Black Hole

While walking the dog yesterday, we found the tracks of a pack of wolves that had passed across the edge of our property. (I live out in the highway in Alaska.) I took a picture of my hand next to a wolf track for comparison. 

Now here’s a picture of my hand with one of our dog’s tracks:

And he’s not an especially small dog; he’s a 55-lb retriever mix.

And the dog’s tracks next to wolf tracks:

like, a wolf is as tall when lying down as most dogs are standing. here, see for yourself. Labs are a very dog-sized dog, wouldn’t you say? Check this out

But instead, it’s just… lazy.  There’s no effort at all.  No spirit, no love, no desire to create anything of meaning.  For goodness’ sake, it makes the entire performance of “Hakuna Matata” boring!  That’s actually impressive in a manner.  It’s less than the sum of its parts and looks like a sloppy, uninspired imitation that doesn’t even try to hide that it’s nothing more than a copyright assertion and marketing ploy.  This all hearkens back to Eisner’s shameful take on Disney’s direction in the 80s:

I CANT show off art that I BUY and therefore OWN!!??

HOLY SHIT THATS INSANE. Where the fuck would that fly ANYWHERE ELSE!!???? (Because it sure as shit doesn’t fly in the art community)

“Ok, we’ve set you up with your new phone. You can make calls, go on the net and text. But ONLY in a locked bathroom stall and at your home. If ANYONE sees this phone then we’re reposessing it and calling you out on showing your phone to another living thing without asking us first. ONLY you are allowed to look at this 200$ item you bought!”

“Wanna play Mario party on the fancy new gaming console you just bought? WELL FUCK YOU YOU CANT! YOU AND ONLY YOU ARE ALLOWED TO PLAY! GET YOUR FRIENDS INVOLVED AND THE ONLY THING YOU’LL BE PLAYING IS “DONT DROP THE SOAP” IN JAIL BUDDY!!!“

"New just for you!: the jacket you stay inside in! That’s right! It’s hip! It’s expensive! No one’s allowed to see it but you! You’ll be the envy of your friends IF you were allowed to let other people see it! But you’re not!! That’s right! You bought it but if we see it on you we’ll burn it and you in it! Wooooo!”

“Wanna share the latest book you bought, read and loved with a friend? Well you know the drill! Share that book and we’ll shoot you on site! Snipers are trained to follow around every single person that buys a book in our collection and if they so much as see a hint of it’s cover anywhere anyone can see it, well, let’s just say we’ll be earning a headshot achievement. It’s expensive but worth it to make sure nothing we make is shared ever!”

Do you see yet how you’re being incredibly petty? People don’t show you respect because your actions don’t deserve it. Maybe if you stopped being a spoiled child you would earn the respect of others.

While the essay was unwarranted, I can see their point. An artist who doesn't upload to DA (and currently, is using solely Tumblr, a nigh-dead site - plus they've self-reblogged this post recently, AFTER tumblr has already committed suicide) and DEMANDS other people come to them for watermarked versions - not credited, mind you, signature is credit and should already be on art, watermark is going beyond credit - instead of uploading public art already watermarked, and also demands it be done with commissions too, IS being unreasonable.

Oh and their post about Derpibooru is blatantly opinionated, presumably to manipulate opinion through emotionally-charged wording. Let's go over it, bluebrush09arts!

Its pony dA. The community is garbage or nonexistent.

250,000 active users and drastically different management style resulting in bans for misbehaving users.

The fact alone that anyone can upload anything without any form of permission is a big flippin reason.

DNP uploads without permission get taken down by the very active moderation. Additionally Derpibooru is an archive site, not an artist gallery where artist has full reign.

And its been a pain in the past to have anything taken down.

For the entirety of last 4 years, artist takedown took a single report of the offending image with proof of being the artist - which registering for DNP is.

And ive been on their DNP list for over a year but they havent added me to the one they appear to have stopped updating annoys the hell out of me.

You’re on the thread-based DNP list, adding you to the site-based DNP that also blocks upload is a matter of single report/PM/email reminding staff of it.

Doesnt matter if the sourcing is great if the uploader chooses not to source.

Anyone can, and usually quickly does, fix the source of uploaded images. Additionally the artist is credited and, with artist-link (which you have), has their other sites linked on their tags - and people who don't credit to bypass DNP or simply out of spite get banned.

I probably would be this ticked off at the site if they didnt say its okay to upload things that arent yours. Its a huge middle finger to artists and is inconsiderate. If you didnt draw it or purchase it dont flippin touch it.

Unconsiderate is refusing to let people see and preserve ("don't store all your eggs in a single basket" principle, if your blogs go down - and with Tumblr being dead, they likely will - all art on them will be lost to Internet) what they like. Again, Derpibooru is not an artist gallery, it's an art archival site with gallery functions - better gallery and art-discovery functions than most other sites thanks to uniform tagging and sourcing that is not limited by artist's whim.

