if I did, I did

LIKE THE OCEAN??? OR DEVOTION????

Now, I thought this AI generated garbage was just truly terrible on a number of levels; first off, she looks wayyyyyy too modern - her makeup is very “Hollywood glamour”, she looks airbrushed and de-aged, and as far as I’m aware, Ancient Egyptians didn’t have mascara, glitter-based eyeshadows and lip gloss. Secondly, her features are exceptionally whitewashed in every sense - this is pretty standard for AI as racial bias is prevalent in feeding AI algorithms, but I genuinely thought a depiction of such a known individual would not exhibit such euro-centric features. Thirdly, the outfit was massively desaturated and didn’t take pigment loss into consideration, and while I *do* like the look of the neck attire, it's not at all accurate (plus, again, AI confusion on the detailing is evident).

So, this inspired me to alter the image on the left to be more accurate based off the sculpture’s features. I looked into Ancient Egyptian makeup and looked at references for kohl eyeliner and clay-based facial pigment (rouge was used on cheeks, charcoal-based powder/paste was used to darken and elongate eyebrows), and I looked at pre-existing images of Nefertiti, both her mummy and other reconstructions. While doing this, I found photos of a 3D scanned sculpture made by scientists at the University of Bristol and chose to collage the neck jewellery over the painting (and edited the lighting and shadows as best as I could).

Something I see a lot of in facial recreations of mummies is maintaining the elongated and skinny facial features as seen on preserved bodies - however, fat, muscle and cartilage shrink/disappear post mortem, regardless of preservation quality; Queen Nefertiti had art created of her in life, and these pieces are invaluable to developing an accurate portrayal of her, whether stylistic or realistic in nature.

And hey, while I don't think my adjustments are perfect (especially the neck area), I *do* believe it is a huge improvement to the original image I chose to work on top of.

I really liked working on this project for the last few days, and I think I may continue to work on it further to perfect it. But, until then, I hope you enjoy!

mouth has smiled and laughed and cried

and screamed, and it shows.

i'm 23 today!! 💪

That ol’ chart of mine makes the rounds online periodically and it drives me crazy because it’s frankly not very good. So, I finally got around to remaking it.

I doubt this will get anywhere near as popular, but I wanted to make it.

A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.

I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.

Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)

Bulgaria - 35% Croatia - 45% Cyprus - 12% (!!!!) Czechia - 47% Greece - 27% Italy - 41% Latvia - 43% Luxembourg - 20% Malta - 11% (!!!!) Romania - 48% Slovakia - 47% Slovenia - 38%