#things like start from the middle and work out just don't work with the workflows I'm using for positional dithering

[megid0nt]

consider for a moment the following playing card: the windows xp era queen of spades

while the face card bitmaps in cards.dll are paletted to have 16 colours, they only use your bog standard rgbcmykw 8 colours that we know and love. but I like messing with colour gamut and so was playing with this, and got struck by something of no consequence to anyone but me:

when you apply a positional dithering map to this image to reduce it to 1 bit, note how the bottom half looks different from the top half: that's fucked. These cards are an even number of pixels, but for them to actually cohere they *need* vertical symmetry, and so naiively applying positional dithering to them ends up looking dreadful.

course, that's less satisfying bc it took manual intervention to duplicate the top of the card, but it's kinda interesting to me.

[sirfrogsworth]

Adventures in Cooling

The 5-star rated HVAC repair service I used kind of depressed me.

It was almost... too good?

Like, they offer 24/7 service. They have a text message system that lets you know when the tech is coming. Every tech has their own custom van that serves as a giant advertisement. The entire process is documented with a tablet computer. Every serial number and model number must be photographed. He has to follow a diagnostic checklist. And an upsell checklist. And a repair checklist. He had so many checklists that at one point he pulled a card out of his wallet to make sure he didn't forget one of the steps. He had a poorly memorized speech for every upsell. You could tell he didn't have "his" tools, but the company's tools that he borrowed.

None of this was "bad" as far as a workflow. The service was flawless and nothing was forgotten. But you could tell that every detail was micromanaged and if the tech didn't follow the procedures to the letter, he would probably get some kind of demerit.

I felt sorry for my tech. He was in his 60s and clearly had a severe chronic knee injury. He walked slower than I do. He was quite monosyllabic and difficult to make conversation with. Not unpleasant, just not great at communicating.

At one point I asked him if I was a good candidate for a heat pump and he was like, "Everyone is."

End of advice.

Oh, and the uniform.

The uniform was very silly.

Every square inch of his shirt was meant to assure people they have a qualified technician. The one sleeve listed his certifications from some Alphabet Association that certifies such things. And then the other sleeve made sure to let me know my technician was drug tested and background checked.

The entire visit I kept trying to imagine how being stoned might negatively affect HVAC repair. I mean, if he was on a little cocaine perhaps we could have wrapped things up 30 minutes sooner. Marijuana might have helped him communicate. Opioids could make his knee feel better. I don't think shrooms would have been a good idea. If he hallucinated an angry fan monster in my A/C unit that could have been really awkward.

He was a terrible salesman—but for some reason, I fell for every upsell. Actually, I sold all of the upsells to myself in my head. I got a new filter and had him install it because I worried I would forget or I would install it improperly (not really possible, you just stick it in). But for the price I paid I could have bought 6 years worth of filters.

I just wanted everything sorted. I am so stressed and do not have the bandwidth to deal with A/C troubles. So I just said "yes" to everything. But the price kept inflating as we went along and every time it inflated he required a signature on his tablet.

This repair business had been corporatized to death and it made me miss all of my dad's friends from the old days who he would ask for favors. He always "knew a guy." He would trade car repairs for discounts on things we needed around the house. And they all worked for themselves and had their own tools and their own shitty truck and they all said, "There's your problem!" with the same masculine affect.

Their uniform was a flannel shirt and jeans and I bet some of them were high as fuck.

And this elderly gentlemen with the bum knee kept checking his checklist to make sure he checked every check because he feared managerial discipline.

He got to the sales pitch for the fluorescent dye. He was like, "Do you want this? You don't have to buy it." And I started selling it to myself in my head despite his assurance it wasn't really necessary. I worried if I had a big leak and I don't discover it until the middle of July, I would regret saying no in this moment. But then I realized he hated the dye injection process. And his poor salesmanship was mostly him not wanting his hands to be fucking radioactive yellow for the rest of the day. He tried wearing gloves to avoid it, but he still ended up with yellow hands and grumbled, "I really hate this stuff." Which was one of the few unrehearsed things he said to me the entire time.

Once the checklist was complete and the house was already starting to cool, he had one final sales pitch for me. He asked that I give his company a 5-star review and to make sure I mention his name. He told me that in July all of the techs with the most 5-star reviews will have their names put in a hat. And "the boss" will give one lucky employee a free vacation.

This vacation thing sounded like such a manipulation. And I'm sure "the boss" has instructed his techs to tell this tale of the free vacation so customers will be like, "Well, shit. I don't want this poor old guy with the shitty knee to miss out on that."

And it was then I realized just how this company got so many 5-star reviews.

Diabolical.

But the good news... my house is cold as heck.

And I keep shivering because I can't figure out the perfect setting on my thermostat. I guess I was used to the inefficiency and I will have to recalibrate.

[chaoskirin]

Today, While I was in the middle of typing an email, Microsoft Outlook 365 popped up a window demanding feedback. And boy did I have shit to say.

I had to keep the swearing out, because apparently any report I make is duplicated and sent to the IT department. But the text I ended up sending follows:

---

God, I have so much to tell you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. First: Stop messing with everything. Outlook works fine, but you keep changing things that don't need changing. Moving buttons around. Turning on features that I have explicitly turned off for not working before. Just today, you turned on the auto-suggestions again, which would be great if it actually worked. Instead, when it suggests anything you don't accept, it just mashes words together. Do you know how it feels to be typing a professional email and you miss one of those failures and send your email anyway? I mean, to be fair, I caught ten, so I still got a 90% on the ol' Microsoft-sanctioned-typo-factory. But the person I emailed doesn't see it that way, do they? They see that I mashed three words together like there was a wasp on the space bar.

Plus, my signature keeps getting deleted. Not just switched to nothing, but completely deleted. Which means I have to re-make that every time your developers get bored and decide to re-haul a program that absolutely never needs re-hauling. I remember once a couple months ago the attachment button just disappeared, and there was no way for me to attach a final bill. I had to actually use my personal gmail address to send an email to a customer because for about 16 hours, it was impossible to attach anything.

