always holding your head high with a smile

Just in case you forget this exists.

You can browse the most popular ones or search for certain colors, themes, and even specific hex codes!

When you find one you like, you can download a wallpaper swatch of it and also select the specific colors it uses to look at more palettes that use those same ones.

Hey kids!  If you’re a filmmaker, animator, or storyboard artist and you don’t know what screen direction is, you might want to read this.

For the record, there are always exceptions to the rule in filmmaking, which is why I pointed out 3 examples here.

I’ve also found that comic books tend to NOT take screen direction as seriously as film does, but I’m still on the fence if this is wise or not.  My favorite comics pay close attention to screen direction so as to not confuse the reader.

- don’t erase the stuff you’ve already drawn, just make the layer invisible. if you’re anything like me then deleting in process sketches has a very light subconscious negative effect on how the drawing is turning out.

- don’t draw your sketches on white, especially if your brush is black. white is hard to draw on. change it to grey. trust me on this.

- if a sketch is almost there but not quite try mirroring it horizontally. the issues will be way easier to spot.

-if inking isnt your thing but you want outlines just paint your color over the sketch lines, then do the ink lines last.

- if you have lots of ideas but no patience with details like myself take to tiny tiny thumbnails. like im talking barely bigger than your thumb. it forces you to look at the whole picture and not just the details.

Calling all storytellers! This is real!!! 

Free Video course by the creators from Pixar. 

“Have you always wanted to be Pixar animator? Now that process is a tiny bit easier. The animation studio recently made a number of courses available on the Khan Academy website to help you start your journey - and they’re free.”

The group of courses are called “Pixar in a Box” and include short lessons on everything from character modeling and animation to using virtual cameras. Today, it added a new course into the mix: The Art of Storytelling.

The free course is an exploration into the storytelling process at Pixar. From the course description:

“What makes someone a good storyteller? Storytelling is something we all do naturally, starting at a young age, but there’s a difference between good storytelling and great storytelling. In this lesson you’ll hear from Pixar directors and story artists about how they got their start, what stories inspire them, and you’ll begin to think about what kinds of stories you might want to tell.”

Read the full piece here

CURRENT MOOD:  

hey yall its me the Art Mom™ to help you shade pretty

rule 1: DO NOT SHADE WITH BLACK. EVER. IT NEVER LOOKS GOOD. 

red- shade with a slightly darker shade of purple

orange- slightly darker and more saturated shade of red

yellow- i think like..a peach could work but make it a really light peach

green- shade with darker and less saturated shade of blue or teal

blue- shade with purple

purple- a shade thats darker than the purple you’re using and maybe a little pink (MAYBE blue)

pink- darker shade of red

white- a really light lavender or blue..or i guess any really light colour??

black- okay listen dont use pure black to colour anything unless you want to leave it with flat colours because you cant really shade black lol

grey- a slightly darker shade of purple or blue (less saturated)

brown- slightly darker and less saturated shade of purple or red

I made some Balls of Colour to go with Art Mom™’s post:

’What is hair and how i can render it?’

I got this question and I really wanted to show on very simple examples how to render hair. Because it really is… simple! Following this guide you will be able to paint hair in few minutes.

This is called the ribbon technique.

It is used by many artists out there. I just wanted to show you a couple of examples. As you can see I picked Adam Hughes and J. C. Leyendecker. Look at it and see how they paint the hair. It doesn’t look like a mop. It looks more like big, overlapping shapes organized in some fashion.

Try to imagine a string of hair like a ribbon. Ribbon symbolize a large portion of hair. Don’t focus on every single hair string, instead of this imagine it as bigger shape. It will catch light in highest point and it will have core shadows.

Establish where light is hitting the hair and where it turns dark. Start with big shapes. big brushes to get the lights and volumes right. Then You can go into details and paint small brush strokes to add details like single hair strings.

I attached two examples. First is very simple where you can clearly see and understand the similarity between hair and ribbon. Second example is theory put into practice. But it’s basically doing the same things as shown in simple example.

Let me know what you think about this?

I based my knowledge on James Gurney blog (author of Dinotopia and Light and Color book)

Just some things I’ve learned that when I share some people don’t seem to know yet! 

