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Comprehensive Resource List for the Aspiring Artist V1.01

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Helpful things for action writers to remember

Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll. 

Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast. 

Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention. 

Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them. 

Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently. 

ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face. 

Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.

Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone. 

A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way. 

If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword. 

ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters.  (CLICK ME)

If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability. 

People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot. 

Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME) 

If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)

Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here. 

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People often say to me: “You draw like some kind of inhuman machine.  If I eat your brain, will I gain your power?”  The answer is yes, but there is another way. The key to precise drawing is building up muscle memory so that your arm/hand/fingers do the things you want them to do when you want them to do them.  Teaching yourself to draw a straight line or to make sweet curves is just a matter of practice and there are some exercises you can do to help improve. If you’re going to be doodling in class or during meetings anyway, why not put that time to good use?

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job hunting advice

I posted this for one of my networks last week, and as I’ve prepared to interview college work study students, I’ve realized how much bad advice is out there. so here’s some solid advice for posterity.

(this is based off of my experience applying to jobs and hiring students in the US, I’m sure a lot of the advice is applicable to other countries, but some stuff might not be, for example resumes/cvs are wildly different depending on your country)

applying to jobs:

have a solid resume/cover letter

for your resume:

have accomplishments listed, not just job duties

take high school stuff off once you graduate college

start with a relevant experience section, listed chronologically (newest first), then an other experience section, also listed chronologically. If you don’t have any experience relevant to where you’re applying, stick to a chronologically newest-oldest experience section

don’t add a skills section unless you’re listing skills that are self-taught, that you didn’t learn at another job. if you learned something at a job, it belongs under that job in the experience section

DON’T ADD AN OBJECTIVE

keep it to a page unless you have 5+ years of experience, and everything is substantial

no weird formats. just keep it straight forward. I had a student hand me a resume with light blue font. don’t do that. (unless you’re going into design, then there are different rules) stick to simple black font (on white paper)

cover letter:

don’t just repeat your resume, add new information

don’t be overly formal, keep it professional while still showing personality

write a separate cover letter for each job

connect your experiences to elements of the job ad, without outright listing them, just incorporate it

do some research about the company. find something that excites you about their mission, talk about that.

it may sound harsh, but companies care more about what you can offer them than what they can offer you, so show how you can fill their needs, not how working for them would help you (of course, it’s best when a job’s mutually beneficial, but that’s something to talk about in an interview, not a cover letter)

start the letter as : Dear Hiring Manager, (or Dear Mr/Ms _ if you know the name)

don’t be pushy, especially in the closing. thank them for their consideration and end there. don’t say anything like “I’ll contact you in a week to set up an interview” please don’t.

applying in general

don’t “follow up” with the company. if you’re deathly curious and it’s been a month, you can email once to get an update. that’s it. one polite email, anything else will come across as annoying (this is different with retail/food service, you can follow up with a call then, but don’t do it for office jobs

don’t email the hiring manager/hr with questions unless you can’t find the answers anywhere else. someone may tell that this helps you “stand out” but really, it’s annoying. I keep getting emails from students who saw my job ad asking questions whose answers are in the ad. all this does is make me question their reading ability and they stand out in a bad way for not being able to follow instructions

FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. read the job ad. read it again. make sure you submit everything they need in the format they ask. this is your first test as an applicant. 

interviewing

prepare for the interview!

I use ask a manager’s AMAZING interview guide and you should too

take the notes she recommends so that you have well thought out answers

use bullet points so that you talk more organically, instead of just reading your notes word for word

come up with thoughtful questions to ask them, especially if anything in the ad makes you question whether the job is the right fit for you

phone interviews

don’t be scared of the phone interview, it’s the best way to weed out candidates who aren’t a fit while wasting no one’s time with traveling

use a landline if you can, but if you can’t, make sure you’re in an area with good reception

you can have your notes in front of you!

make sure you sound cheerful, since they can’t see your face it’s the only way to show enthusiasm

in person interviews

look nice! most fields still like interviewees to wear a suit. (of course, I don’t think anyone expects students to wear suits to interviews, but it would seriously impress me if a student wore something nicer than jeans or yoga pants) buying a suit can be intimidating but here are some tips:

get a blazer instead of a suit jacket if you’re going into a field that doesn’t require a suit on a daily basis. blazers can be paired with jeans and a tee shirt to dress up an outfit

I prefer pencil skirt suits, because I wear pencil skirts with sweaters or nice tops and cardigans, but you can also pair those things with nice pants!

your jacket and pants have to match exactly. it’s not a suit if they don’t

button downs aren’t necessary, you can pair a nice shell top with a suit too, just stay away from anything too sheer until you know if that’ll be alright based on the office culture

wear comfy (but nice!) shoes in case they give you a tour of the entire campus.

