By simply adding a few more lines, we can add a pair of eyes and a mouth. Maybe even a little triangle nose! Or half circles for ears. We can now draw a face, which provides a basis for all sorts of expressions.

These simple additions can allow us to explore the wide range of human emotion and individuality.

This may seem like the basics of the basics. But that is what we want! In order to get to the point where we are able to draw complex, elaborate representations of humans and objects, we will need to start with simple shapes like lines and circles and build our understanding from there.

For instance, lets give our stick person some cool new features, such as hands and feet. I chose little squiggly circles to represent hands, and triangles to represent feet.

We can go a step further and modify the body of the stick person to include shoulders, hips, elbows and knees. These parts of the human body are quite complex in real life But here, all we need to do is add a few simple lines and dots to our stick person.

The lines provide some additional structural elements to our stick person's body, which are the shoulders and the hips. The dots indicate the points of articulation - elbows and knees, the places where the arms and legs bend!

Now we can use our stick person to show us an even wider range of human movement, action, and expression.

Our little drawing of a human being is evolving! All it took was adding a few more lines and shapes here and there.

By elongating some of the existing lines and making the head an oval instead of a circle, we can give our stick person proportions that resemble that of a real life human.

By this point, we have managed to add more complexity to our stick person simply by using our ability to draw lines, circles, and other basic shapes!

These basic ideas are the building blocks that will enable us to create more complex shapes.

The next part may be a considerable step up if you are absolutely new to drawing, but I have decided to include it in order to show you how complex objects like the human body can be built from shapes that are a bit more complex than circles and lines.

For example. Two ovals and a rectangle can be combined to create a cylinder.

Six squares can be combined to create a cube, or a box. Here, each square is distorted slightly depending on which way the cube is facing.

Note that the back faces of the cube and the bottom of the cylinder are hidden. These shapes allow us to visualize that which should not normally visible.

A sphere from all perspectives can be represented by a circle. But we can make it more like a sphere by adding lighting and shadow if we so desire.

Cubes, cylinders, and spheres are examples of 'solid shapes' because they consist of 3 dimensions.

Lets see how these solid shapes can be used to compose the human body.

By stacking three cylindrical objects, we can create a torso. Two spheres have been added to form shoulders, while a smaller cylinder forms the neck.

An arm is an alternating sequence of spheres and cylinders connected together. Note that the hand has been simplified for this example.

We can apply these solid shapes to the rest of the body to give us a more recognizable representation of the human form. It doesn't even have to be perfect. And just like that, our stick figure now has a silhouette that is unmistakably a person!

In the above examples, notice that we kept the stick person at the beginning while building up the shapes and solids around it. This is because the stick person serves as a guide for positioning the body and its various parts -> also known as posing.

You can do the same thing to everyday objects! Here, I drew a wine glass by stacking these three dimensional solid shapes.

The cup and its contents are two ovoid shapes that were cut in half. The stem is a very thin cylinder shape. The base is a cylinder with a slightly wider bottom.

Solid shapes help inform us how objects and parts of the human body may appear from different perspectives.

For example, a sphere can be used to demonstrate how the human head appears when looking up or down, turned to the side, or tilted at an angle.

With these examples, I hope I have managed to convinced you that if you can draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can draw a person! You just have to train your eye to recognize the simple shapes within complex objects. Try it with everyday objects as well! Or even your favourite media! A drawing subject can be as simple or as complex as you envision it to be.

Once you have mastered that, there are many aspects of drawing you can explore from here that may require you to seek additional resources or a fellow artist's advice.

Last of all, remember that drawing is an iterative process. Even if you draw something correct the first time, you will need to draw it again and again to get it right all times! And by making small changes like the ones we explored in this tutorial, your drawings will gradually transform!

I hope what I've demonstrated here are enough to provide the basics of how to get started with drawing objects and people, and also to help refresh more experienced artists. :) Hopefully I didn't go too off topic with what was requested, and let me know if there are any more questions I can answer.