CATCH DUPLICATES. Catch them and then return them to prof willow. You can do this by clicking on the pokemon’s stats, scrolling down and hitting transfer. You get pokecandy for this which you can use to evolve/power up your original! 

Make sure you compare and contrast CPs of your duplicates. One pikachu might be 10cp and the other 56cp. Keep the higher one, transfer the other. 

That being said DONT waste your time evolving/powering your pokemon just yet. You might work hard to power your eevee to 100cp only to catch one at 150cp the next day. WAIT. In fact, I started only powering up my highest evolved pokemon. (ninetails, fearow, etc)

Pokestops refresh every 5 minutes. You can visit them for an unlimited amount of time. I live right on top of one and check back in whenever I remember to. 

Leveling up will give you LURES, INCENSE AND INCUBATORS. So don’t think you NEED to buy these from the shop. 

If your wary about spending money for coins, you can GET COINS by having pokemon in gyms. This is the ‘defender bonus’ Theres a shield icon in the shop section that you can refresh every 21 hours. You can have up to 10 pokemon in 10 diff gyms for a total of 100 pokecoins and 5000 stardust a day.(10 Pokecoins and 500 stardust per pokemon)

Your gym alliance makes it so that ANY GYM you fight of your own alliance, your pokemon WILL NOT FAINT.  Their hp will reduce to 1 and they will need healing, but they won’t faint. You also gain gym prestige this way which helps strengthen your alliance territory. Any rival gyms however will faint your pokemon and they will need a REVIVE to keep being used. You can also transform them into candy at this point if you are a heartless monster. :( 

A gym has a max of 3 pokemon traners/defenders. If you find a gym of your alliance with only 1 or 2 pokemon in it, you can ADD YOUR POKEMON WITHOUT FIGHTING YOUR FELLOW TEAM. Just drop a pokemon in there and keep walking! Free defender bonus. (Do this by clicking the bottom left icon of ‘add pokemon’)

More than one trainer can fight one gym leader at a time. Getting a friend to fight with you is the best way to beat the gym!! You attack at the same time.

ITS NOT TURN BASED ATTACKS. Its real time! Click once for a basic attack, swipe to dodge, and hold down a click for a SPECIAL ATTACK!

My best method is not to dodge at all but just click forever. So long as I have a bigger CP I usually win lol. 

Do NOT put your best pokemon into a gym. Your second or third only. You cannot recall your pokemon once its in a gym and you will need it to fight other gyms.  (they get returned to you after they are beaten)

Everyone gets one free incubator that lasts forever. Any extras you find or receive from leveling up only last 3 hatches before breaking.

TRACKING POKEMON! Sparkling grass doesn’t guarantee a pokemon showing up. The ‘nearby’ tab is the actual tracker. The highest on the list is the closest. Selecting a pokemon in it will make the tracker pulse when you get nearer to it. 3 footsteps away mean THREE RINGS away (or more). 2 footsteps means TWO RINGS, one footstep means one ring and NO RINGS MEANS YOU CAN CLICK ON THAT POKEMON AND IT WILL APPEAR IN 10 SECONDS.

Battery saver mode, found in settings, works as follows: Once clicked on, if you drop your phone to your side as you walk, with the top of your phone facing the ground, the screen will dim so only the pokemon logo shows. It still tracks your steps for your eggs and it will vibrate and beep when a pokemon shows up. As soon as you lift your phone to your face (right side up) the screen will appear again as normal!

The higher level you get, the more rare pokemon you come across.

i think an important thing to learn, especially if you start out with drawing anime, is that faces don’t necessarily have to narrow from top to bottom

i like to think of wide top, wide middle, wide bottom, and rectangle-like as the 4 main face shapes

what you should keep in mind about them:

you’re only halfway done: the jawlines, the width-length ratio, the amount of fat in the cheeks, the intensity or subtlety of the face’s curves are all important components you still have to decide on after choosing the shape itself

none of these shapes are exclusively feminine or masculine, don’t hesitate drawing them on any gender

most people in real life have some variation of the wide middle type

if you are trying to draw real people, getting the shape of their face down is the first step

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes taking place in the technology sector that are poised to have an immense influence on human life.