don’t arrive too early

know the parking situation before you get there

look around at the other employees, see how they interact, how they dress, can you imagine yourself here?

go with your gut. if you see any red flags, or if anything makes you uncomfortable seriously consider if you’d really want to work there every single day

after an interview

send your interviewer(s) a thank you email

the one-time follow up by email still applies (unless it’s for retail/food service

listening to advice:

everyone and your mother will try to give you advice. know who to listen to

prioritize advice from hiring managers in your field

your parents (unless they are a hiring manager) probably have outdated advice. when they tell you to “pound the pavement” and “keep calling to show your interest” just smile and nod, then disregard that advice completely

college career centers sometimes give really bad advice, double check what they say by researching advice from professionals in your field

read ask a manager. seriously. do it. her advice is ace and the commenting community is spectacular, unlike most comment forums on the internet.

and most importantly:

DON’T STRESS TOO MUCH! when you’re applying to your first job, the hiring manager doesn’t expect perfection. but if you follow this advice, you’ll be head and shoulders above other entry-level candidates!

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this is so annoying lol. so that’s the palmaris longus tendon. about fourteen percent of the world population does not have the tendon, but that varies by race and contintent, and handedness (and insignificantly by gender depending on which study you’re looking at). even among those who have it, the shape and parts of it vary a LOT.  there is no difference in grip strength or flexibility between those who have it and those who don’t.  you can find a lot more info by googling “palmaris longus” ((but watch out for all of the sites that use the absence of it to disprove creationism. sure, they’re right, but they’re also less likely to be complete scientific info since they have an agenda to accomplish and include only the info they need to accomplish that agenda)) but most of all, i absolutely hate the phrasing of this image.  - ALL humans are a product of evolution so i don’t know what that sentence is supposed to mean.  - if you have the muscle, don’t worry. you’re not somehow “less evolved” or not a product of evolution. it’s just a thing that varies by body, and even varies among those who have it. everyone is different. you’re not somehow closer to a caveman for having it. 

Lay your arm on a flat surface and push your thumb and pinky together. If you don’t see a raised band across your wrist, you are a product of evolution. If you do, you’ve got a useless extra muscle in your arm that is slowly being erased from our genetic code. Source

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How to learn a language

Tips from a language major:

•When learning new vocabulary write the meaning in your language once and the new word at least three times

•If you are learning a new writing style (I.e. Hanzi, kanji, Sanskrit, etc.) write the character at least three times, the meaning and the pronunciation once. -do not write the pronunciation above the character, write it to the side, otherwise you won’t even try to read it. -Learn! Stroke! Order!

•when reviewing vocab try to use the word in a sentence.

•do not pay attention to the technicalities of the grammar. Do not attempt to compare it to your own language. This will seriously mess you up for 80 years. Just pay attention to the sentence structure and make similar sentences.

•if you are learning a tonal language (I.e Chinese) or language that has sounds that don’t exist in your language watch videos of people pronouncing things and try to match their mouth movements.

•if all else fails on your tones just speak quickly.

•watch TV shows in that language and yes watch them with subtitles. But please be aware that may not be how people speak in real life (I’m looking at you, Japanese/Chinese/Korean learners)

•DO NOT BE AFRIAD TO MAKE MISTAKES of you mess up during a sentence just correct yourself and keep going.

•flash cards, flash cards, flash cards. Real and digital.

•spend at least an hour a day on it (OUTSIDE of class), if you’re trying to learn on your own you’re gonna need more time.

•talk to yourself in that language, take notes in it, set your phone to it. You probably look crazy but that is a-ok.

•listen to music in that language, while it probably won’t do much for your ability in the beginning it will help you distinguish sounds once you get pretty good.

•and lastly, don’t give up. It took you like ten years to grasp your own language it’s gonna take awhile to grasp another.

-How I learned 2 ½ languages at once.

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Turn your handwriting into a font

I discovered this by accident and I thought it was really funny and cute:

1. Download the template from MyScriptFont website

2. Write out the alphabet and numbers in your style, using a black marker (felt pen). This is mine:

3. Scan the template  4. Upload to the MyScriptFont website, name it, set the format and click “send file” 5. Download it to your computer and install

And check out my result!

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figuring out complicated designs in perspective doesnt have to make you mad so here is good tips to keep in mind. can be used for all kinds of things

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Support here »  http://www.patreon.com/doxydoo

THIS IS HELPFUL

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Unlikely simultaneous historical events

A poster on Reddit asks: What are two events that took place in the same time in history but don’t seem like they would have?

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PSA for Skinny Girls.

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LMAO no, it is not real. snakes don’t slither like that and they don’t charge forward like that. but the dogs in the background are making me laugh lmao 

When your ex tries to slide into your DMs… by The LAD Bible

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Before I start this little spiel, I need you all to know: I’m not hating on people who don’t vaccinate their kids, and while I know for a fact BASED ON facts that vaccines don’t cause autism or other “defects”, I’m all for continuing research to make them even better and safer.