But, you say, I should have sent error reports. And I did. But the question in my mind always comes back to "why are you messing with something that does not need changing?" The only thing that ever happens is that you change aesthetics. Colors. This time the boxes are gone. Do you think you're at risk of losing customers? Do you think you have to keep things new and fresh? No. People are shackled to you. You have a quasi-monopoly and a stranglehold on a whole lot of workflows. People cannot leave you. In the world of word processing and spreadsheets, you are Alcatraz. You don't have to change things to keep people here.

Instead, long-time bugs continue to plague everything I do within this hell-suite of software. Sometimes when I try to start typing in the body of the email, outlook decides that, no, I don't want to type an email! I want to send the other emails in my inbox to the archive, where, if I don't notice this, they will sit and fester forever. There's also the bug where I create an email and it duplicates it and puts it in my drafts. Or the bug where it just creates a blank email and puts it in my drafts. Do you want to know how many blank emails I've deleted from my drafts folder? There are not enough numbers in existence to count this.

If you REALLY want to know how to improve Outlook and this message isn't just going into the wilderness like all those notebooks from the hit-TV-show-where-nobody-liked-the-ending, LOST, then please. Listen. From the bottom of my heart and from the top of my lungs: Stop changing everything. Nothing needs changing. Just run a good service. Get your programmers onto fixing longstanding bugs instead of trying to make an email and scheduling program look like a fashion show in Paris.

And if I seem a little ticked off in this message, it's because your request for feedback popped up in the middle of me compiling an email, which was just about halfway done. Outlook, in all its wisdom, decided that I didn't actually need that email and went ahead and deleted all the text in it. All of it. So after I finish giving you an earful, I'm going to have to retype it.

Hope this helps. Have a wonderful day.

[benzjr]

The 2024 reboot no one was expecting...

Those of you who have been around for a while might just remember back when I did fanfiction, and if you do, you might remember the story of my Supernoobs OC Josh Carter, the aspiring social butterfly, future superstar and reluctant superhero whose life was getting way more complicated these days...

Back towards the end of 2019, I was really starting to lose steam with him; the inspiration I had for him was really starting to wane, especially given the fandom seemed to peter out and my previous partner-in-angst-crime Pumpkin (@whynotzoidbergdotorg) moved on to other creations. I've definitely missed creating fandom work over the past few years, but between not really finding anything to grab my attention in the same way and a series of setbacks in my life (not to mention the grind of growing my YouTube channel), things just happened to fall by the wayside.

But it seems I wasn't posting into the void after all! Josh and his story left a huge impact on the small but surprisingly resilient Supernoobs fandom, and over the past few months I've been pulled back in, thanks especially to @ghostlyapivorous' @superastral-official and @jaspydunks' @noobs-rewritten. So much so, that I've been re-motivated to return and at least continue (I don't think I should be presumptuous and suggest "finish") Josh's story. In addition to a few unreleased chapters from the original run, I've been working on continuing the story, and I've almost gotten to the end of Dancefest, where we originally left off.

We'll be picking up from there soon, but it didn't seem fully right to go back to using the old 2016 designs of our main cast — my artistic workflow has completely changed since then. So, it was time to give them all a glow-up. The primary goal was mainly to get them looking closer to the show's style, though I've also taken the opportunity to resolve a few longstanding annoyances with some of the characters and change some things up. Despite not being part of the main cast, I also decided to do an image for Zoey, given she's a pretty recurrent character in the series. Just like the first time around, expect to see new art of these kids in the future (though I don't think I'll spin up @joshcartersblog again).

Look out for the continuation of Josh's story very soon, but in the meantime, catch up on how Josh got here:

A Future Super-Something, the first story: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Perfect Disasters, the second story: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Over and Out, the third story: 1 & 2 3 4 5

Diamonds on the Rebound, the fourth story

Reminiscence, the fifth story

A Hero’s Prelude, the sixth story: 1 2 3

Dancefest, the seventh story (so far)

Text versions of everyone's descriptions under the cut.

Josh Carter

Josh Carter has only one goal in mind: becoming one of the popular kids. Enamored with fame and starry-eyed about celebrity, he's chasing the top of the Cornbury Middle School food chain with the help of his friends. Clever, ambitious, and seemingly carefree, he'll stop at nothing in his quest to rise to the top without losing himself, while making plenty of buzz along the way.

…But will something bigger and more destructive than the current popular clique or a mortifying social mishap stop him in his tracks?

Dreams of a social media-perfect lifestyle

Friends with Jock Jockerson despite not being a jock

His "walk-in closet" is practically a department store for one

The Yellow Superdude

As elusive as he is mysterious, the Yellow Superdude is the newest addition to Cornbury's local team of intergalactic virus warriors. But he doesn't seem too happy about having the opportunity of a lifetime; honestly, it seems like he doesn't get along with the other four at all. With the heroes already building local recognition and facing even bigger battles, can he ever become the hero the Earth needs — and does he even want to?

Alias: ???

Powers: Energy blasts, stretchy body, shapeshifting, possibly more if he ever actually went to training

Always has messy hair for some reason

Simon Parker

Josh's best friend since forever, Simon is the realist of the group. As much an inventive strategist as an easygoing wingman, Simon's a true ride-or-die in Josh's popularity adventures, turbocharging their social game while keeping his starstruck bro down-to-earth. They've been there for each other even in their lowest moments, including Simon's brutally public one last year. It's a trust that makes Simon unafraid to be honest with Josh. But despite all this, is Josh keeping a super-sized secret from him?

Enjoys the outdoors with his parents

Still recovering from a 7th-grade incident where he was dubbed "The Whale"

Maintains countless inside jokes and references with Josh

Rebecca Hewitt

Rebecca is a punchy wildcard who's garnered her own notoriety. Since stumbling into Josh's high-flying life in sixth grade, she's been looking to find herself somewhere in the many aesthetics Josh's influencer adventures bring into her world. Rough around the edges but fun at heart, she's not one to mess with, but worth having in your corner.

Recovering horse girl

Still throwing out Mini-Horse Friendship Force merchandise

Best dodgeball player in the class

Zoey Miller

Zoey is the intrepid reporter behind The Cornbury Hound Dog, Cornbury Middle School's unofficial school news blog. Zoey can be eager and persistent to a fault, the perfect attitude for hunting the next big story. She keeps up on all the gossip around the halls — especially Josh's ambitious search for teenage stardom. Totally not because she has a crush on him or anything…

An ace at alliteration

Has a venerable collection of visor hats

Elaborately daydreams of meet-cutes with Josh

[narsh-poptarts]

2, 5, 16!

