Flower Stuff

Check READ MORE below post for details!

For fans of Spider-Verse, Motorcity, Ghost Rider, Initial D, Fast and Furious, Heated Rivalry, or John Carpenter's Christine!

RIDE OR DIE is a supernatural-romance-thriller webcomic about revenge, queer street racers, a missing person, and a demon-possessed muscle car! Free to read online, it's now Chapter 3's turn to be printed!

Over 60 full-color pages!!

Chapter 3 will be hardcover, and come in Standard and Premium cover options, just like Chapters 1 and 2!

🔥 Back the Kickstarter! 🔥

As an added thank you for reblogging this post, you can also enter a GIVEAWAY! follow the read more below for details!

Natural Black Hair Tutorial! Usually Black hair is excluded in the hair tutorials which I have seen so I have gone through it in depth because it’s really not enough to tell someone simply, “Black hair is really curly, draw it really curly.” 

this is the rhizophysa filiformis, my absolute favorite siphonophore.

if you don't want this to happen, it's VERY QUICK to sign this petition which will eventually be sent to parliament! you don't have to be from aotearoa to sign.

The same conditions as in Oregon USA, which is rather in the spotlight right now as the data centres there using nitrate-polluted groundwater for cooling have intensified that pollution so much that it's causing cancer and miscarriages.

so, ways to get around this:

turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us

don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace

a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)

instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian

including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too

including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue

for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend

when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!

if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache

some online resources and museum collections:

fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples

the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates

costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)

v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece

lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces

nypl digital collection for photographs

national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art

national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific

stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource

wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain

auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!

Please read and share this, it affects everyone within our community, and if anyone has any further sources to add, including ways we can push back, please do.

Here is a link to the Federal Document signed this past February 19th.

This is just conversion therapy, just straight up conversion therapy. This is human experimentation trying to "cure" being transgender that the US Government is enacting on captives in federal prisons who do not have the rights to protect themselves and cannot fight back against it. It is utterly inhumane.

Not to mention that black Americans end up disproportionately incarcerated in US prisons and this will certainly be an extension of a long history of the US government committing human experimentation on black lives and bodies.

Alongside this, I need everyone to be very aware that if even a portion of these cases are marked as 'resolved', if the US Gov can manufacture some kind of statistic that these methods "work," it could very well become a mandated policy for treating gender dysphoria across the US. Not just in prisons, but any kind of government custody and potentially in psychiatric inpatient care, and potential extensions beyond that into the life of the general public.

Although what may be most effective would be to make it so that many trans people end up either within government or psychiatric custody, where their rights are directly denied from them in a situation they are defenseless against- just like this. And this will effect firstly those most vulnerable in our population, those impoverished, unhoused, severely mentally ill/disabled, immigrants, and the many black trans americans and other trans people of color who fall into these categories, especially.

CTRL+SHIFT+i does not initially work, you need to turn on developer tools:

^the article does use the wrong quotes, use this: "DANGEROUS_ENABLE_DEVTOOLS_ONLY_ENABLE_IF_YOU_KNOW_WHAT_YOURE_DOING": true

Paste this above "ChromiumSwitches":

Then go to console, type "allow pasting", press enter, and paste the below text (@pokemonheartgold used one _ too litle on either side):

Object.values(webpackChunkdiscord_app.push([[Symbol()],{},r=>r.c])).find(x=>x?.exports?.default?.__proto__?.getCurrentUser).exports.default.getCurrentUser().ageVerificationStatus = 3;

Click away from the channel, back into it, press continue, voila:

^as you can see it took a few tries to get the code right

Close devtools, possibly remove the line of code from settings.json again, done!

I've been sitting on this ask for a while because I kind of wanted to answer it in-depth, so sorry for taking so long, Anon! The "Ace Attorney art style" isn't really one single thing. I'll try and answer this as thoroughly as I can, but I think the most important thing to do when replicating a style is to get really into it and have references up for whatever you're trying to do instead of playing by hard and fast rules! In context, (and very broadly speaking) Ace Attorney's original art is a fairly standard deviation from the "Capcom" art style. So, I'd like to start there! Pre-AA (and contemporary with AA1), some of the AA style quirks are definitely identifiable in other Capcom series. For example, Here's Ikeno Daigo's cover art for Street Fighter III 3rd STRIKE (1999), and what I think is a 1998 Ryu piece. (Side note: it's these silly illustrations of the characters doing things like their laundry that make Capcom characters so special to me! There's a fair bit of older AA art like this too, and I really wish they still did it for the aa5-6 cast!)

I think Street Fighter designs have a lot of common DNA with AA designs, particularly facially. (There's even a sketch by Iwamoto on Carmelo Gusto's design page that's just Ryu in a chef's hat!)

I think a decent chunk of the SF similarities can be attributed to prolific Capcom official artist Edayan (Shin'ya Edaki) drawing more official art than most people realise. (From what I can tell, from JFA-AJ, a lot of the promo art and character renders are his handiwork. It gets harder to differentiate as time goes on...) Here's a 1996 poster for Street Fighter EX, where you can hopefully see where I'm coming from!

Comparing it to Kumiko Suekane's comic art in Investigate Into the TRUTH (2005), there's definitely some carry-over, except the AA characters don't look quite so tough. (I always think Mia looks a lot like Chun-Li though.)