But you know what really, really scares me about the anti-vax movement? As a future Public Health Professional, the thing that scares me most about this is the fact that our cultural mindset has become so CHILL about vaccine-preventable/”childhood” diseases that there is even room for such a movement. Let me explain.

Do y’all know what an R0 is? The R-naught, as it is called, is the basic reproduction rate of a disease. It tells you how many new infections can come from one existing infection. For example, an R-naught of 3 (R3) means that, on average, one sick person will infect three other people. Every disease has an R-naught, some greater and some lesser.

Do you remember when everyone was freaking out about Ebola? Everyone was terrified of catching it, because it’s SOOOOO contagious and deadly, right? Ebola has an R-naught of 2. That’s it. R2. One person with Ebola, on average, will get 2 more people sick. And we were freaking out about that.

Well guess what? Measles is the most contagious disease known to mankind, and it has an R-naught of 18. 18. One person with measles will give it to 18 new people, and those people will give it to 18 new people EACH, and so on. That’s what happened with the Disneyland outbreak; it’s so ridiculously contagious that just ONE sick child was enough to start an epidemic.

And yet very few people are as scared of measles as they are of Ebola. Why is that? One reason could be the nature of the disease, sure; Ebola is terrifying in its progression and symptoms. But I would suggest that a major reason is that measles has been so well-contained by vaccination that people no longer fear it. It’s not a part of every-day life anymore; this disease is no big deal because nobody gets it, because so many people are vaccinated against it. Let’s put this another way.

What are the diseases that scare everyone the most: Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and SARS are pretty high on the list of terror diseases. But let’s look at the R0s, shall we: Ebola-R2. HIV/AIDS-R5. SARS-R5. 

Now let’s look at diseases that people are voluntarily rejecting vaccinations against: Measles, Pertussis, and Diphtheria are the major ones. Their R0s? Measles-R18. Pertussis-R17. Diptheria-R7.

Everyone focuses on the former set of diseases– rightly so, I suppose– because they’re more dangerous at the present time. What makes them more dangerous? Not their R0; it’s the fact that there is no viable treatment, and NO VACCINE. Seriously, that’s why the medical community is worried about them. There’s no way to treat or PREVENT their spread biologically. Well guess what? There’s no viable treatment for Measles or Pertussis, and only limited treatment options for Diphtheria. That’s why the medical community doesn’t focus on them as much, because we can prevent them at the biological level, safely and effectively.

But now that the Anti-Vax movement has taken hold so firmly, the medical community is now being forced to once more worry about diseases it had almost eradicated. And not only that, it’s endangering herd immunity for the people who can’t receive their own vaccines due to compromised immune systems. I’m allergic to eggs, so I can’t receive the flu shot, but I’m also asthmatic so I can’t get the inhaled vaccine. I rely entirely on the people I associate with to keep me safe from the flu by getting their yearly shot. This made public school a living nightmare, because almost NOBODY got their shot. They caught it, and while it didn’t affect them TOO terribly because they were generally healthy, when I caught it, it was very dangerous because of my asthma. And then there’s that time when I caught the flu, and then right after because of my weakened immune system, I caught Whooping Cough from someone who hadn���t been vaccinated. I HAD been vaccinated, but my body was so fatigued from the flu that it couldn’t keep up with immune demands. And so I caught it.

Have you ever had Pertussis (whooping cough)? It’s hard enough on someone with full lung capacity; it can break ribs, it makes you cough so hard. You cough until there is literally no air in your lungs, and you have to inhale so forcefully it makes the “whooping” sound that gives it the name. It’s painful beyond belief, and it can last for weeks. Some people will survive it. But add that to asthma, or to a young child, or to an elderly person, and you are looking at either permanent damage or death, no exceptions. When I had it, I was about 6 years old, and asthmatic; I spent 81 hours awake because the coughing was so violent I physically couldn’t sleep. I tore abdominal muscles. I vomited during coughing fits and aspirated the vomit. I was actively dying. The doctors could barely suppress the cough enough for me to breathe at all. My inhaler wasn’t helping, none of the cough syrups or breathing treatments were helping; I was getting pneumonia on top of the virus. It was Hell. I was LUCKY that I didn’t die.

Who would wish that on their child? Nobody, I hope. And if you KNEW you could keep your child from ever experiencing that, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to ensure their safety?

Or would you look at the safeguard and say, “Nah. I’ll take my chances with my child’s life.”?

That is what the anti-vax movement is doing. Perhaps not purposefully, but that’s the end result. These aren’t just names on syringes designed to make a child cry; the diseases are real, and real threats to health and life, and the vaccines are how you prevent them. Yet we are so far removed from the impact and effects of these diseases BECAUSE of the peace brought to us BY vaccines that people now feel no qualm about refusing vaccines.