(artist asks)

2. how long have you been drawing?

oh my god EONS like literally forever forever, started out drawin me and my friend's sonas when we were in elementary school and just shrimply <3 never stopped <3333 i think my first DIGITAL drawing was in 2016 tho, that's when i got my tablet (and that thing is still fuckin kickin!!!!! i still use it today!!!!!!)

5. what's your favorite thing to draw? answered!!

16. Do you draw more today than you did in the past, or do you draw less?

I definitely draw a lot more today than I did in the past!! mostly that's a bit due to like. drawing for school now, having a new thing to work on for class and such and how that's reshaped my workflow, but also like!!!! im drawing a lot more for fandoms and my own personal work!!!! i think about a lot a lot of new ideas and stuff and then actually draw them out instead of just letting them hang around my head like i used to. i mean. i still kinda do that, but im generally more likely to actually draw it now. there's a lot that's still the same!!!

i used to go months and months without drawing a single thing and then i would start drawing and do like one thing. I was very very sparse with how much i drew, i have maybe 3 sketchbooks total that were mine from like. elementary/middle school and not a single one of them is filled up. i think maybe ONE is.

the sketchbook im currently using is actually one i started using in i think 5th or 6th grade

ANYWAYS. i STILL kinda do the whole "don't draw for a month" thing <<;;; but now i relatively consistently draw at least one thing per month!!! one big thing anyways. a lot of the art i do nowadays is all stuff that can't be completed in one sitting

[vespidwasp]

aaaand one more random thought i guess. I like friendship test for a lot of reasons, but one of the big ones is... it feels exactly like the sort of game i have always wanted to make? i was 12 years old dreaming about making an rpg maker game set in a laboratory with scientists and robots and experimented-on people and animals. I never got around to it cuz i hated my middle school years so much, not to mention my long-lasting fatigue and executive functioning troubles. But I would have loved friendship test soo so much at that point in my life.

I watched Mar's Q&A yesterday. It's kind of amazing how FT went from being, well, literally a "test" game into such a long and thought out story. I think when I think of making a game, I feel like I have to have the story pretty well planned out before I can start programming or making art for it. But thats not true, is it? I'm just holding myself back that way, getting myself stuck. I think my workflow will be best if I have many things to switch between anyway, between the programming, story, writing, artwork, gameplay, music, etc. I always hate doing the same type of stuff for too long.

IDK. seeing that bit of Mar's process makes gamedev seem doable. I don't have to have a plan going in. esp if planning isnt really working for me.

[design2repeat]

We've Been Documenting Our Pattern Design Process All Wrong (And How We're Fixing It)

Hey fellow pattern people! 💕

So we just had one of those "why didn't we start this sooner?!" moments in our studio last week. After losing track of how we created that one perfect botanical motif (you know, the one everyone keeps asking about), we finally got serious about documenting our design process.

We're definitely not experts at this—just fellow artists figuring things out alongside you—but we thought we'd share what we've been learning about documentation because OH MY GOODNESS it's making such a difference!

What we've been trying:

Setting up our phones on cheap tripods to record time-lapses (not perfect lighting but who cares!)

Taking screenshots whenever we make a major design decision (future us says thank you)

Creating super simple project templates that don't feel overwhelming

Actually writing down our color codes instead of just... hoping we'll remember them? (lol why did we do this to ourselves)

The whole social media growth thing as artists can be SO draining sometimes. We're constantly creating new content, but then struggling to remember how we actually made the things people love most! It's like this weird cycle where the pressure to post makes us skip the documentation that would actually make posting easier?

We're finding that having even basic documentation is giving us SO much more to share. Those process videos? People are actually more into them than our finished work sometimes! Who knew our messy middle would be the content gold mine we needed?

This isn't about having a perfect system—none of us have time for that. It's about building tiny documentation habits that save future-us from wanting to throw our tablets out the window when a client asks "can you just tweak that pattern from last season?"

If you've found cool ways to track your design process that don't feel like extra work, please share! We're all figuring this out together, and honestly, it's way more fun that way.

Join us on this documentation journey? We promise it's less boring than it sounds! ��

[storm-stone]

02: feeling thankful

I'm feeling really grateful for my partner this week, and honestly, I simply wanted to share.

My brain has been all over the place. Work has been a little crazy. We have new leadership at my company, so there's a lot of new information to take in. My work laptop died, and the replacement was slightly delayed. But mostly, I'm gearing up for the dreaded return-to-office.

My team and I are more globally distributed than other groups in our company, so we currently work completely remotely. However, we're now being asked to return to the office for some time every month. It may seem like a small thing, but it has admittedly disrupted our work-life balance. It has impacted some of my team members extremely strongly, and their lives have essentially been turned upside down.

All week, I've been holding spaces for difficult conversations. Sometimes they happen via work chats on our messaging platform. Sometimes there are random questions or outbursts in 1:1s. Our team meeting this week was focused just on getting feedback about the change. But thankfully, my team is very kind. The feedback, while passionate and rightly negative, has never felt inappropriate or burdensome.

I will admit, though, that I'm feeling a little burnt out from holding the space for those conversations. I can't do anything about the policy, and I don't have any additional answers to their questions, so I'm in between a rock and a hard place -- the Middle Earth of middle management.

How am I going to get out of this?

I feel disoriented. I've been distracted. I'm forgetting things. I even accidentally left a candle burning for much longer than I planned. I keep visiting ismercuryinretrograde.com even though I know the answer is NO. It's particularly frustrating after such a successful and heartwarming beginning to the year with the team that I manage.

Perhaps as one way to recapture the feeling of having control over my life, I went on a whole reorganizing binge. I cleaned out my closet. I reorganized my dresser. I bagged up clothes for donation. I ordered a new side table for my workspace. I set up some new workflows for my new work laptop to help streamline the things I had been simply coping with on my old laptop.

