Are you IMPressed?

What is stimming?

In it’s most simple form, stimming is a repetitive body movement that self-stimulates one or more senses in a regulated manner.

What types of stims are there?

Visual Stims

Flapping hands, blinking and/or moving fingers in front of eyes, staring repetitively at a light, pressing on closed eyes to create visual effect [pressure phosphene], …

Auditory Stims

Snapping fingers, tapping on objects, listening to the same song on a loop, rolling Rs, “cat noises”, repeating words, putting hands over ears, singing, clicking tongue, humming…

Tactile Stims

Scratching, rubbing the skin with one’s hands or with an external object, pinching the skin, putting thumb inside fist, sucking thumb, rubbing hands/feet together, petting preferred textures, tying knots/twirling string, twirling/stroking hair…

Vestibular Stims

Moving body in rhythmic motion, rocking front and back or side-to-side, spinning, pacing, walking in circles, walking on tip-toes, jumping up and down…

Taste Stims

Licking body parts, licking an object…

Smell Stims

Smelling objects or hands, smelling other people…

Rhythmic Stims

Tapping on surfaces/objects/self, clicking fingers, making repetitive vocal sounds, bouncing legs, foot tapping, hand flapping, clicking pens, …

There are a lot of other stims as well that don’t necessarily fall under the category of “repetitive” such as pressure stimming, which are still just as valid. Basically if what you do serves the purpose of the stim, you can call it a stim.

Why do people stim?

People stim for all different kinds of reasons. They may stim when they are happy or excited, when they are stressed, as a part of their normal body language, as a way of communication, as a punishment, as a response to something internal or external, as a compulsion, to focus, to self soothe, etc. Stimming can be a coping mechanism, but it can also be so much more! No matter what reason someone has for stimming though, it’s important to remember that all stims are natural and normal.

Who stims?

Anyone that finds stimming useful, whether consciously or subconsciously, can stim. This includes neurotypicals, but mainly stimming is seen as something that neurodivergent people do and it occurs most frequently in:

the autism spectrum

sensory processing disorder (SPD)

Tourette’s

schizophrenia

OCD

people that experience mania/hypomania

people with ADHD/ADD

people with anxiety

etc

Where can I find stim toys/jewelry?

Stimtastic

TherapyShoppe

AutismShop

SensoryUniversity

OfficePlayground

RuthDoodle

His sister tells him ‘You waste all your time playing with knives. You’re not even good!’ and he masters dual swords.

His sister is a prodigy and he’s told he’ll never catch up. He learns from dragons. He trains the Avatar. He takes her down (with the help of a very skilled waterbender)

He’s left behind by his mother, cast out by his father, hunted by his sister, and Zuko still learns unconditional love. 

His father tells him he’s worthless and unloved, that he was ‘lucky to be born,’ and he becomes a man that the world is proud of. 

Anything his family said to him, he managed to turn around and build on it. He thrived on it, exploded from it, turned all the negativity into a positive path and it’s just… it’s amazing.

There’s just no end to my love for this character. No fucking end. 

Bonus: The weak, banished prince has fangirls for all the ages. Take that, Ozai.

Took some 1920 x 1080 resolution HD screencaps of the backgrounds in “Bubbled”. There’s 12 backgrounds here. I only took ‘clean’ backgrounds that didn’t have Steven’s bubble in it (although some did have his bubble but I was able to easily edit it out.

Here’s the folder

When artists talk about “references,” they don’t necessarily mean a single reference photo that they are copying exactly. If you want to know what curly hair looks like, you get reference photos of curly hair. If you want to know what purple light looks like, you get reference photos of purple light. If you want to know what curly hair looks like in purple light, you get both.

When Disney made The Lion King, their animators studied references of lions, and “references” included photos, videos, and actual trips to see real lions.

You have to build a visual vocabulary no matter what you want to draw.

References can be how light hits a certain material, what elbows do when you look at them from certain angles, or how a seatbelt works in real life in case you want to design a neater looking seatbelt for your spaceship.

who thought of that idea? who thought “put davy jones in a bucket of water” and had the guts to suggest it aloud? and then who went “hey that sounds like a great idea!”

apRIL FOOLS I DREW TWO DOGS THEY’RE BEST FRIENDS

Then I found out he yelled this in the middle of a fit of rage while playing Sonic ‘06 in response to a nearly game breaking glitch.