#my art is my own algorithm

[bleed-more]

Alex’s moment of clarity as he watches Seth die in his arms

Fan art for @studentfilmyoulying’s fanfic that I am extremely unwell about

[falmerbrook]

(Mild flashing/eyestrain warning for the second half! I'll post a slower version below that's less flashy and let's you see the details)

A short Morrowind animation for a MAP (Multi-Animator Project).

It was fun trying different methods of animation (no reference for Nerevar, rotoscoping a 3D model for the ring, and a video reference for the hand) and letting myself use a loose sketchy style!

YouTube Link

Version with the second half slowed down (link because Tumblr is dumb about having more than one video in a post):

[vanhelsingapologist]

Publishing has always been a fucking nightmare, but now it’s a layer of hell. It’s not enough that writers be good at what they do. Writers have to maintain an active social media presence and cultivate a following. Be available.

They have to be conventionally attractive enough to look good enough to see on a screen, aesthetically pleasing, kind, funny, up-to-date on trends, socially aware but not so controversial that they turn off a brand from California from slapping their discount code on a video promoting a book.

They have to do all of this with no media training, with little help from the companies that are supposed to be doing this for them.

Of course, a lot of this isn't possible for say, the 40-something mother of two who teaches English at a school and writes on the side. She’s boxed out of an already complex industry that already has enough walls.

On some level, I think authors have always marketed themselves a little, but we’ve reached such a crazy point where we’re demanding the author become the influencer. Accessibility in publishing has narrowed from an inch to a sliver. And that inch was hard enough to get in as is.

[optiwashere]

I have a lot of (mostly negative) thoughts about Wattpad, but everything that's happening over there w/r/t another fandom purge is why AO3 exists in the first place. It's sad to watch another cycle of queer and sexual art get removed because of Corporate Values, regardless of my personal opinions.

Everyone unfamiliar should do their Fanlore homework on Purges, starting with the infamous FFN purges.

[horreurscopes]

not that i wasn't doing it for the longest time in the 2010s and it probably is a stepping stone that many younger artists will eventually outgrow but man something about the pinterest reference industrial complex bums me out.... nothing takes the magic out of a piece of art like seeing it and being like i know exactly what photo from the aesthetic side of pinterest this pose/study is from

[paul-simon-juggling]

Such a good video I found from Paul and Artie's 1982 tour of Japan!!

[kaslanist]

riot grrrl!

[vehemourn]

i just wanna know. what does anyone want artists to do. im really just curious. Like if u steal all of our work and chase us out of all of the jobs and crush every single one of us until we either die or quit. Whats the end goal. artists provided their work for free for 2 decades and built their lives in digital spaces. And in a few years the landscape is changing drastically away from that :/. I'm fucking tired. I'm tired of artists being disrespected. And yet its not going to Stop. Our spaces are still snuck into and scraped, our work is still stolen, and we still have people that are just outright fucking nasty to us just bc u draw a furry animal or are queer. what is anyone supposed to do. our communities were destroyed. our spaces were destroyed. so many artists are Gone and scattered to the winds. What is anyone Doing.

[koko2unite]

[lemongogo]

can i ask.how u guys practice ur creativity <3 how u practice ur imagination or like.. how u experiment with ur art, how u come to ideas and how u develop them.<3 pretty please <3

[yepthatsacowalright]

"Like everyone else in the modern world, large parts of my life have become increasingly digital, sometimes against my will. The result is a very mixed bag. Some things have improved, and others have definitely degraded. I constantly wrestle with the balance of these changes, and I try to be mindful about them. But this is the hardest to do where it intersects with my work.

I’ll start with streaming. I did not come up on streaming. I’m in my 40s, so by the time I was buying music of my own it was the early 90s and I had cassette tapes. Then came the CD, then mp3 players, then streaming and cell phones. The last change has affected how I interact with music the most. Since streaming became the norm, I listen to music a lot less. I know my age is a factor here, but streaming has killed a lot of my desire to explore. I still love to hear new music, but I’m basically 100% recommendation based at this point. I never browse platforms like Spotify. In theory, having all of recorded music available at once, for a monthly fee that’s less than what a single album cost 30 years ago, would be a feeling of abundance, of infinite possibilities. But the actual result is just being overwhelmed. Sifting through hundreds of thousands of tracks that aren’t quite doing it for me just sounds exhausting. So I don’t use it very much. I can’t remember the last time I actively searched for new music on it. And passive things like algorithmic suggestions and playlists have not filled the gap.

I also work in music, so I’m always suspicious of how much that colors my opinion. But I feel the same way about film these days. I used to really stay on top of movies and shows. Since the streaming model has taken over, I have that same overwhelmed, agitated feeling I get from the music platforms. Scrolling through all those films and shows, with their auto-playing trailers and automated recommendations, just makes me turn the tv off. So I rely entirely on recommendations here, too, and I have no desire to explore.