My partner has watched me in my mini-tornado, like the most controlled of chaoses taking place in the Middle Earth of middle management.

After having a frustrating day of his own, my partner took some personal time and left work two hours early, to come home and find me attempting to put my new side table together while also getting my new work laptop set up, all after having given myself a blister from holding the screwdriver wrong (hah I'm literally useless!).

What did he do upon finding me in this condition?

He started building the side table himself. He walked me through all my questions about how to set up my work station. Even laughed with me when I quipped that I shouldn't care so much, given that we're going back into the office part-time anyway. And even spent some of our time during dinner Googling how to optimize my workspace, i.e., give me the dream set up that I've been saying that I've always wanted.

I asked him how he had so much stamina to put up with all of my requests and swirling.

And he said that he didn't find me annoying at all. That every question or need that I have had is valid. That we're a team, and we help each other out. And that he likes doing these things for me, simply because he loves me, and he likes seeing me smile.

Which made me smile.

I don't know how I got so lucky. And I know there are times when my mind swirls. But this week... I just feel so damn lucky with how easy our love is. How our journey isn't really about trying to be better for each other, or compensate for what we've lacked. It really just is about how much fun we're having while sharing space, and time, and life.

There are so many articles out there listing out ways to know you've found the right one. 8 Ways You Can Tell They're Your Soulmate. 10 Ways You Know They're Committed to You. 20 Things to Watch for in a Partner. 500 Red Flags (and 5 Green Ones!).

But this one is the one that makes the most sense to me:

When you're around them... can you just be?

[mango-ti]

@stargirl-3000 Hiii!!! First of all , thank you!! Also sorry for the wait, I realized that if i want to show how i did stuff, I will have to create a new head and screenshot the progress and it took me a bit because of irl work. but it's alright because you were very nice to me and I want to at least try helping out as much as I can :]

I'll show how i create a head from start to finish because i don't really know how to better explain my workflow because i'm not very good at explaining things i think, so it will be the most straightforward way

images will be smashed together because tumblr image limit is a thing

so for this tutorial i'll be making the head for Cure La Mer from Tropical Rouge Precure

First i got a bunch of references

it seems her eyes are usually closer together and bigger in the show while the official art above has them further apart, i'll go with the show look since it's cuter imo

get the front and side and set them up in blender

when doing Belles head i followed this tutorial i found because it was the only one that explained what keys to press and what they do, so for the general shaping i referred back to this video for reference

make the mouth, and then when shaping the eyes follow the reference images very close, remember to shape them from the side too. extrude some vertices to start filling in the mesh. also don't forget eye sockets and mouth like i did down there

ngl i could probably do less polygons and it would still be fine since i added subdivision later anyway

Select an edge,duplicate it and separate it by selection. then start extruding from the edge and start outlining the eyelash shape

i usually stylize the eyelashes to be very long or give them fun shapes :]

for individual lashes i subdivided the edges till i got the vertices to line up and extruded further, then merged the last two for a sharp end

don't forget to line up from the side

(note: my references don't match up ideally but just moved them around to help me with the shape)

This next one is something you should probably not do since it's kinda useless and here i could 100% get away with it just being on texture but i just wanted to do it

so i did the bottom eyelash too :]

next you select the eyelash, extrude it somewhere near, then select the ends of the eyelashes and merge them so they can stay sharp

note: i dissolved the middle row of polygons because they were useless in the long run

you can push one side a bit into the skin so it fits the skull, watch out for bits like this and fix them

repeat with bottom eyelash if you did one

realize i'm stupid and forgot the mouth. speedrun the thing

now the eye. get the circle and scale it to the reference, rotate slightly to fit the side

extrude twice to make two rings, one will be the basis for the outline and the other one for the pupil

push the second ring and middle vertex slightly inside for a slight illusion of depth, then extrude the whole thing inside

now the highlight, get circle and shape accordingly, remember the side

also remember to no be like me and hit the F key to fill the highlight

adding the pearl thingies :]

now do the eyebrows like you did the eyelashes

now go here and hit "face orientation", you will see they don't match, go to edit mode, select the parts and do alt+n to bring up the menu and flip them

Now go into viewport right click the eyelashes to see this menu, hit shade auto smooth, 180 gives soft shading and zero gives very harsh one where you can see every line, for me 30 worked just right

check this specific angle to see if it looks alright, mine didn't so i fixed it

now take an edge again, dupe it, and extrude. shape from the side and then check if it overlaps with the eye, if so, push it back a little bit

so for the ear followed this guy's tutorial (ear part is at 21:32, also turn on captions), i recommend the whole video it's good,

it seems like i added subdivide modifier at this point too

now for the fun part- textures!

i will be doing my textures in clip studio paint

first you're gonna download this bad boy, it will give you an option to reload the tex from blender without having to go to materials tab every time

mark your seams and click live unwrap, see if the uv satisfies you , you can scale it and move it around, it might take a few tries to get the seams right, but you'll get it right eventually

when you're satisfied export the uv, also when exporting i recommend setting it to 2000px square and setting the fill capacity to 0, more than that will fill the uv with white and it's annoying

block out the colors :] I usually color pick from my references

then gradually add more needed detail according to the reference

your texture will most likely look rather simple and that's alright! less is more in some cases!

i also wanted to give her some finishing touches so we'll add a solidify for lines and some simple shading

follow this video for the lines (4:32), and this simple shader setup which you can copy from here too

the shadows don't look the best at certain light angles but it works for something quick and simple until i learn something more advanced

Congratulations!!! We now have a head!!

The main things that i think are important are: following the reference shapes and letting the texture carry the whole thing lmao. just trust the processes

honestly you can just follow the reference slightly and then go ham doing whatever with the textures and colors! go wild like fan artists do!

you can now do stuff like rigging and blend shapes but i haven't touched those yet

I don't know how to end this so if you have any questions let me know and have a good night!!

BEHOLD

My first model in blender :]

It's probably not very good on a technical level but I'm still very proud of it

Her face turned out sooo good she looks so cute when facing the front

Also have this first try that looked so ugly I redid the whole thing

[lvmimis]

cw: self-indulgent and selfship-coded. radiologist!reader (lmfao). fluff.