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems

Talentbuddy

TopCoder

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

Django Tutorial

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

Rails Guide

If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:

Cake PHP Book

Symfony 2 - Get Started

Yii PHP - The Comprehensive Guide

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

Video games:

Easy game engines (virtually no coding): 

Game Maker Studio (2D; free and paid versions)

GameSalad (2D)

RPG Maker (2D; numerous versions ranging from free to $69.99)

Stencyl (2D; free and paid subscription versions)

Scratch (good for kids and is more general; 2D; free)

More difficult game engines: 

Unity (lots and lots of platforms; C# and JavaScript script; 2D, 3D, VR; free and paid versions)

Unreal (specializes in graphics; C++ and visual script; 2D, 3D, VR; free with a royalty on successful products)

CryEngine (Lua script; 3D; paid subscription and full license versions)

Mobile game development: 

Corona (free and paid subscription versions)

SpriteKit (2D) and SceneKit (3D) which are built into the official compiler to create iOS apps (see iOS apps for more resources)

also all of the above game engines (cross-platform)

Game console development: 

Game Maker Studio (with a paid subscription)

Unity

Unreal

CryEngine

Note that games can also be created on more general platforms like iOS and Android apps, but the resources listed above are specialized for game development.

iOS apps:

In order to develop iOS apps, you’ll need to purchase an iOS developer program membership for $99 a year, which requires an Apple account. Here are some general resources:

Xcode (the official IDE for iOS apps; can be installed on OS X)

Start Developing iOS Apps Today (Objective-C)

Ray Wenderlich iOS tutorials (Objective-C and Swift)

Code School: Try iOS (Objective-C)

Developing iOS 8 Apps (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; Swift)

TutorialsPoint: iOS Tutorial (Objective-C)

How to Make iPhone Apps With No Programming Experience (Swift)

Swift Tutorial: Building an iOS Application (2, 3)

iOS apps are developed in the 2 official languages of Apple: Objective-C and Swift, the latter of which is newer and generally much easier to learn.

Objective-C resources:

the official documentation

TutorialsPoint: Objective-C Tutorial

Ry’s Objective-C Tutorial

Swift resources:

the official documentation

The Swift Programming Language (free official e-book)

Swift: A Quick Reference Guide

Xcode also has SpriteKit, SceneKit, and Metal built in, all of which are incredibly useful for creating apps that require elaborate graphics, particularly games.

SpriteKit resources:

How to Make a Game Like Candy Crush With Swift (2)

Sprite Kit Swift Tutorial

Create Space Invaders with Swift and Sprite Kit

iOS SpriteKit Physics Tutorial in Swift

Build the Game of Life (Swift)

SceneKit resources:

Scene Kit Tutorial: Getting Started (Swift)

An Introduction to SceneKit (2; Swift)

Metal resources:

the official documentation + other resources (Obj-C)

iOS 8 Metal Tutorial with Swift (2, 3)

Getting Started With Metal (Obj-C)

An introduction to 3D graphics with Metal in Swift

Also, in order to publish iOS apps, you’ll have to juggle certificates, app ids, and provisioning profiles. This process can be convoluted at times so here are some resources:

How to Submit Your App to Apple: From No Account to App Store (2)

Beginner Tutorial: iOS Certificates & Provisioning Profiles

Android apps:

In order to develop Android apps, you’ll need to register as a developer for a one-time fee of $25. Here are some general resources:

Android Studio (the official IDE for Android app development; free; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux)

the official documentation

Getting Started

Android Tutorial For Beginners (2, 3)

Learn Android SDK From Scratch

Introduction to Android Development With Android Studio

Android apps are developed in Java and the layout is coded with XML.

Java resources:

W3schools: Java Tutorial series

TutorialsPoint: Java Tutorial

Core Java Tutorial

XML resources:

W3schools: XML Tutorial series

TutorialsPoint: XML Tutorial

For publishing (which is somewhat easier than publishing iOS apps):

How to Publish to the Android Market

3D modeling/animation:

Blender (can also be used to create games; Python script; free and open-source; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux)

Maya (specialized script; free trial, free 3-year student subscription, and paid subscription versions; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux to an extent)

3ds Max (Python script; free trial, free 3-year student subscription, and paid subscription versions; can be installed on Windows and OS X)

RenderMan (specialized script; free for non-commercial/educational use and pay-per-license for commercial use; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux)

Misc. resources:

Stack Overflow is an ask-and-answer community for programmers. It’s amazing and will save your life. Sign up and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Github offers a student pack (here) if you create an account and prove you’re a student. This gives you free access to a bunch of great programming resources for free for a certain period of time, such as Unreal Engine. Also, Github in general is a site that you can host your code on. Other users can see it, and “fork” it to make a copy of your code and modify it.

