lotsa oc stuff

Comparative: 1930s chinese oculist posters vs Carnaby Street, 1967

Many websites have those complaint forms you need to fill out to submit DMCA notice. Here are some of them:

Tumblr https://www.tumblr.com/dmca

DeviantArt https://help.deviantart.com/dmca

Instagram http://help.instagram.com/contact/372592039493026?helpref=faq_content

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/634636770043106?helpref=page_content

Twitter https://support.twitter.com/forms/dmca

VKontakte https://vk.com/dmca

Pinterest https://pinterest.com/about/copyright/dmca-pin/

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/copyright_complaint_form

Flickr https://ipr.yahoo.com/copyright?.lang=en-US

Google https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice

Usually links to those forms can be found on website’s Terms of Service pages. (search for copyright or DMCA)

In the conclusion for now, some things I’d really recommend doing if you’re seriously considering making a webcomic (or really a comic in general). Some of these don’t really apply to strips or gag-a-day type of comics, but I’m not talking about those here.

1. Write down ideas\sketch stuff, LEGIBLY. “I’m gonna remember it later” NEVER works. And if you scribble it somewhere on a piece of paper, you’d better scan it or retype in one doc later, because tiny notes always get lost among other doodles in my skethbooks.

(i know it’s hard to keep everything clean and organized, but this mess is just not productive)

If your project is a collaboration, save your conversations. If you’re working alone, make a blog for your ramblings. You have no clue what tears of relief I cry when I open that blog and rememeber I don’t have to painstakingly look through my heaps of sketchbooks and folders for a tiny idea I’m not even sure I wrote down a few months ago.

2. Inspiration folders, or even better, inspo blog with tags also help with collecting and remembering ideas. Color schemes, landscapes, style inspirations, atmospheric stuff, maybe some photo references, all those neat things.

3. Basic tier: character design sheets. Top tier: common poses, expressions. God tier: outfits they wear throughout the comic. Holy cow tier: turnaround sheets for all those outfits.

(I’d die trying to find good pages for references without these)

4. If you haven’t finished detailing the plot, don’t even think about moving on to drawing the comic. You’re gonna regret it when you come up with a really cool plot element that can’t be incorporated anymore because you’ve already drawn all the parts you could’ve tweaked.

5. Don’t just define the plot, make a script. Writing down the lines and the brief description of the actions serves me fine:

(notice that I approximately divided the pages & the text that’d go to each panel on a page)

6. Hard mode: make thumbnails for all the pages, if possible. At least whenever a new chapter starts. 

7. If your story involves some convoluted chronology shenanigans, you’d better write down the events of your timeline in the chronological order.

8. Backgrounds. You can’t avoid them, bro. Like half of the comics are backgrounds, especially if your story involves a lot of adventuring and looking around. I know it hurts, but you’ll have to become friends with them. Read some tutorials, practice on photos, go out and sketch some streets, use 3d programs (like Google Sketch) to understand the perspective, use sites like houseplans to visualize your buildings better, I don’t know. Just be prepared for their imminent evil.  

9. If you’re drawing digitally, pick a brush size for the lines and stick with it. You don’t want your lines and detail levels to look all wonky and inconsistent in different panels. And I don’t mean the cool stylistic varying lines, I mean this:

Also, things on the background should have thinner and/or lighter lines to avoid distraction. Usually less details too, unless you’re making a busy background with a simple foreground to help it pop out. Or wanna draw the attention to an object on the bg.

10. Readable fonts. Even if you chose to ignore people with poor sight or dyslexia, the majority of your readers aren’t gonna be excited about struggling to decypher this:

Also, as much as I love my black speech bubbles, colorful text on black still kinda hurts the eyes. I wouldn’t recommend doing that for all the characters. Black speech bubbles are usually used for creepy, inhuman voices. And yes, having a colorful outline in this case helps.

11. Probably newsflash, but did you know that panels have their place, order and functions? They do! My favourite thing ever is how I used panels when I was like 12:

(comics ain’t rocket science, but this one is)

The composition of the panels and word balloons always serve for a better reading experience. They guide your eyes over the page, so that you never feel lost or confused. The images in the comic equal frames in a movie, so it’s pretty damn important in what order you look at things and how quickly you can understand what’s going on!