"ugh, do i really have to go down there?"

you bite your lip, and the radiology technician on the phone pauses, before she insists again, and when she mentions the trigger words 'patient care' and 'documentation', you start to regret the whiny tone your voice took just moments ago. this is a place of work, and you're a professional. a doctor. you shouldn't be upset by something so fundamental to your oath as actually talking to a patient, but this is the fifth time you've been called on the phone to deal with something outside of the growing list of reports waiting to be read, and frankly you're a little bit tired of it.

you sigh, but force agreeability into your tone this time.

"fine. thank you, i'll be down in a bit."

the technician thanks you for not resisting her further, and you hang up, leaning back in your chair and letting out a sigh as you rub your temples. you're tired and the night has barely begun. after drafting a CT report in the middle of a thought, you quickly let your junior know that you'll be back in a few minutes, and make your way down to the x-ray suite.

typically you don't read outpatients at this time of night, and any results you'd dictate into a radiology report would be relayed verbally by the emergency department physicians or the inpatient team instead of you, but this order had come in at a weird timing, and now you're the one who has to deal with the consequences. a few things were strange about the order, 1. that the name was hidden (although it won't be the first time your hospital has dealt with vips) and 2. that the patient themselves requested a physician see them before they got imaged. because the request was so out of the norm, you didn't fight it too much, because part of you was curious. the orders looked like they were for upper extremity films - forearm, wrist and hand. nothing too out of the ordinary.

you make it down the stairs in record time, your stride quick enough that you breathe a little heavy. the quicker you talk to them, the faster you could get out of there and back to your list without falling too far behind. once you make it to x-ray, you notice a few things are wrong.

your technician is standing outside waiting for you, and her face is the slightest shade of red.

a few other technicians who should be working in CT are also gawking through the window.

you raise an eyebrow, and she cocks her head over to the small waiting room. you look in that direction, and don't see much, save for two moving figures you can't identify in the back. when the other techs peering through the window see you coming, they look sheepish and step back as though they are trying to find something to explain why they're not working.

"what's the patient's name?" you ask the xray tech in a whisper, as you usher her to come in with you. you are about three steps from the door.

"Deku."

"Deku?" you repeat. the technician nods rapidly, and you're still confused to why she looks slightly distressed... up until you walk in.

Oh.

Deku wasn't a last name; it was a Hero name.

Deku, hero name Deku, sits in a hospital gown thrown over a frankly torn up hero costume, atop a rickety looking stool, accompanied by a man who just as recognizable as he is, hero name Dynamight, arms crossed over his chest as he leans against a wall. your eyes flit from one to the other, rapidly, and then you turn and look at the tech and she's standing quickly behind a computer, waiting for instructions. you blink a few times, as though you've forgotten how to speak or introduce yourself, then open your mouth, but patient-who-is-interrupting-your-workflow Deku beats you to it.

"hi, um, nice to meet you!"

he looks far too cheerful to be in the hospital, and he even raises his arm to wave, then winces, as it flops unnaturally in your direction.

that's the injury, all right.

Dynamight looks like he's about to hit him for a moment, then looks at you instead, you who gape like a fish in your bright pink scrubs and topknot.

"are you the doctor?"

Dynamight's voice and demeanor is as gruff as it sounds on television, and he already looks like he doesn't trust you. you're not new to resistance from patients because of the way you look (young and inexperienced), but this feels different.

you clear your throat. "yes-" you begin, and you try to introduce yourself properly with your last name, but Dynamight waves you off.

"we asked you to come down here because Glass Bones here insisted he needs to warn you about something before you read his xrays."

Deku gives you a nervous look, and tries to laugh off his hero partner's remarks, but Dynamight's stare looks straight at you, as though trying to intimidate you into submission. you've recognized hostility as a manifestation of caring over the years, so you try not to let it bother you. you nod, then look at Deku, who appears a lot less combative, and acts as though he's barely injured, despite the clear arm deformity that looks more painful than it seems to be.

"did you get pain medication before coming here?" you ask. reflexively, you move forward and take his arm, which has both heroes tense up. you look at the tech, and ask if she's sure he came straight from outpatient. he clearly needs a cast.

"do you have feeling in your forearm?" you ask. slightly overdeveloped muscles make it harder for you to feel the snap and you don't want to move him too much. when you look up, he's clearly blushing and Dynamight rolls his eyes.

"y-yeah."

you set his arm down quickly after examining him, feeling your own cheeks warm inappropriately, then look away quickly.

"why did you need the radiologist to come see you?" you ask, trying to avert your eyes from his too-pleasant green stare.

"he's fucked up his arm so many times that he usually goes to a specific hospital-"

"kacchan, do you have to speak for me-"

"- and since this was the closest place, he thought you'd deserve a warning."

you blink.

"that's... nice?' you ask. odd but nice, you think. "i assure you, i'm experienced enough that i probably wouldn't be that thrown off by atypical fractures."

you say this confidently, and then when you help the tech position Deku to get xrays, and look at the films in the suite, you and the tech both look at each other before stepping out.

"so uh... thanks for the warning." you tell him, sheepishly.

Deku smiles and you forget that you have a list piling up waiting for you.

"i don't typically do wet reads to the actual patient but you probably need that casted. i'll call the emergency department to let them know you're coming and maybe we can put in for transport for you-" you start.

Dynamight twists his mouth to the side.

"i can cast it myself. Get up, Deku," he starts, and Deku gives him a slightly miserable look that you find a little too endearing for your own liking. you wonder if they're dating.

there's a small part of you that also wonders if Dynamight could cast it, why he bothered showing up for xrays anyway.

"are you sure?"

"positive."

you raise your hands in mock defeat. "transport is still available if you'd like to go to the emergency department. i can give you a few moments to decide before documenting your refusal against medical advice." you say curtly.

"will you be there?" Deku asks and your heart stops. Dynamight gives him the most exasperated look while you gape like a fish.

"no...? i'm in the reading room..."