It’s been strange watching former hobbies and sources of joy turn into chores, or even things I actively avoid. I realize that a lot of people will feel the exact opposite here, though. I don’t think this is unanimous by any means. But this is how it has turned out for me, and it has made what I do for a living feel really strange. Because I no longer enjoy these platforms very much as a user, releasing work has become increasingly dissonant. How do you make things for platforms you don’t personally enjoy? I’ve never had this issue before now. I liked buying albums. I liked going to record stores, where they had curated selections, and hunting for something that I wanted to take home with my very limited funds. So the idea of creating something that would be packaged as an album, that someone else might discover in a shop and decide to take home, was really motivating. It served as a mental model. And while I liked going to shows sometimes, they weren’t what made me want to write songs. I was all about records and the process of finding them. I cherished my tiny little collection, and the idea of being a part of someone else’s was really cool to me.

Watching a number occasionally go up on an app I personally try to avoid isn’t quite the same." - Ben Cooper/Radical Face's blog entry Investment Strategies [x]

[blindtiiger]

you know ur in deep with ur OC’s when you start making human AU’s with them😭😭

(girl on right & cockroach next to the old man belongs to @aguagua)

[kaiserouo]

Do you know what string art is?

Yeah that thing. Kinda. Maybe.

For anyone curious, the setup is:

600 nails around the perimeter. (image size 540x360)

3 ropes (RGB) going from one nail to the next. Each rope does this 2442 times.

The algorithm (at least the implementation I took from Github) is to literally brute force every possible pin and use the L2 distance from the resulting image to the last step to determine the best next pin every step. Greedily does this until no improvement is possible.

Easily enough for computers and quite effective even if it's a greedy heuristic approach. Not really parallelize-able other than the 3 ropes so this took 10 minutes to generate.

[drawingtheseaonacuttlefish]

At this point... I'll just unfollow whichever mf uses ai art

[skynapple]

I'm not even going to show you which art of mine this is from cause it doesn't matter but look at that ratio

This is why fanart is dying on Tumblr

Reblog first, THEN like. Always. That's how Tumblr has been and it should be. This isn't Instagram where you're "curating" content for a theme (and if you are that's fine that's what side blogs are for). But this is Tumblr.

Likes ONLY and I do mean ONLY tell the creator that you like it but it does NOTHING to promote it. It won't show up on your friends FYP if you like it. The post just dies.

Do better.

[48787]

I've obviously been leaning REALLY hard into the Decepticon theming as of late, considering either renaming my blog or creating a new one.

Probably not going to change much, "Hedonistic Gamer Pile" is fairly accurate, relatively unique, and has a certain amount of reverence to me now

However the allure of "Decepticon High Command" is always there, despite the fact that it's probably not unique. But it doesn't need to be, I suppose.

I don't know, maybe once I start writing a bit faster (Coinciding with an improved text editor. I love you obsidian.md but you're no nvim... But I'll keep you around (Sorry I've been having trouble in paradise with my electronic servants and warriors, my fondness for them blinds my ability to make progress sometimes. They'll all be stored. They'll all be saved.)) I'll probably want to eventually find some method of organizing things beyond just tags, but I'm certainly not ready to have a blog in a traditional sense yet.

I still don't know how this website works and don't think I ever will, so advice is helpful but not necessary. Posts will happen regardless, it's just a question of whether they're formatted for anyone other than me. I'm half considering literally just uploading .md files and refusing to care how they look on other people's machines. It's a .md file, make it look how you want to look idiot. Something like that at least.

And a part of me never wants to let go of "Hedonistic Gamer Pile" because, like, that's what I'll always be, a Hedonistic Gamer collecting a pile of shit I care about. This shitty little blog I was forced to learn how to love has been pretty nice and I want to do more with it but I also don't know if I want to change the labels. How vexing...

I've been wanting to spruce up my actual blog page, but I don't know if people actually look at those. I happen to find them a little confusing because when I don't know where buttons are I get a little scared and my brain is specially trained to have fight or flight responses shoot off whenever there is even a hint of (unaddressed) context sensitivity

Anyway expect way more Decepticon propaganda soon, whether it be here, on a new blog, or coming to a state/republic/federation near you!! I don't want to be Megatron, you must understand that I simply am Megatron, but not the one you know (regrettably I cannot turn into a gun yet, for one). This isn't a crisis of identity or anything, I just literally have a lot of identities and overlap and play into each other in weird ways. I just am very autistic and don't quite know how or when to show those overlapping identities in a format understandable to anyone but me or someone with a lot of time to parse and translate.

Time is meaningless and you are being deceived, I'll figure everything out in time, but questions comments concerns prayers battle-cries battle-hymns and strategems are appreciated! Might help me do it more efficiently!