Jirakong

GG EZ

They aren’t super compatible with small animals but they can be trained out of it.

I have one and she’s my little dummy ❤️

Greyhounds. “Consider us!”

Going over my copy of The Visual Dictionary of Dinosaurs (images 1, 2, 4 and 5), most of the models are credited to John Holmes, Roby Braun, Graham High and Jeremy Hunt of Centaur Studios. Given this newspiece on the fate of commissioned work of theirs for another publisher, it’s not undue to assume these models are owned by Dorling Kindersley and are hopefully in suitable storage.

Image 3’s model was again commissioned by DK, though this time the work was done by Jonathan Hateley, as acknowledged on Dangerous Dinosaurs.

“Whether the Andrea Gail rolls, pitch-poles, or gets driven down, she winds up, one way or another, in a position from which she cannot recover. Among marine architects this is known as the zero-moment point – the point of no return.” –Sebastian Junger, “The Perfect Storm”

Posts like this aren’t my usual fare, but there’s a lot of readers on Tumblr. So y’all might be interested – or, if not, you really should be.

On Monday, this went down:

That’s the bloodless, matter-of-fact, ho-hum business event way of describing it. Let me paint you a different picture.

On Monday morning, every single Barnes & Noble location – that’s 781 stores – told their full-time employees to pack up and leave. The eliminated positions were as follows: the head cashiers (those are the people responsible for handling the money), the receiving managers (the people responsible for bringing in product and making sure it goes where it should), the digital leads (the people responsible for solving Nook problems), the newsstand leads (the people responsible for distributing the magazines), and the bargain leads (the people responsible for keeping up the massive discount sections). A few of the larger stores were able to spare their head cashiers and their receiving managers, but not many.

Just about everyone lost between 3 and 7 employees. The unofficial numbers put the total around 1,800 people.

People.

We’re not talking post-holiday culling of seasonal workers. This was the Red Wedding. Every person laid off was a full-time employee. These were people for whom Barnes & Noble was a career. Most of them had given 5, 10, 20 years to the company. In most cases it was their sole source of income.

There was no warning.

But it gets worse.

No, I’m not going to link back to your page. I edited out your ugly signature too. I paid for the art. It is mine.

Don’t worry, this does not mean I take credit for drawing it. When people ask if I drew it, I say “Nope.” When people ask who did, I say, “Sorry, I don’t remember.”

Just because I bought your art does not mean our profiles have to be linked forever. It’s the same if I buy an apple from the grocer. I don’t have to keep the sticker on it or tell people where it came from. I’m not a walking advertisement for your shop.

If you want credit so badly, then I should get a cut of your future profits for my part in the advertising.

if you bought a physical, painted-on-canvas drawing, would you still go through the trouble of trying to edit out the signature there too? Because literally the only difference between that scenario and this one is that the canvas can be physically held and displayed, where the digital painting stays in a digital venue.

Please do not ever fucking commission me. My signature is an A, but I don’t care if an artist’s signature is a giant fucking watermark half as big as the piece. If you cut out their signature, you cut out their effort. Do you have to make a little URL tag that links back to my page or DA or tumblr or whatever? No. Would it be nice? Yeah. Is it a good habit to do anyway? Yeah.

But unless you’re paying me USD and we’ve made it part of the agreement that my signature will NOT be on the art- leave the fucking signature on the art. You purchased art that has the signature. Once you alter it, you’re violating our purchase agreement. The artist produced that art for your agreed upon purchase price with the understanding that what they were sending- signature fucking included- would remain on the piece.

When I show my stuff here on Tumblr, I keep whatever DA link came with the automatic sharing of the post. I include a comment about the work if I feel it needs actual context, but otherwise I just have the link to the original post on DA and to my profile on DA. That’s it. I don’t link Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, Flickr, Instagram, and whatever other god forsaken social media people can easily find me on. 

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST.

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST.

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST. 

CHANCES ARE THEY ARE GOING TO WORK VERY HARD ON YOUR PIECE  

THEY MIGHT EVEN BE ANXIOUS BECAUSE THEY MIGHT TAKE A LITTLE LONGER THAN EXPECTED 

SOMETIMES THEY LOSE STEAM HALF WAY BECAUSE LIFE THROWS OBSTACLES IN THE WAY. 

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST, THEY WILL HAVE SPENT TIME AND EFFORT ON YOUR PIECE. THEY MIGHT HAVE GONE THOUGH SOME TURMOIL IN THE PROCESS OF MAKING IT. BUT IN THE END YOU WILL HAVE WHAT YOU PAID FOR. 

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST AND YOU ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR WORK AND WHAT THEY PROVIDED, THE ARTIST WILL BE VERY HAPPY AND PROUD. THEY WORKED VERY HARD ON IT! THEY PROBABLY WON’T MIND IF YOU SHOW IT TO OTHER PEOPLE, IT WOULD HELP THE ARTIST A LOT! (BUT IT’S OKAY IF YOU DECIDE TO KEEP IT TO YOURSELF TOO….)

BUT IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST… 

AND YOU SEE THE ONE SECTION THAT TIES SAID ARTIST TO THE PRODUCT THEY WORKED SO HARD ON….. 

….AND DECIDE TO TAKE IT OFF 

YOU HURT THE ARTIST EMOTIONALLY…..

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST AND EDIT THEIR NAME OFF THE PIECE….