"oh. well, great to meet you! you have great bedside manner!" Deku says, and again, reaches with the wrong arm to shake yours. Dynamight drags him away, exhausted.

you watch the two of them shuffle out, and then as you step out, you can still see the other techs glance at them, then at you. they want to ask you questions, but you quickly shuffle your way back up to the reading room. you chuckle to yourself, because there's something a little hilarious about a radiologist being told they have nice bedside manner, but the giggle is less humor and something a little more... silly.

as you finalize your reports that night, you have a little renewed energy, and you deem it from value added by actually seeing a patient and talking to them in their time of need.

never mind that he's cute. never mind that he's Deku!

and never mind that in a week, you see him again, and he remembers you.

and never mind that he asks for your number, and technically, in saying yes, you don't break any rules. probably.

[genericpuff]

I really wanna make a comic like you did but I feel so discouraged and idk... I wish I had your motivation and discipline :(

how do you do it?

I mean - and I'm gonna try and phrase this as best as I can without sounding curt - 'motivation' as people tend to view it... isn't really how you get shit done. Like obviously I had to be motivated to take on projects like Time Gate and Rekindled but that initial motivation isn't what keeps me going each week. People tend to have the general idea that motivation comes first, action second, but you actually need to take action in order to gain motivation, as the motivation to continue comes best from seeing the results of your work. And those results can only happen if you take action.

Discipline isn't the same as motivation, either. Discipline is not beating yourself over the head to force yourself to "do the thing" - rather, discipline can only come from creating routine. It's what I've done with creating comics, but it only came after a long time doing it. And when I say a 'long time', I don't mean a week or a month or even a year, I mean a solid decade of work. Before Lore : Rekindled, I was working on Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH]; before that I drew Time Gate: Reaper; before Reaper I drew Uzuki; and before THAT I was in high school just doodling personal comics for myself (i.e. not for an audience). And every single project came with its own learning experience, audience, and results that motivated me to continue (though for some of them, I never did, a big part of growth and succeeding is knowing that failure is inevitable and some projects you just grow out of love with, even routine can't save you from not continuing a project that you're simply not enjoying doing anymore).

Drawing comics and writing is as routine to my day and life as going to work, eating, sleeping, showering, etc. even if I don't feel compelled to work, I'll still find myself picking away at a panel or two or coming up with a story beat to fill in where I'm going next. It's the kind of compulsion that comes not from internal motivation, but from not doing the thing that you usually do and that can only be gained from building habits and routine. I may not get the same amount of work done each day, some days I'll work on comics for 8 hours straight and others I'll only get a single panel done, but I still get something done (which is better than nothing, not getting anything done at ALL in the face of 'waiting' for motivation is where a lot of that discouragement can come from) and that's been reinforced into a routine that now feels effortless to do because I've been doing it so long. Just like building up any good habit like going to the gym or doing a skincare routine or drinking more water, it can feel impossible to do in the beginning, but the more you do it and commit to that routine - even when you don't 'feel' like doing it - the less overwhelming and impossible it feels and the easier it is to see it through.

As you fulfill those habits in the beginning and see the results of your work, THAT'S what gets turned into motivation to continue.

Take the motivation out of the equation in doing what you want to do, motivation is not the first step but the result of taking action. Don't wait until you "feel like it", take baby steps and start moving. If you're wanting to work on a comic, start with something small, like a single panel even. When I started out with Reaper, it would take me a month to get out an entire 18-22 page chapter; by the time I was finished, I was getting the same length of chapters out per week, and that was only possible after years of routine, practice, and polishing my workflow to the most efficient model possible (which only came with repetition and practice).

Of course, I wouldn't recommend people climb up to that output because it did take its toll on me, I'm actually currently in the middle of burnout from working on Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH] and outputting 60+ full color panels a week, that's not something that a single person is meant to do and now I'm paying the price for doing just that.

But my point is, I'm not where I started - just like everyone else, I had zero clue what I was doing in the beginning, but I stuck with it long enough to finally get to where I wanted to be. This is the same advice I'd give to people trying to write novels, or learn an instrument, or even learn how to draw.

I think the only other thing I can recommend beyond that is finding a support network. Have someone to share your results with, whether it's friends, family members, or other people partaking in your craft online. I'm in several comic creating Discords full of wonderful people who are open to giving me feedback and celebrating when I hit milestones. Think of it like having an accountability buddy - it's a lot easier to pick up new habits when you have someone else there for you to hold accountable and to hold you accountable. At the very least, it helps you feel less alone in that initial suffering of building a new routine from scratch.

It gets easier.

But the hard part is getting started and sticking to it.

And that's not gonna happen with motivation alone. You just gotta pick up your pencil (or whatever tool you're using) and start, even if it's just a little bit at a time. Some progress will make you feel a hell of a lot more motivated than no progress.

[iraprince]

hi ira! im p sure i remember u regulary scan ur traditional stuff n also times where u said u didnt do it for a while or smthg. do u have any tip on where tf to start w a big backlog...i didnt have acess to a good scanner or camera for a long time and now i do but i have so much shit i wanna scan in (both sketchbooks n loose papers) i have no idea where and how to start :')

[wheezing softly] yeah "regularly" is the goal, but hitting big backlogs every few weeks is more accurate to reality lmfao. but that means i have a lot of little things i've folded into my workflow to make it more doable!

that being said, i'm sure what works best will vary person to person, but the core rule that works best for me is: scan the backlog in batches, but digitally clean/edit/organize each batch in one sitting. picking up in the middle of where you left off in a physical stack is easy; picking up where you left off in a bunch of nebulous digital files is a fucking nightmare.

what i mean by that is, like, let's say i have a stack of 60 sheets of paper to scan in. maybe i don't have the time/energy/attention span to scan all 60; i start running out of steam at page 20 or something. in that case, that's fine, set the rest of the pages aside; but if i sit down to start cleaning/editing that folder of 20 scans, i should do them ALL NOW. if i don't think i can clean them all tonight, i'm going to wait and start tomorrow.

the reason i'm adamant about that is like, say i get through cleaning scans 1-6 out of 20, then i want to pick them up tomorrow.... frankly unless i remember to write myself a note (and i probably won't) i'm going to forget which one i was on. it's a pain to open a bunch of the scans trying to remember which one i did, i lose the "flow" that you can kind of get into when doing tedious stuff like this, etc... these are all tiny problems that i know ppl can come up w a million simple solutions for but the fact of the matter is for a task that is already kind of overwhelming + tedious that i'm already dreading, ANY AND ALL sources of friction are going to make it more likely that i'm just going to keep putting it off, and then it just Won't Get Done.