Parse is a backend service that allows you to store data in databases it hosts on its own servers. It lets you use push notifications, create users, store and retrieve data, etc. It’s compatible with iOS apps, Android apps, Windows apps, Xamarin, React, Unity, OS X, Windows, JavaScript, PHP, .net, Arduino, and Embedded C. It’s free up to a certain limit that depends on the services you use.

Cloud9, Codebox, and Squad are online IDEs that allow for real-time collaboration and support a variety of languages, so they’re useful for team projects.

And some general advice:

Your program will not work right away, 99% of the time. That’s okay. Do your best to figure out where the error is. Here is some advice on debugging (written for PHP but the methods can be generalized).

If you’re stuck, Google. Google like there’s no tomorrow.

Ask questions on a community like Stack Overflow.

For that matter, browse relevant Stack Overflow questions. You can probably find some solutions there.

Don’t be afraid to copy and paste.

Take breaks sometimes if you’re getting burned out. But don’t stay away from your projects for too long or you’ll lose track of its status.

Backup your code. On the cloud, on a USB drive, wherever. If your IDE has a backing up feature like snapshots, use it whenever you hit a milestone.

If your project is big, split it up into milestones and set goals. Don’t tackle everything at once.

Like the OP said, coding isn’t just for professionals and “geeks” anymore. Anyone can learn it if you really try, and with the rapidly expanding tech industry, learning coding can really broaden your opportunities.

If any of the links are broken, or you have a question or some information/resources to add, you can contact me through the askbox or the OP through his Twitter (as mentioned in his post).

1, Set yourself up an account on jsfiddle.net and you get yourself an awesome, easy to use sandpit for trying out JS/JQuery/JS framework stuff. YOU DON’T NEED TO INSTALL ANYTHING (woo!). It’s free. 

Just remember if starting a fiddle from scratch, you’re usually gonna be coding with JQuery, so you gotta set JQuery as your framework:

2, Got a light/medium understanding of JS? Next step: learn AngularJS. Seriously, it’ll blow your mind. Just remember to select it as a framework in JSFiddle:

Xcode no longer requires an iOS developer’s license to push your app to a mobile device. However, it’s still needed for submission.

If you do develop for mobile and plan on submitting your app I would recommend looking at Apple’s human interface guidelines, or at the very least the do’s and don’ts of UI design. Your app doesn’t have to look and work flawlessly but if it’s clearly a mess Apple will reject it.

TalentBuddy was bought by Udemy and I don’t believe the actual coding problems are available anymore? HackerRank effectively does the same thing.

Speaking of Udemy, they just changed their terms of service and courses aren’t astronomically expensive anymore. It’s paid, but if you learn better through videos here’s my favorite iOS course.

Parse is shutting down, here’s a list of alternatives.

DON’T ignore GitHub. There are a LOT of open source projects available that are specifically created to make the production of your app easier. Few examples:

Chart.js makes adding graphs to web pages much easier [x]

Spring makes it easier to implement UI animations into your app [x]

New XKit’s source is on here [x] (not really something you’d “add” to anything but I thought I’d point it out)

Realm is super easy to use and is great for databases on mobile devices.

A Video Game That Teaches You How To Code

“I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think,” Steve Jobs said in a lost interview from 1995.

But for a beginner, learning to code from scratch can be intimidating.

Enter CodeSpells. UC San Diego computer scientists developed this video game to teach people how to code. The story line is simple: you’re a wizard that uses spells (i.e. code) to navigate through the world, fight off foes, and solve problems.

While experienced coders can delve deep into the programming to create some truly devastating spells, newbies can easily experiment with the simple drag-and-drop coding interface.

If you’re into Minecraft, the CodeSpells team has also developed LearnToMod — a tool that teaches coding through Minecraft.

GUYS. GUYS.

GUYS.

HOLY FUCK.