(Eric Shanower & Scottie Young’s Wizard of Oz)

12. One update a week is fine for testing waters. Don’t overestimate yourself, especially if you have a pretty busy life outside it. A stable comic that updates slowly, but regularly is better than an unpredictable erratic one. You can always pick up the pace later, if you feel confident enough.

13. Try to always have a buffer - a couple of pages in reserve. If you’re making the pages much faster than you’re updating, this shouldn’t be a problem. But if those paces are equally the same, it’s goddamn HARD. But on the other hand, if something happens and you skip an update, those come in handy.

Hello everyone! It’s around that time of year again (I’m actually a little late, my bad~) but let’s hold another OruFrey week! First, we have to vote on some new prompts! Fill out the form below for your favorite prompts (and, if you have any ideas for next year’s prompts, those would be greatly appreciated!)

Form: https://forms.gle/tJ4XsaVE8ct5cNCQ6

After two weeks, I will be closing the poll and I will announce the winning prompts as well as the dates for the week! Look out for that announcement on Sat. August 21st!

In the meantime, please vote and reblog this post to spread the word!!

july ‘19 vs september ‘19 

the drawing made in july is lacking on light reflections

the one done in september looks much better since i paid attention to them

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk

These limits no longer exist, so you are no longer beholden to any of them. Despite what you might hear in certain pixel art spaces, there aren’t really any rules anymore, because there’s no technical limitations forcing you to work a specific way. You can make your pixel art have as many colours as you want, be whatever size you like, and have as many frames as you want it to.

However! the smaller you make a sprite, the harder things will become to read unless you shrink down the number of colours in equal measure.

In a photo you might have. i dunno. 1,000,000 pixels in it or something like that. Thats like a really small photo but that’s still so many pixels that you don’t really notice any of them individually. They all blend together into one big mass to tell you what you’re looking at in groups of hundreds!

On the other hand, in a 16x16 sprite you’ll only have 256 of them. Every single individual pixel can have something to say!

But if every pixel is trying to say something at once, it muddies the sprite and makes it hard to read. However, if a group of pixels are all the same colour, they’re all saying the same thing, and it becomes a lot easier to understand what you’re looking at.

like, for example, take a look at this 16x16 crop of a random photo.

does that look like a whole lot of nothing? yeah . theres 256 pixels, and theres 256 colours. the pixels aren’t really working together to tell you anything, so instead it just becomes one big vague mass. if i reduce the colour count to just 6 colours and increase the contrast, though,

it starts to look less like visual noise, and more like water at sunset!

The contrast is important - part of why you want to keep your colour count low is to make groups of pixels distinct from each other.

But, how exactly do you keep your colour count low, anyway?

a colour ramp refers to the gradient of colours in your palette that are used to shade one particular colour, such as tempests hair or her skin

instinctively you’re probably going to want to make individual gradients of colour for each of these things.

however, if you connect these ramps together, you can greatly reduce the number of colours you’re using in your piece. This also helps create a cohesive palette!

when it comes to connecting ramps, value matters much more than individual hues. you want to have a good range of values to have a readable sprite!

I think actually a really good example of value mattering more than hue in sprites, is this guide to anti aliasing by pixeljoint user ptoing

also just generally good advice, but take a look at this bit in particular

despite the wildly varying hues, they work together just fine. by focusing on the value when you combine your ramps, you can create some really interesting colour palettes!

anyway. now for some vaguer notes on how i do lighting

A Multi-Step Guide Written by a Visually Impaired Writer and Blogger

I’m hoping this blog will over time develop its own following, and when it does people will inevitably see my bio and notice what I included: I’m visually impaired.

Yes, a visually impaired writer, and I’ve written with two blind characters before so I have some practice in the field.

So, inevitably, someone is going to ask how to write a blind character.

Or, at least, I hope you’ll ask someone who’s actually blind or visually impaired about writing a blind character before you get too involved with your new WIP.

All parts will be tagged #blindcharacter in my blog, and I will add links to every post as I finish each part. Follow my blog for more writing advice.

Note, this post updates fairly often and old versions are still floating around out there. The most current version of this post is pinned to my blog with any new guides or links you might of missed.

As of 24 January 2021, this is the most extensive and screen reader friendly version of this post.

Part One: Crafting the Blind Character

In which I tell you how to begin making a blind character who is more than a cardboard cutout

Part Two: Narrative Choice, Visual Description, Verbal Description, Social Interaction

In which I give you a basic rundown on how to write from the perspective of a character who can’t see and still make the narration descriptive

Part Three: Tropes and Clichés to Avoid

Your blind readers will thank you for not being the 5000th person to do this and manage to actually finish your story. (Do you have any idea how many stories I’ve noped out of within two chapters because of these clichés? A Lot.)