Starting off strong, the front page:

Immediately the first thing that stuck out to me was the open hours for Sundays. You're telling me you're a video rental store going out of business in the early 2000s and you're open from just before midnight to the witching hour on Sundays? The Lord's day? well technically it would be monday bc the day would switch over at midnight but u get what i mean

If we click on the stretched, blurred-to-shit image of the storefront we're met with this:

FLASHING LIGHT WARNING

Now upon first seeing this, my gut instinct was that this flashing on the screen had to be morse code. And sure enough, with some painstaking eye trauma and extreme slow down of the original video, I decoded this: "I'm still here. Find me."

Is this Dave coming back to MandelaTech in spirit? Is he sending out this message hoping someone will find him? I thought we saw his brain explode... why is he still here? Perhaps he plays a bigger role in all of this than we originally thought, or perhaps this is Gabriel luring Thatcher back to MandelaTech for a final showdown. Who's to say?

Heading back to the home page and clicking on the ad for "the only CRT TV in Wisconsin" brings us to this message from the MCPD.

To be honest, I don't really see this as having any further plot relevance than world building. I just don't see this fitting cleanly into a character driven narrative, at least not one that we've seen yet. So in the meantime, let's move on.

If we click on the bright red highlighted text that reads "WHAT HAPPENED WITH MANDELATECH?" we're met with... a black screen.

Though when highlighted, it reveals the same paragraph that was on the front page, and the same red highlighted text at the bottom, but other than that, nothing of note really.

If we go back to the home page, there's a couple tabs we can click on.

On the Contact Us page, there's a working email address to contact for inquiries. I haven't actually sent anything to said email bc i'm an anxiety ridden bitch and i dont feel like it rn but if anyone tries and hears a response I'd love to know.

On the Products page, we see multiple products for sale including the CarCamGPS (used by Adam and Jonah in Vol2), and FaceStudio 2... very interesting.

Under Subscriptions, there's a big notice that MandelaTech's subscription video service (the intro we see before the Stanley bit in Vol333) has been discontinued since 2001. Now to me, that raises a question about when, canonically, this website was last updated if we're still seeing a notice about something that happened in '01. Don't know what the answer to said question would be, just think it's something to draw attention to just like with the dates on the old MCPD site. This also places the Stanley bit from Vol333 around or before 2001, since Dave was still using the MandelaTech Daily portion of the tape to intro his findings for Thatcher.

Nothing much more here, so let's move on to the juicy stuff.

I found the website's site map, a list of all the tags tied to the domain including /projection, /mandelapolicedepartment, /contactus /subscriptions, etc.. But scrolling through the others... there's some interesting info here that's completely hidden if you didn't think to look much deeper.

Starting with /BPS.

We're brought to what appears to be the BPS website, where you can contact Adam and Sarah about paranormal happenings and learn about what they specialize in. (side note: the wording of "wanna open your eyes to the truth?" is gross and i hate that adam probably wrote that shit)

The "Paranormal" page (which they literally tout as being the "side of things" they focus on) literally goes nowhere, but the "Alternates" page seems to throw a wrench into things.

If we assume that Sarah is running the website (Adam, Vol4: "You're the one that handles the online shit.") then how does she seem to know next to nothing about the alternates, especially considering her brother was pseudo-murdered by one? On the other hand, this isn't Sarah's texting style at all. She tends to use proper grammar and punctuation. If anything this looks more like how Adam writes. Either way, just something to note.

On the main BPS page, we can click on Adam's Dove Messenger profile picture and reach /murray-diary.

Here we get three entries from Adam about his feelings on joining and being a part of the BPS. The first is a partially redacted telling of his initial joining and founding of the BPS with Sarah and his excitement to start an investigation with her (we all know how that ends up going). Using an anagram decoder, the closest thing I can come up with (with any real plot relevance) for the shorter redacted bits is "visionless", "villainess", or "alienisms". Can't for the life of me figure out what's going on in those longer redacted bits; someone will have to help me out on that one.

