JP's Desk

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

with such great hits as 

mabel (upon seeing steven’s gem): you’re PERMANENTLY BEDAZZLED?????

dipper: ugh gideon’s the worst

steven: oh yeah I hate it when your friends try to kill you, but you just gotta wait it out and be patient with them and they’ll come around to you eventually

dipper: what. the fuck.

the kids repainting the sign when mabel drops her paintbrush to the ground by accident, cue steven being like ‘np i’ll get it’ and walking straight off the edge of the roof 

mabel: i hate that picture of me, 4th grade’s the worst

steven: haha yeah…grades…those exist… i definitely didn’t look exactly the same from ages 8 to 14 for complicated shapeshifting reasons

“our grunkle stan is kind of a sketchy guy” “oh no way most of my family are war criminals”

steven: *breaks a cup* aw shit *licks it and it seals back together* 

dipper: *furiously taking notes*

theres no possible way that steven “haven’t you noticed I’m a star” universe doesn’t come over to mabel’s slumber parties w/ candy and grenda and casually mention his girlfriend who a. is literally a knight in shining armor, b. has taken down multiple genocidal dictators thousands of times her size, not to mention c. mastering the art of swordfighting when she was twelve and d. saving his life and the lives of all the beach city residents on a regular basis

dipper: *trying to reach something on a high shelf*

steven: oh here you go *shapeshifts his arm to grab it and bring it down*

dipper: ??????thanks??

playing w/ waddles and nonchalantly saying something about missing his own large, pink pet, a magical lion that can teleport and that he has ridden into battle multiple times

(at suzy’s diner) steven: don’t worry, i’ll get the bill 

various pines: thanks man

steven: it’s cool, my dad’s a millionaire

dipper:

mabel: “dipper, stop being such a dummy-dumb, he literally TOLD us that he’s half gem on his mother’s side!”

Couple years ago I saw these two board games at the store back to back. Well, not saw them per se, but ya know. Spied them out of the corner of my eye. And for a moment without reading the text, I couldn’t tell you which was which decade at first. Funny. Either they were in a rush to get these out the door or they wanted their throwback trivia game boxes to look uniform. I didn’t think too much of it.

Only, from then on I started seeing it MORE. Every time someone markets a 90s or 80s throwback…

Goddammit they’re identical! What??! How did we let this happen? As a 90s survivor and a designer, this drives me up a wall.

Look, I know I’m late to the party to complain about “the 90s look” when we’re just starting to get sick of the Y2K nostalgia train. But c’mon, the 90s were not The 80s: Part Two™ 

Trust me when I say that we weren’t all wearing neon trapezoids up until the year 2000. The 90s look being peddled is so specific to the tail end of the 80s and an early early part of the 90s - a part of the 90s when it wouldn’t stop being the 80s. This is Memphis design being conflated with the wrong decade.

Keep reading for a long ass graphic design history lesson and pictures of old soda and fast food.

Stop everything you’re doing and go download and install Firefox.

If you’re saying, “well, I need Chrome because I need such-and-such extension for my job”, the computer will not explode if you install another browser. Use Chrome ONLY for work tasks and use Firefox for everything else. If you’re concerned about losing your bookmarks, Firefox can import your Chrome bookmarks.

[ID: Firefox Library window. The “Import and Backup” panel is expanded, displaying the option, “Import Data from Another Browser”, which is also circled with a red MS Paint ellipse. ID end.]

Be sure to add the multi account containers extension to your firefox, which allows you to be logged in to multiple accounts on the same website at the same time in the same window but in different tabs.

look on my five open tumblr accounts (not sideblogs, accounts!) ye mighty and despair.

Firefox is super good, folks. It's good in a general "google shouldn't own everything in the entire fucking world" sense AND in a "this is an actual good product that does lots of cool shit" sense.

ALSO make sure to add the Ublock origin extension on Firefox - I haven't seen a youtube ad in five years and you don't have to either.

While you're at it, why not add the Wayback Machine extension so that if you go looking for a page that has been taken down the wayback machine will automatically offer you an archived version instead; also handy for documenting people's shitty takes and winning arguments after they delete the original post!

Worried that Firefox is going to slow down your computer? In benchmarks, modern versions of chrome and firefox are pretty much the same speed but you can still install the auto tab discard extension ANYWAY so that it will snooze unused tabs in order to keep your computer running faster. Set it to sleep, discard, close, and store tags at your discretion!

And while you're at it: install Firefox as your mobile browser for android and add those extensions to your mobile browser! Mobile adblock is here, baybee, save your data and enjoy a better mobile experience! And install it on iOS! iOS can't add extensions, but at least it's better than safari, and if you want a somewhat more private iOS browsing experience try firefox focus for iOS (which is also available on android but you can accomplish the same thing with extensions).

I would also like to suggest Unpaywall if you're an academic-type. I know we all love sci-hub but this is quicker and cleaner in most cases!