats you well! I love seeing your character breakdowns and art on my dash :>

Exactly, thank you, and that's literally what I explained in the video plus the layers they got screenshot from was from the Adobe Illustrator file that I already said in the video that I only used for the stuff that needs the sensitivity pressure like the line art, usually I would just do everything in Adobe Illustrator because how hard it is to keep going back and forth between 2 softwares and this is why I don't usually go for overly complicated style and settle with just the basic shading and highlighting that Adobe Illustrator will allow me to use but because I wanted to go for something different this time and challenge myself, I had to use Clip Studio Paint too with Adobe Illustrator like I explained in the video and honestly with all the issues Adobe Illustrator has, organizing layers is so much easier in Adobe Illustrator because it automatically creates a folder for each new layer and if you expand the little arrow beside the layer it will show you each individual thing you did separately so it will have everything you did already separated in case you wanted to change or edit any of it but it will also stay hidden and out of the way unless you expand the arrow, while in Clip Studio Paint you will need to create the folder yourself and move layers into it and organize it manually while working which I'm not very good at because I'm not used to doing it this way so I end up either doing most of it on the same layer or just merging layers together once I feel that it started to get a little too crowded for my ADHD brain to handle...

Also first they said they think it's an AI because it feels muddy to them, so I record a video showing and explaining why and how some parts gets pixilated while moving it between the 2 softwares then they be like "I don't understand how this is related" And "the art style in this one looks different from your usual art style" will duh, that's the entire point of trying something new lol. Honestly this whole thing feels like a very bad dream to me, I still can't process what the heck happened just ☹️