One of the artists who most people will think of when they hear AA art style is Tatsuro Iwamoto, who did the bulk of the character designs for JFA, T&T, and both AAI games, as well as a few designs in AA1. I always think the most characteristic thing in his work is how angular everything looks! When he draws men, they tend to have clearer bone structure than other AA illustrators. (A lot of the women have the same big almond eye shape and cute proportions...)

From a technical standpoint, I think Iwamoto is probably the best AA official artist, though I do personally prefer the more wide, kind of squishy feel of the original game. These are his work, and you can see the spikiness of it.

Onto actually drawing like this, taking Mia as an example, her official art varies massively. I've drawn her at the side mostly based on the style Suekane used for her first render. She has generally fairly realistic proportions (albeit with very long legs, and a small head) and, on the whole, this is how AA characters are built. Usually they have pretty big hands too, because one of the most important things about AA is that big OBJECTION! point!

Fatter characters usually have less jawline definition, but a little chin bump, which you can see on Delicia Scone, Bikini and Marvin Grossberg. I'd really recommend doing real studies of real people of all shapes and sizes to get better at drawing cartoony characters, because all of this stylisation is based on observation, and being able to draw diversely is a great skill that I think all artists should hone.

One of the biggest things about trilogy characters is that, by and large, you can usually tell who they are by their eye shape, because they're all really distinct. Packing personality into your eyes is a super key part of drawing in... any style that focuses on emotive humans, really, but particularly in these anime and anime-adjacent styles. Take the cast of RFTA, for example, in their default portraits, as designed by Kazuya Nuri:

You can tell a lot about the personalities of each character by how they hold their face: Ema has big, wide eyes, and she's a curious character who likes to observe things. Gant and Darke have crazy eyes and a slackness at the base of them that makes them seem dangerous. (And more similar than Gant would like to acknowledge!) Bruce looks like a puppy, so you know he's just a simple guy. Angel has two distinct personalities that she wants to present, so she has very different ways of holding her face. Mike is skittish and comedic, so he has cartoon eyes that always look wide open. Jake and Angel both have a slight droop to their eyes, so they look tired. There's a lot you can read from little pieces of a design, so when drawing for yourself, you should consider how a character would hold their face, as well as what that face actually looks like. Most of the cast have a simple nose made up from a line and a nostril, but more chiseled/handsome/older characters often have more detail on their nose. (Sorry, Edgeworth, for the purposes of this demonstration, you're not the handsome one.) Usually these are Iwamoto drawings, and you can see that when Iwamoto half-redesigned Edgeworth for AAI, he's a bit better looking! Really, there are a lot of different AA nose shapes, so your best bet is just looking at real noses and trying to stylise them in a way that fits in with the rest of the face.

Usually, the brow to cheek to jaw line from the 3/4 view that's very common in AA art is a lot more vertical than you'd think, especially in the men. Iwamoto tends to include a subtle jowl bump, though, and the chin usually goes in before it goes out. As far as brushes are concerned... For the Mia above, I used a lineart brush called "Funny Haha" which you can find for Procreate by searching just that. For the shading (I know it's not in colour, but I'd use the same brush for rendering that too!) it's one by Deharme from their 2017 pack (and you'll be able to find it by searching Deharme 2017). For these character splash arts for my RFTA zine, I used a different Deharme oil brush for everything, from the sketch to the rendering, and really, I can't recommend this set enough.

When colouring, there's usually a lot of soft incidental lighting that makes things look a bit more 3D and solid in what is otherwise quite a flat style. (Like on Gant's chest.) Having a look at where there are hard shadows and lights versus softer ones can really make things look more legit, and a lot better in their own right. Clothing folds, particularly for suits (which are a hard thing to draw!) are a huge part of AA characters, so it's worth studying how they work in game and in real life. Don't ever be afraid of pulling up a photo reference, because a lot of the time it'll look more game-accurate than if you tried to cobble it together from game art.

This is the same brush. I always think Iwamoto is more of a line artist, and Nuri is a painter. You can kind of tell what each process is like from the artbook scans, so you should look at those. (You can find them online!)

Sprite-wise, if it's OG style pixelated sprites you're interested in, I'd have to point you to spacecoyote's Neil sprite set - from 2008, but I think it's still one of the best resources out there! Nina does a great job of making it accessible, and that was pretty much the same process that I followed when doing this cut-in mockup for Lana.

The HD sprites are a bit more approachable, because really, they're just standard illustrations. (and they're only waist-up!) I was lucky when I was spriting Lana à la Investigations, because Calisto was a reasonable reference for her coat, and Ema was great for her face. AAI sprite lineart is super crisp, comparitively, I think.

Level 1: browser extensions

This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.

Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.

Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).

uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.

Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.

FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.

Level 2: leaving enshittified services

The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.

Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.

Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery

DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.

Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.

Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.

With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.

Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery

Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.

To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.

Level 5: automated media piracy

The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.

The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.

Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.

Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.

Level 6: fucking with Android

Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.

Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.

Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.

You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.

Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.

Level 7: fucking with Windows

This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.

Level 8: switching to Linux

I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.

VERMIS III - Old Curses & Buried Horrors

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺𝘴 ?