-New- Part Four: Canes, Guide Dogs, and O&M

Everything I can tell you about 1) how to learn how to use a cane 2) how a cane works 3) how to describe what your character experiences with their cane 4) everything I know on guide dogs

Part Five: Small Aspects of being Blind You Never Thought Of

5 January 2021 Edit: This link has been fixed to correspond with the correct post

Or, really, very normal everyday things for blind people, the inclusion of which will make your characters more real and authentic. It’s the tiny details.

Part Six: Should You Cure Your Character’s Blindness? (Short Answer: No)

There’s no way to write a cure for your blind character that doesn’t make blind readers hate you. Sorry. We came here to finally experience a relatable character who experiences the world like us, but none of us are getting cured so seeing this character we learned to love become something alien from us in the end feels like a slap in the face

Why I’m Blind and What I See -NEW-

I thought I’d finally make a post explaining the complicated situation about my vision. Includes an explanation of visual snow and exotropia, two of the three causes for my vision issues.

Writing Blind Characters Falling in Love, an Advice Post:

Someone asked what being blind and falling in love have to do with each other. Honestly, blindness changes your perspective on everything and it makes an impact on every relationship you have. This includes some things that you definitely do not want your character’s love interest to be/do.

Writing Blind Jokes (Should You Do It?)

You know those flow charts of “should you do x?” going around? It’s like that, but screen reader friendly. Should you write blind jokes. It’s pretty complicated and there are a lot of possible scenarios and details to consider.

Advice for Writing Toph Beifong -NEW-

In this I discuss what I would like to see done in fanfiction with Toph’s character after ten years of reading Avatar the Last Airbender fanfiction

A small essay addressing the frequently asked question on giving your blind character a superpower to help them “see.”

It’s became a popular question, so to make the answer easier/faster for everyone to access, I wrote what will usually be my initial answer. Below there are a few links to some notable past questions on this subject.

Mourning My Vision, it’s More than Depression. 

A small personal essay addressing the nuances of the mourning period you experience with a new disability. The mourning period is mentioned in other guides, but this is more detailed.

Dealing with Heightened Senses, a video by Molly Burke with additional commentary by me

While Molly talks about the myths and truths about heightened senses, I talk about the correlation with blindness and neuro-divergency and how co-morbid disorders/disabilities might affect sensory processing.

Satirical Commentary on the phrase “that blank look in their eyes” used too often in fiction to identify a blind character

a:tla, I’m looking at you (and my eyes aren’t blank)

I Found a Lost Piece of Blindness History

My grandmother told me about her blind aunt and how she sent letters. It led me to speculate about all the O&M things people develop on their own but never get a chance to pass onto other blind people. Technology and techniques are lost in history and reinvented, including the white cane ad guide dogs.

Includes a little history on the introduction of guide dogs into the 20th century

The Following are Answered Anon Questions

Making Your Blog More Accessible

Making Links Accessible to Screen Readers

Reblogging to Add an Image Description to Someone Else’s Image

Why I Write Image Descriptions

Writing Blind Characters

Advice for a Character Who was Born Blind

Over-Protective Parents of a Blind Character, Why They’re Over-Protective and How to Avoid Crossing a Line

A Blind Character in Victorian Era Historical Fiction

Is It Bad Not to Have Guide Dogs in a Fantasy/Historical Setting Without Guide Dogs (short answer: it’s not bad)

Someone Asked About My Thoughts on a Medusa-like Character Blinding Herself to Avoid Hurting Anyone

-New- Characters Who Have Recently Gone Blind and Avoiding Inspiration Porn

Talking about Popular Blind Characters In Media

Does Daredevil’s Echolocation Negate His Blindness

Someone Else was Asked How to Write Daredevil Fanfiction

Blind Characters with Superpowers/Fighting Styles

World Setting where the General Population has a Superpower

Superpowers that don’t involve sight, Five questions to ask yourself if this superpower is a bad idea or a good one

-New- Your character would not use a cane as a weapon, it’s a bad idea

D&D/Roleplaying Blind Characters

-New- Animal Familiars Acting as Service Animals and Advice for Communicating with Your DM