The second is the immediate aftermath of the investigation they go on in the beginning of Vol4. Adam is clearly upset and annoyed that Sarah isn't as gung-ho about all this as he is, and starts looking for her replacement.

And finally, the third. Adam meets Jonah, and apparently hates him? part of me wonders if this isn't an attempt at curbing some of the homoerotic fan headcanon surrounding their relationship bc i know that makes alex a lil uncomfortable but i digress. We know from Presto that Adam recalls hating Jonah to Thatcher, so that all checks out.

Most of what's here is things that we'd already established: Adam and Sarah start the BPC, found the BPS, go on an investigation, Sarah backs out, and Jonah ends up as her replacement for investigations while she sits back and handles the website, calls, and YouTube videos.

Wait.. YouTube videos?

We know canonically that the BPS has a YouTube channel, Sarah mentions their viewers multiple times in Vol4 and we see Sarah send Adam poorly edited Movie Maker videos like in Interlude. Not to mention, on the front page of their website it says right there, "check out our channel."

So I did some digging.

There's two and only two channels that I could find with all the BPS branding on them. One with no videos, no channel links, barely a description and the updated logo. And one with two, very old looking videos and a channel description that reads "SUBSCRIBE TO SEE MORE INVESTIGATION CONTENT!!!! if you want us to do an investigation or you have a suggestion for a vid contact us here [email protected]".

The first video is nothing really of note, a simple introduction to the society marked as a reupload from the original BPC YouTube channel (doesn't exist). However it's here that we discover Amanda, the girl that told Adam to go fuck himself over Messenger in Vol4, and is mentioned by Evelin in Presto, was originally part of the BPS.

The description tells us that she's no longer in the group since she and Adam broke up, and I guess the rest is history, but I wonder with the consistent mentions of her in recent content if she might appear in an update somewhere down the road.

The second video is just your classic "spooky scary alternate sighting". Nothing to shake a stick at really.

Now upon further investigation, it appears this channel is run by Alex Kaizo, friend of Alex Kister and co-creator of the website. He stated on Twitter just this morning that the YouTube channel would likely serve no lore relevance or canonicity, but idk.. you created the website which is canon so….

Anyway, that was my little dig into that rabbit hole.. let me know what you think. Now back to the site.

There's one last link that takes us somewhere very interesting.

/prophet.

I think a lot of people seemed to go back and forth on who exactly Gabriel was referring to at the end of Vol4 when he claimed he'd deceived "The Mandela Prophet". From where it was placed in the video one could assume he was referring to Adam, considering the hard cut to good ol' Gabe talking in the sky after Adam's encounter with Six. But I think this confirms that the Prophet was actually Dave, spreading Gabriel's message through the tapes he was restoring, ya know, like a prophet. But better yet-

really kickin him while he's down huh gabe

Well I've been compiling and writing this for about an hour... and this is far too long as it is, but I hope you discovered something or maybe had an epiphany while reading this or smth idk

okay so the big updates as far as i can tell are on the /murray-diary page. we start with a new entry from adam on august 14, ‘08.

he’s describing an encounter with the man in the corner. (the lore building and description here is just fantastic, like the idea that he radiates static from his being is so cool dude)

i find it interesting that it seems six is showing adam what he’s meant to be all the way back in ‘08. what six is doing is not a new thing in january of ‘09, he’s BEEN trying to contact adam and wake him up.

then we get this entry from present day, post vol2, pre catalyst (i think).

he’s hearing jonah’s screams. his best friend who he left for dead on the side of the road. and even if he doesn’t want to admit it, jonah was his only friend. the only person who ever cared about him. and adam feels terrible.

this restores my hope that adam is grasping onto a tiny bit of his humanity. at this point in the timeline (if memory serves me right) adam knows what he is, and the fact that he’s still human enough to not only recognise that the screaming is in pain, but that it’s his friend (when we know alternates are roused by screaming) i think says a lot about the future of his character. at least i hope so.