GOOD GUY ADOBE releases the ENTIRE CS2 SUITE. FOR FREE.

That means free access to Photoshop CS2 - and that already has most of what you could ask for, really.

All you have to do is create a FREE ADOBE ID.

The cs2 programs date back only a few years, and still have much of the functionality of today’s more modern ones. The differences between most of the versions are little more than slight modifications or additions of minor features, and UI changes. Go for it guys!!

ctrl + click the hair layer to select it

increment by 1 or 2 depending how thick you like your lines

make a new layer under your hair layer

fill with desired color

!! Woah guys! Pixelovely’s new tools are finally out, one for hands & feet, and one for faces!

There’s now 429 photos of hands & feet, and 314 photos of faces. Dang!!

This is super cool news and I certainly can’t wait to start using them haha

Hello internet civilians! As some of you may or may not know, my name is Dana and I am a high school senior that is ALWAYS on the prowl for trying to get to college for as cheap as possible. I’ve come across 1000′s of scholarships that I simply don’t qualify for, so I thought “hey, why not share these with random people on the internet that don’t know where to start?” You asked the question and only answers you shall receive.

Please remember to credit me for this masterpost because I spent a lot of time and energy on it :)

PLEASE ALSO REMEMBER THAT A SCHOLARSHIP IS WORTHLESS IF YOU DO NOT APPLY FOR IT. 

SO DO NOT JUST SAVE THIS POST IN YOUR DRAFTS AND NEVER USE IT. ACTUALLY WRITE AN ESSAY OR FOUR

Scholarship Databases:

fastweb.com

cappex.com

http://www.uncf.org/

http://schoolsoup.com/

http://www.tuitionfundingsources.com/

http://hsf.net

https://www.collegeboard.org/

http://apiasf.org/

http://hispanicfund.org

www.maldef.org

www.supercollege.com

www.finaid.org

www.collegeispossible.org

www.mach25.com

http://chegg.com

www.HBCUmentor.org

“Big” Scholarships That Cover: Tuition, Room Board, Books, or Full Scholarships

Gates Millenium

Posse Foundation

Coca-Cola Scholarship

AXA Scholarship

Dell Scholars Application

Ron Brown Scholarship Program

Burger King Scholars 

Horatio Alger Scholarship

Questbridge

Voice of Democracy Scholarship

Chick Evans Caddie Scholarship

Hertz Foundation Graduate Scholarship

+ 111 Full Tuition Scholarships to Universities!

Scholarships

(**Some May “Prefer” Minorities, But That Does Not Mean You Should Still Not Try For It**)

http://blackstudents.blacknews.com/

May/June 2015 Scholarships

http://www.fastweb.com/college-scholarships/articles/the-2015-scholarships

http://blackstudents.blacknews.com/opportunities/

Scholarships for Minorities: White House Edition

LGBT Scholarships

Buick Achievers Scholarships

Cultural Diversity Scholarships

50 LGBT Scholarships - 1 Application

50 Top Scholarships for 2014/2015

National Association of Black Journalists

7 Prestigious Undergrad Scholarships

The Jackie Robinson Foundation

500+ Scholarship List

Masterlist of College Minority Scholarships

4 Scholarships That Are Easy To Apply For

Do Something Campaigns

Need help on Scholarship Motivation?

HOW TO WIN A SCHOLARSHIP: FROM A GIRL WHO’S APPLIED FOR 300+ AWARDS

12 Tips on Winning Scholarships

Skip these 6 Scholarship Errors

Students with Average Grades Can Win Scholarships!

4 Ways To Make Your Scholarship Essay Stand Out

Get Rid of Student Loans!

How I Got Rid of 60k Student Loans in 3 years By Living in a Hotel

10 Steps To Minimize Loans

Minimize Student Loans

Know How Much Student Loans To Take 

Paying For College

Miscellaneous Articles That Are Good Reads

Out-of-State Colleges That Offer In-State Tuition

5 Myths About Financial Aid

How To Negotiate A Better Financial Aid Package

How To Read A Financial Aid Letter

How To Deal With A Low SAT Score

Great Schools That Accept Low SAT Scores

How To Demonstrate Interest in a College

I Told Harvard I Was An Undocumented Immigrant. They Gave Me A Full Scholarship.