What you want, going by your posts, is absolute control over your art, including pieces that by contractual obligation of commissioning them belong to the commissioner. This is unreasonable.

P.S. Tumblr is a terrible gallery and DA allows total control over art much better than it.

А не замутить ли мне опять лотерею, как три года назад? Раз пока не банят.

Условие то же самое - сделать реблог, потом я выберу случайным образом один (если будет больше одного) и нарисую реблогнувшему картинку. Насчёт содержания - что и как я могу изобразить, все и так видели.

Срока возьму чуть больше и подведу итоги только к концу первой новогодней недели, благо сейчас людям всё равно не до этого.

Всех с Наступающим, все дела.

I decide to hold a lottery just for fun. You may reblog this post, I will wait during some time and then count every reblog, choose one randomly and draw any picture for winner. There could be anything I usually post here.

The deadline is Sunday 6th Jan incl.

Alright, so.

Lets get this out of the way first.

SFW:

[DEVIANT ART]

SFW AND NSFW (Requires account):

[FUR AFFINITY]

[NEWGROUNDS]

[DERPIBOORU]

Uploads will be done in batches over a long period so as not to flood the sites. I’ll try to make sure there’s some new stuff mixed in there to keep it interesting.

– I will not be joining Twitter –

and I encourage all my fellow artists to rethink opening accounts there. Twitter has a long, long history of fucking with users’ content and I guarantee you if you thought Tumblr was bad Twitter is going to be a million times worse, and far more interested in who you are. If you’re like me and like to keep your professional/personal life and NSFW artist life separate, you’re going to find it very hard to maintain that the longer you’re associated with that platform. It’s not just an administration problem, and it’s not just a userbase problem. It’s both. I know Twitter’s become the new social scene because it’s like a Tumblr-lite but it is a bad, bad idea. Be smart about your privacy.

This blog will no longer be updated.

Tumblr has proven over the last couple of weeks that it has zero interest in adhering to its own new guidelines and would rather keep things maintained by halfwit robots (sorry Runtime) than anything with a soul and flexible rationality. (She’s good in this department though.) It’s simply an awful platform for anybody in any visual medium now and, if I may place a soapbox under myself for a moment, morally I can’t support it in the slightest. I have no problem going elsewhere for smut or for uploading smut, but to maintain yourself as an open platform for NSFW content for so many years, pulling in traffic and revenue off that work, and then shut the door on it with such little regard for not just the people who’ve come to rely on your service but also for the people who get caught in your wide-cast net when they shouldn’t? It’s not just stupid, it’s bad business. I am not sure what tumblr’s going to look like after the 17th, and I doubt it’ll really die, but it’s not going to be the same site and I think it’s going to be a far more notorious one in the years to come, SFW-only content be damned.

If you want to continue following my work, I highly suggest clicking one of the links above and bookmarking it. As my professional life and personal/pony life settle into smoother balance, uploads will begin to become more frequent again. It’s been a rough but exciting ride recently, and I hate that it has to be punctuated by this, but I’m excited to get back in the saddle and start making you guys smile again.

Pun intended.

Please make at least a Deviantart or Furaffinity if you’re leaving Tumblr. Twitter is a terrible site to make your main art site. Literally non existent tagging, archiving and searching for specific pics.

Miriam and Tyler have been cosplay mainstays of many Pony conventions and a relentless source of Friendship and positivity in the fandom for years, and last weekend Tyler was planning to propose marriage. Instead they got a call that their house had burned flat to the ground. They’ve lost everything, from priceless family heirlooms to their beloved dogs, there’s just nothing left and now they’re homeless at what should have been the happiest time of their lives.

It’s not live action - it’s fully CGI animated, so there’s absolutely no excuse for poor color management.  Unfortunately, it seems to be a running issue with the new cinematic remakes of older Disney films.  They’re all pretty equally muddy and washed out because of whatever weird-ass art direction these filmmakers have agreed upon.  Even scenes that should be really elaborately colorful, like the ball from Cinderella - which is literally a magical life-changing evening for her - are only just kind of colorful.

Based on the on-set photos, it actually looks like there’s an intentional lighting direction to flood the scenes with orange, for whatever reason.  It covers everything with an unpleasantly dull haze which, as is apparent in this particular case (along with color editing in post, surely) completely alters the mood of the set and scene.

Good examples of use of orange and teal effectively. 

Here it’s not super obvious, but the only orange tone in this is the main focus of the frame. He’s front and center and is warm compared to the teal tones in the background. 

Here’s a fantastic example. Warm lighting against warm skin while the background is teal toned so make the character stand out. Orange works very well with skin tones when it comes to lighting, especially for dramatic effect. 