basically, discover anything that potentially throws you off or makes you lose your spot or just makes the whole thing more of a pain in the ass (i can't remember where i saved everything, the papers are disorganized and i can't remember what i've already scanned, etc) and ELIMINATE IT (throw everything into sub-folders of one big folder called "SCANS" even if it's ugly, gather ALL the stuff u need to scan into big piles in one place even if it's ugly and then move them elsewhere when scanned, etc). it's tempting to want to be like "i will get all my shit perfectly color-coded studyblr organized first and THEN i'll do my scans" but realistically that just means you're never ever going to do it. shit does not need to be organized. shit needs to be EASY!!!!!!

now some technical stuff, which is again super personalized to what works for me but maybe it'll give ideas!

i use a free scanning software called NAPS2 and it's a godsend. there's a batch scan setting where u can tell it how many pages u have to scan, then set how many seconds it waits between each scan (i.e. 10 seconds, just enough to take each finished page off and swap in the next one/flip to the next page of ur sketchbook) and then it'll just automatically keep scanning/waiting 10 secs for the next one/scanning until the stack is done, WITHOUT having to click "scan" every time. ymmv but for me this is really nice bc my scanner is on the opposite side of the room from my computer lmao (walking back and forth to hit "scan" every time is a friction point. ELIMINATE.)

NAPS2 also makes batch-saving things really easy with placeholders! for example, let's say i have 120 pages to scan and i want to save them to a folder. instead of having to save and name each one individually as i go (friction point. ELIMINATE.), when i'm done scanning i can batch save and name them "april 7 scan $(nnn)" and the program will automatically name each one "april 7 scan 001.png," "april 7 scan 002.png," etc etc all the way up to "april 7 scan 120.png." it saves me an incredible amount of time. (you can also do placeholders for current date/year/etc if that's useful to you, but i already tend to manually sort my files into monthly folders so the placeholder numbering is the only thing i've used personally.)

if you have one of those "all-in-one" home office printers that has a top-loading feeder you can use for stacks of loose pages instead of putting them directly on the scanner glass, that can also be a good way to get a high volume done without having to open and close the scanner/place each individual page on the glass/hit scan every time etc; but i would only advise that for casual scans where the quality/alignment doesn't matter much, bc there's a higher risk of jamming/wrinkling and sometimes a lot of the scans come out a bit crooked that way.

when you're digitally cleaning (this is clip studio specific but i'm assuming a lot of software operates similarly): once i've done whatever correction/adjustment layers i need to crisp up my scans, usually a tone curve + saturation adjustment in my case, i hold off on merging the adjustments down right away!!! you can copy those adjustment layers and then paste them on top of all the other scans you have to edit. i.e. copy the tone curve layer from scan 1.png, switch tabs into scan 2.png, ctrl+v. scan 3, ctrl+v. scan 4, ctrl+v. rinse and repeat and now look, you basically only had to do the tone curve once and then you can get the rest of the batch 90% done with one keyboard shortcut each. depending on each image you'll probably have to tweak them for them to look their best, but it's still way faster than navigating the menus and redoing your tone curve/level adjustments/etc from scratch every time (friction point. ELIMINATE.), especially if you're trying to fight your way through dozens of files.

uhhhh what else. well here's just a quick flowchart of my scan process in case it helps visualize! my philosophy is for everything to be in service of the end goal (get scans organized into patreon sketchbook compilations/set aside for later refinement/ready to upload, then i'm probably never going to look at them much again); i organize just enough to make that EASY, but i don't bother with any form of organization that i won't need to reference later. again, more steps just = more reasons the shit is not going to get done. ELIMINATE. STREAMLINE. WIN

(there's also a folder by year but i forgot to stick that in and also who cares. i hope this makes, like, any sense at all)

[jomatto]

I don't know if I've officially announced it, but I'm presently in the process of rewriting Mister Cinderella. I've written some things down but now I'm trying to organize everything into Scrivener.

This is something new I'm trying, at least in regards to my stories. I've spent the last couple years dealing with workflows, kanban boards, spreadsheets, and all sorts of annoying BS at work. From this experience, I've learned that I'm a very meticulous sort of fellow, and applying this approach to story writing may generate tangible results.

However, my plan is to only update once everything is complete. I ain't about that update-as-I-go life anymore. I want everything to be ready to go as soon as I make my comeback announcement, and nothing would kill my momentum more than a disappearing act moments after my grand entrance. If I'm gonna be coming back, I'd better be bringing something big to prove it.

Mister Cinderella has become a testbed for learning Scrivener. The more I dig into it, the more I'm digging its features. Being able to move scenes around willy-nilly or bring up reference cards for characters, settings, and themes across multiple windows fits very much into my modus operandi. I find it easier to set up foreshadowing and callbacks, maintain thematic consistency, and just make the whole thing a lot more structurally sound.

I've reached a point where I feel like I'm making steady progress, so I've started looking ahead for what's next on the horizon. Besides MC, there's only one other story that I haven't finished in my FF.net profile, and that's Best Deceptions Redux. The last update was July 2014, which means it's been more than 8 years. That's a helluva long time.

After a brief flirtation with Ranma 1/2 and Evangelion in middle/high school, it was Best Deceptions that pulled me back into the fanfiction writing game and it made poetic sense to close out my run with the story that started it all.

We go back even further and the original has been dead for much longer -- since 2006. That's over 16 years, twice as long as my neglect. Methinks the story is cursed since it failed to cross the finish line twice -- but I suppose getting a second wind is more than most stories get if we talk about the massive graveyard of unfinished fics floating about the internet.

Since I wanted a refresher course, I tried to look up the original story but it's been gone for a long, long time -- and I mean gone. The profile for the original author has been done and dusted, with nary a trace left behind. Imagine my sheer panic that the story I'm trying to remake no longer exists. Well, shit.

But didn't we encounter this exact situation not too long ago? Luckily, an enterprising individual requested that I recover a story that I long since buried, and I was able to exhume its corpse thanks to the foresight of preservationists who backed up FF.net's entire story database.