That’s what scares me about the anti-vax movement; people have become so complacent that they no longer worry about these very real, very deadly diseases. They’d rather risk their child’s life than get a shot? The side effects of vaccines are unproven (nonexistent), but the efficacy of vaccines are very much proven.

When the pertussis vaccine first came out, people jumped on it right away. They were so grateful to have it, and for a while everything was smooth sailing, and whooping cough was on the decline. Then, in the 70s, some groups started claiming the pertussis vaccine was causing brain injury in young children. Less than 50 in 15 million cases were reported, but it was enough to scare people away from the vaccine. And children began dying again. It was later discovered that it was NOT the vaccine, but the result of infantile epilepsy, that caused the brain damage. People began once more vaccinating their children, but not before hundreds if not thousands had died.

And that’s what’s happening now. A falsified claim scared just enough people that time-tested, lab-tested, fully-proven, totally safe vaccines are being rejected, and we’re already starting to pay with lives. And I’m scared it’s going to get worse. People don’t really grasp the full import of these diseases and the necessity of the vaccines until they have experienced the disease. I’m scared that it’s going to come down to new epidemics before people will realize the mistake of not vaccinating.

Right now we’re still in the semi-safe zone. Enough of the population is immunized that we could probably keep most pandemics of these diseases at bay. But if this movement keeps gaining momentum, there might come a day when measles and pertussis could once again destroy thousands of people yearly. Imagine if some terrorist group weaponized Ebola and used it against this country; so many people would die, because we have no vaccine for it, no way to prevent it. That is what could happen with diseases like mumps, rubella, measles, pertussis, Diphtheria, and polio. Except it wouldn’t be terrorists using a disease as a weapon; it would be some kid in your child’s class, or your neighbor across the street, or the guy who delivers the mail to your office. That’s how life used to be, and if someone from the pre-vaccine era could see us now, they’d weep for joy at the idea that we can prevent these horrific diseases; and then they’d weep in sorrow at the idea that people are voluntarily turning down that safeguard.

It’s true, vaccines aren’t always 100% effective; I was immunized, but still got Whooping Cough (lowered immune function, if you recall). But you know who didn’t get it? My baby sister. My big sister. My cousins. My mother and father. My classmates, the other kids at my doctor’s office. The nurses at the hospital. The pharmacy workers. Their children. The kids my mom taught at school. All those people were safe because of vaccines. And you know what else? When I was in India, I was exposed to polio. Didn’t get it. Know why? I was vaccinated. I was exposed to chicken pox in 5th grade. One unvaccinated kid got it, and the other 4 kids in our class who weren’t vaccinated got it. But you know who didn’t? The rest of us who WERE vaccinated.

Vaccination may not be perfect, and the only way we will improve them is by continuing research. But the fact remains that as they are now, vaccines cause no lasting side effects (injection site pain goes away), and are extremely effective at preventing dangerous, painful, debilitating, often deadly diseases. Let’s keep researching, yes, but in the mean time, PLEASE vaccinate. It’s not worth your life, or your child’s, or anyone else’s. Vaccines save lives, not destroy them.

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y’all, this is embarrassing... this is satire... clearly. http://www.snopes.com/food-stamp-hunger-tests/

What in the actual fuck? This is out of fucking hand. Now this guy want you to lick “food stamps” before you can use them?

“…but from what I [Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.)] can gather, we’d be using a benign chemical that would be able to tell whether or not a person is experiencing hunger from their saliva. The chemical would be located on the stamps themselves, and upon licking the stamp, as you would a simple stamp at a post office, we would know straight away if a person is trying to trick us or if they really deserve food. And if all goes well, we’d develop new chemicals to also show us which applicants for food stamps are narcotics users.”

First off SNAP benefits aren’t in the form of “stamps” it’s a card, like a prepaid debit card.

Second, even if they were in paper form, how about we have this idiot lick his money before every use. How fucking disgusting, for the grocery check out person who has to now take licked paper vouchers.

Third. Now in order to use SNAP benefits, I’d have to starve myself before going shopping?

Fouth. Do I have to take my whole family with me and have them lick the fucking things too?

This is what you get when you elect idiots to congress.

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i feel like OP deactivated specifically because of the literal thousands of replies that are like “um no it’s that if you use cheap materials you’ll always lose duh”  like YO THAT’S WHAT OP’S FIRST OPTION WAS 

what the fuck is the moral of the three little pigs, anyhow. people without access to the best materials are going to die? familial bonds mean nothing in the face of an impending crisis? wolves are dicks and pigs are stupid? i have no fucking clue

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i feel like i shouldn’t be wasting this url on my ugly shit sideblog