When used in opposite then the foreground looks cold while the back lighting is warm. Giving a very different mood to the scene. 

The entire point of this orange and teal thing is complimentary colors creating visual contrast. It’s more used nowadays, but even older films took advantage of dramatic light and shadows.

Entirely back lit with blues makes the scene colder and more jarring with the dark figures in the foreground.

No cool teal in this one, but the shadows here bring out the orange even better. 

It’s horribly sad that Disney isn’t taking advantage of dramatic lighting for such big named movies. The color in the original animated films are far superior. 

In this the majority of the scene is warm tones. Yellow, gold and orange, so they balance it with Beast’s blue jacket to keep your eyes center. It’s complimentary colors.

Like, consider Belle’s opening introduction in “Beauty and the Beast” where we meet her new little hometown.  The whole point of this scene and its associated song is that Belle is an outcast.  She’s the weird one who doesn’t fit in with everyone else, she’s the one who craves change but is stuck living in a place that thrives in monotony.  In the animated version, the coloration is used to help reflect that.  The whole town consists of warm, earthy colors - reds, oranges, browns, muted green, and even the blue sky isn’t as bright as it could be.  Belle is the ONLY person who wears blue.  This allows her to visually pop right out of the scene and stand in open contrast to literally everything around her.

In a nice bit of color-based characterization, this even applies to Gaston. He’s emblematic of his environment - the big hero of the little town.  He’s bombastic, he’s larger than life, he stands out.  His costume consists of those same reds and oranges as the town and villagers, but they’re saturated to the point of overwhelming the background colors.  He’s also the only character in town to have jet black hair and - in a similar visual drawing point that Belle’s dress serves - bright blue eyes.  These high-contrast elements draw attention and make him visually more important.  Further, Gaston is Belle’s visual opposite - she’s in cool blue while he’s in bright red.  When set side by side it immediately puts them in contradiction to one another and helps demonstrate their very different natures.

Compare that to the live action version.  Belle fits right in.  She melts into the background and there are plenty of colors that match her, making her seem less important visually in the scene.  And even then all those colors are still washed out equally.  Belle and Gaston don’t even stand out against each other, let alone against the rest of the scene.  Even in Gaston’s big “look how awesome I am” song number he still doesn’t visually pop out at all anymore because everything is so damn muddy.

The color-based storytelling from the animation continues through on that same vein through Beast and Belle later in the film.  Beast - in his boorish, cruel attitude at first - echoes Gaston in coloration.  Brown, orange, red, dark blacks and bright blue eyes.

But when Beast later improves himself and grows as a person his color scheme cools into purples and pale blues.  Belle’s color scheme, meanwhile, gradually warms in each of her costume changes -  green, pink, and finally to an intense yellow.  This is to reflect how she is acclimating to others and growing as a person herself, becoming more social with Beast and the castle servants.  The oatmeal scene in particular goes toward this end.  Beast and Belle each are in colors that directly contrast their base costumes - Beast has gone from red to green and Belle from blue to red.  Beast is a slob and Belle is demure.  But Beast puts in a genuine attempt to eat like a person again despite having the wrong anatomy for it and Belle, recognizing the effort, compromises by meeting him halfway.  The two share their own connection - toasting their bowls and drinking from them directly in a compromise between etiquette and ability.

As the two grow closer still, their colors and shades more closely compliment one another and the background they’re set in.

Their palettes grow more and more similar, and then cross over at the iconic ballroom scene.  There, Beast is wearing Belle’s colors and Belle’s dress is just as eye-popping as her original blue, but is a complimentary contrast both to her own base color scheme and to Beast’s new one.  Further, the entire ballroom matches their shared color scheme to help reflect how well the two fit into their relationship and company with one another.

At the climax of the movie, when Beast has lost all hope, he reverts to an echo of his previous color scheme.  Gaston, meanwhile, arrives sporting Belle’s iconic blue.  The opposing colors in capes help to visually set Beast and Gaston in contrast to one another while also representing their purpose in the scene.  Beast has given up and accepted his fate, albeit one that has been impacted by Belle regardless.  Gaston, meanwhile, is an impostor who’s presenting himself as a hero; his wearing blue is a bastardization of what the color has represented in the film thus far.

A good friend of mine, Anontheanon, has had his Tumblr account recently targeted for deletion by Tumblr. He was given no warning, no email, message or otherwise, in advance as to why his account was terminated. 

Apparently this has been happening to many other artists so it isn’t just a single incident. I’m just making this post as a warning so that if any of my artist friends out there has anything posted to Tumblr that was was using this as an archive then to find another means to store it, because relying on this website isn’t a good idea.

Its been speculated that this is largely due to the Tumblr iOS app being removed from Apple’s app store for violating TOS.