YOU ARE SAYING “FUCK YOU ARTIST, I COULD HONESTLY CARE LESS ABOUT HOW MUCH TIME AND EFFORT YOU PUT INTO THIS. I PAID FOR IT SO OBVIOUSLY I DESERVE TO TAKE THE CREDIT FOR SOMETHING I HAD NO HAND IN BESIDES PAYING FOR IT TO BE CREATED.”

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST, DELETE THEIR SIGNATURE, AND SHOW IT OFF, YOUR FRIENDS WILL ENJOY IT AND SHOW IT TO OTHER FRIENDS. THOSE FRIENDS MIGHT WANT TO BUY SOMETHING SIMILAR! BUT THE ARTIST ISN’T GETTING CREDIT FOR IT BECAUSE YOU ESSENTIALLY TOOK THEIR WORK AND CLAIMED THE WORK, EFFORT, AND SKILL FOR YOURSELF, ALL BECAUSE YOU PAID FOR IT. (SOUNDS CRAPPY RIGHT?)

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST

CHANCES ARE PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE. CHANCES ARE THEY TOOK THE COMMISSION TO PAY SOME BILLS AND REALLY NEEDED THE MONEY.

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST AND DELETE THEIR SIGNATURE….

1915 – Splitting the Atom. Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity ultimately leads to the splitting of the atom and the dawn of the atomic age. This epoch-defining stage in human evolution will act as a beacon that awakens ancient superspecies sustained by nuclear energy.

1943 – The U.S.S. Lawton Incident. [unreadable] only survivor. Haunted by the memory of that day, Randa will go on to become one of Monarch’s foremost operatives, searching for the truth behind the ancient creatures that exist beneath the surface of our world.

1944 – [unreadable; likely concerning the disappearances of Hank Marlow and Gunpei Ikari]

1946 – Monarch Founded. In the aftermath and cover-up of the U.S.S. Lawton incident, President Truman unofficially establishes “Monarch Unit”, a small, off-book research team established to engage in the systemic study of “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms”. Privately, many of Truman’s allies question the validity of the group’s theories and work to keep their existence a secret.

1952 – The Great Smog of London. Baffling meteorologists and defying atmospheric physics, this unexplained weather phenomenon saw London’s streets overwhelmed by huge clouds of air-polluting smoke. Monarch theorizes that the beating wings of a giant creature could have created an anticyclone that unleashed airborne pollutants across the city.

1954 – Monarch Goes Golbal [sic]. As the age of the atom bomb dawns, Monarch expands into a multinational coalition of scientists and discoverers leading covert missions to understand and contain the threat of M.U.T.O.s. Authorized unofficially by President Eisenhower and overseen by General MacArthur, Monarch [unreadable] a containment flotilla under the guise of “nuclear [unreadable] weapons across the Bikin Atoll in the [unreadable] were not tests. They were trying to kill [unreadable]

1959 – Siberian Mystery. At the height of the Cold War, aerial photography taken from a Russian spy plane reveals a huge containment facility established around an icecap in Siberia. The Monarch symbol can be seen emblazoned across the canopy of the structure.

1973 – Mission: Skull. Monarch surreptitiously partners with Landsat and the 1st Aviation Brigade, 3rd Assault Helicopter Company to mount an expedition to the mythical “Skull Island” in an uncharted corner of the South Pacific. Encountering the god-like superspecies known as Kong, they soon discover that mankind does not belong here.

1991 – Isla de Mona. A covert Monarch team establishes a quarantine zone around the island’s dormant volcano, under the guise of ‘environmental research’. Over the coming years, what began as a small scientific outpost will expand to become a full containment facility around the mouth of the volcano.

1995 – Return to Skull Island. Monarch security officer Aaron Brooks defies his father Houston Brooks and leads an off-the-books mission to Skull Island, to determine what has become of Kong since the 1973 expedition.

1999 – Janjira Meltdown. Following an explosive disaster [unreadable] Power-Plant, Monarch establishes [unreadable] zone outside of Tokyo. What the [unreadable] the Janjira Q-Zone is in reality a containment facility established around a dormant M.U.T.O.

2005 – A Mysterious Mercenary. Former British Army Colonel and MI-6 agent Jonah Alan is locked up in Pakistani prison after an encounter with Monarch agents. Alan and his band of mercenary accomplices were caught trying to breach the walls of a subterranean M.U.T.O. dig-site.”

2009 – Temple of the Moth. Mythographic studies of Chinese temples leads Monach to the high-altitude jungles of the Yunnan province. Dr. Emma Russell and her team follow a mysterious bio-acoustic signature to a previously undiscovered megalithic temple, within which lies a gigantic cocoon. A quickening heartbeat is detected inside.

2012 – Message in a Bottle. Days before retirement, Monarch veteran Houston Brooks receives a coded message from his son. The mission to Skull Island has revealed dramatic new information about Kong’s origins, and his role on the island.

2013 – [unreadable]

2014 – The Battle of San Francisco. The existence of giant superspecies is revealed to the world as Godzilla clashes with two M.U.T.O.s in the center of San Francisco. Unleashing devastation upon the urban center, the world watches as Godzilla defends our world and restores balance to the natural order. The time has come for Monarch to step out of the shadows.

2016 – Monster Zero. When Monarch discovers an extraordinary superspecies sealed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, Dr. Vivienne Graham leads the effort to build a covert containment and research facility around the dormant creature. Her classified field notes contain a mysterious footnote: “The devil has three heads.”