To my abject horror, I could not find it after searching in the "K" archive. I gave it a couple more tries and eventually resigned myself to thinking that I'd have to depend solely on my faint memories to finish the tale. I went to bed, weighed down by the prospect of trying to complete a story that no longer exists.

Next day arrives and I search for it again. Found it. Turns out, I was looking in the wrong folder. You'd think a story that was never completed would be in the "In Progress" folder, but since the original author officially discontinued it, they marked it as "Complete". Now that's just confusing, not to mention, the archive has multiple folders for Kingdom Hearts (because of the crossover categories).

I backed that shit up immediately. Since the original author deleted everything, I could now claim sole ownership over the plot and firmly declare "I made this".

Obviously, I'm not as unscrupulous as to take credit for something I didn't make, but I do find it funny that I credit a writer that can no longer be found by conventional means. There's no way for readers to unearth this mysterious original "Best Deceptions" that I mentioned unless they go through the effort that I did. I might archive it publically on my profile somewhere if I ever get started on this final story, but for now, I'll hold on to it as reference material for my version.

I always thought that the internet was a place where everything is recorded forever, but the state of data is much more precarious than we think, and that has been demonstrated multiple times over the years with the loss of huge websites that are forever doomed to be remembered by a cache image.

Someone sent me a message last year warning me that FF.net could potentially be closing down and suggested that I repost my stories on AO3 or archive them somewhere. As far as I know, FF.net is still up, but who knows how long that will last? Although I've been lucky enough to recover two long-lost fics thought to be destroyed, it makes sense to make a backup while the opportunity is still there -- just in case.

[small-ashes]

hi, writing blog. dumping some thoughts onto you for the first time in a while

good news, found a middle ground. bad news, it's novels and novellas all the way down, babey

in a way it's good. there's a lot about Process and Workflow that i learned from the arts that i could never figure out how to transfer to writing, but honestly a big part of it has just been... how can i hold the whole work in my head? how do i maintain momentum? how do i stop relying on """inspiration""" to keep me going?

thinky thoughts.

here's the thing: it's learned, it's a skill that needs to be developed. you can't just sit around hoping that the bursts of energy you get will get you anywhere. you don't need to write every day, you don't need a daily practice, but you need a discipline regardless.

but like, i knew that. i've known that for years. and yet.

momentum is weird. it's "inspiration" it's "a plan" it's "coming out of writer's block"

maybe i'll make an actual serious essay about this one day but eehh

some of my most energizing moments related to writing is when i'm collaboratively working on a thing, usually riffing off ideas to build the whole story and like, that's the bulk of it: piecing together the story so you can actually hold it in your head. not just snippets, not just pieces of scenes or one or two good lines of prose or dialogue. the whole. damn. story.

and it's work! but it's rewarding work. and if the project interests me enough, i absolutely can combine the former with the latter i was referring to originally. the thing is good and interesting and engaging to me and that in and of itself is the momentum i need to work toward finishing the project. and inevitably there will be more that excite me, so i go to finish those too. rinse and repeat.

and like, hell, i go weeks without putting a single word down but that's fine, i'm usually doing the prep work to make sure i can get that momentum started in the first place. waiting for it to happen just... doesn't work. it's a skill that needs practice.

the extremely weird phenomenon of feeling the workflow change from "let's work on this thing because i enjoy it and idk if the ideas come they come!" to "i'm finishing work. that means i need to finish work. which means that when i finish this project i need to move onto the next project i have so many projects god help me i need to finish them"

and in a way i miss the former but also i didn't get anything done lmao

[billreeseblog]

Q/A - I Don't Hate iPads

Over the last few years I have been getting these questions in my mailbox. I have kind of ignored them, but these questions have come up alot lately so now it is time to set things straight.

Q: Why do you hate iPads?

A: Let me be clear I do not hate iPads. I have stated in the past that I do not like iPhones, and I was not a fan of the Apple Pencil. But I really like iPads. They are better than Android, Chrome OS, and Windows tablets in almost every way. I have an iPad Air 2 on my desk that I use for my daily driver. It also feels like App developers on the Apple iOS ecosystem (now iPad OS) build for the iPad first. The apps seem better polished and refined.

It's possible that as much as I keep trying to get out of Apple's Walled Garden, I will likely be using an iPad for a long time. In fact I am eying an iPad Pro 2020 edition for my next tablet. I am even warming up to the Apple Pencil as the technology matures. So in reality I am still in the middle of the walled garden.

Q: Why do you hate iPhones?

A: I don't, in fact the iPhone 3GS is one of my favorite phones of all time. My problem is with the app developers. It feels like apps are designed for the iPad first. The iPhone apps seem rather lacking in comparison. The same apps on Android are designed better.

Q: Why do you hate Apple? Macs?

A: I don't hate Apple or Macs, In fact for the longest time I was an Apple fan boy. What caused some Mac-using creators to switch to PCs was a migration of resources at Apple. Apple started development on major updates to the iOS operating system and devices. Mac development was slowed. From 2013 to early 2015 Apple didn't upgrade the MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini Lines. The same happened with the Mac Pro line between 2013 and 2019. Apple also started making their Macy unrepairable.

It was the same with Mac OS X. It felt like they stopped improving and developing OS X at Mavericks. They just kept adding iOS like features and their Metal graphics engine.

I also have problems with Apple's professional apps. They seem to have tossed users workflows to the side in favor of their own workflows. It makes it harder to be creative when you can't work the way you want.

In 2014 I began migrating from the Mac platform to Windows. Not because I hated Apple per say, but at the time it felt like the Mac users were being abandoned for iOS based devices.

Q: Do you have any Apple products?

A: Yes, I own an Apple iPad Air 2 that I use for reading books and research. I own a 2012 MacBook Pro, and a 2005 PowerMac G5. Both of the Macs are still in good shape, and fully functional. I keep them around for legacy projects.

Conclusion

So, no, I do not hate Apple, Macs, iPhones, or iPads. I just felt that I needed to change platforms to maintain my creativity. Apple has changed into a device company that also makes expensive computers. Their computers are still great. For me it's just a parting of philosophies.