#akelun

In case of you did not notice the precedent message. I’m probably moving!

Leaving Tumblr for good.

More explanations from the previous post.

Recently, I noticed that Tumblr was filled with a lot of bots... and that these bots started spamming with likes and sometimes reblogs my post. In theory, that’s nothing dramatic... except that these blogs are always pornographic blogs... on my SFW blog.

But also, I noticed that, on my other created blogs, these bots leave me alone. Which means, I guess and hope, that their code are limited to “I like everything the ORIGINAL blog is posting”.

Well... alright, I get it. So now, this blog will be a closed and useless blog. I will stop posting in here. If you want to keep in touch with my WIP and works on Tumblr, you can follow me in the new blog I’ve just made to prevent this unwelcome spam:

http://akelun.tumblr.com

The link didn’t change, it’s the link from my original blog that I changed.

This is it.

I now finally have gotten Internet, at my new home. I left my parents, I'm living alone. It feels so great... and at the same time add so much new stress due to my financial situation.

I'm actually working until the beginning of July... and need to find a new job fast if I don't want to be kicked out of my new home in some months. So... I shouldn't be really active yet... probably more active than before though.

For the moment, I do not have a lot of things to show.

But the time I spent, being alone, without Internet, I progressed in the script of my comic project. I reached the 110 th page just yesterday. To think it's just a script, so it's more condensed than a novel, and that I probably must be at 10% of the progression of the real story I have in mind... It really IS a big project.

I also progressed on human anatomy studies and a new turn around for one of my character of my comic project (Kawa, again, since I have to modify her a bit).

And finally, I also improved on the dragon anatomy since I wasn't satisfied with the paws and some other details of the dragons I'm usually drawing. My herm dragon Keluna will then be slightly different. But just slightly.

Also, as I now moved and live on my own, some things will change of course. And some of you may wonder: "Will I open commissions / YCH / etc...?" I already talked with a few followers about it.

Well, this is not in my programm yet... But it could be soon. Especially that I will need more money now that I have to pay a rent. Don't worry however, if I open commissions, even if that's for money, my intentions are not to give a fast-made scrap and to take your money. I make a point of confining myself to my responsabilities. If someone is paid for something, he HAS to make this thing... or to apologize and to refund or propose a discount if the commitments were not completely fulfilled or if we're late on our fixed deadline.

Whatever, it's too early to talk about it. I'm not open yet. And don't worry, if I open, you will all get informed on the websites you can follow me: Tumblr, Deviantart, FurAffinity, Weasyl, SoFurry, "MAYBE twitter" and why not Patreon if I open one.

Then... what can I add? Ah, yeah, I kept myself informed about the progress of the 2.80 version of the software Blender. New interface, improvement of the grease Pencil to make it a 2D software as well, and most importantly, the Eevee real time render engine. And to be honest, I really feel amazed and impatient.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, Blender is an open-source 3D software. It is FREE and has, in my point of view, the potential to outperform its rivals at 2'000 or even 4'000 $ (Maya, Softimage, Cinema 4D...). It already outperformed 3DS-max since a long time now in my point of view, by the way. Lighter, Faster, more stable, and it has a real outliner and some other tools.

As you may have noticed, I didn't post a lot of 3D projects I worked with. It is mainly because I used this software mostly to help me in my drawings. I made several "sketches" of characters or Background with it, I rendered it and I used it as a scrap for my final 2D digital arts. Which also can explain why I'm sometimes slow to post a creation.

Though, with Blender 2.80 coming, and promising to be an excellent software, maybe I'll do more serious works on it. I dunno.

Whatever, I guess I said what I needed to say. I'll probably post some WIP of my work soon (maybe in an hour, maybe in the coming week. I didn't decide yet).

If you have questions to ask, do not hesitate. I'm a dragon, but I don't bite... generally. =P

Have all a nice day!

Akelun

Finally, after a long break I had to take because of health issues, I’m done with my part of the art trade with @caehlynt , featuring his Siren eating a good birdie on a beach, in front of a sunset. ^^

Hope you like it!  ;) 

All comments are welcome of course.

Made with Krita 3.3.1

Aaaaah! I think I won't gonna make a lot of artist friends with this.

But whatever, I need to say what I have in the heart... to share it, even if I may be wrong.

Just keep in mind that it's just a personnal point of view, and that I respect the fact that you may think differently of me.

Copyright... is not a PROTECTION for the artists... not any more.

Copyright is just a right to allow the artists to complain at the first - silly - reason.

What makes me think that?

Well, there is one question to ask first: what is the point of making art? What is the point of posting art on Internet?

For me, the answer is simple and can be resumed in one word: SHARING.

- We, artists, post art to "share" our work, our passion. Sometimes, some arts or specialities need to rely on other artworks. We can need references, sometimes. We can need a music for animations, if we are an animator... or an animation, if we are a music maker and want to accentuate the theme of our song with the help of an AMV montage. Whatever we are, a simple drawer, a musician, a singer, an animator, a Youtuber... we ALL need to WORK a lot on our creations.

- We, artists, also "share" our imagination. And, wether we like it or not, we can corrupt or act on the imagination of our watchers.

We, of course, need to be protected, as artists. We have to be protected against TRUE plagiarism (or TRUE art theft, if you prefere and don't know the real definition of plagiarism).

By "true", I mean the kind of plagiarism, when someone else save your work, publish it elsewhere and say "Hey! See that pic! It's mine! All made from me!".

BUT, in my point of view, we also have to respect the 2 points I mentioned above.

And copyright protects you against plagiarism and art theft, indeed... and happily... BUT it also gives to the artists the right to not respect the points I mentioned above.

We can talk about a very big japanese video game studio, for example, which propose since several dozens of years the same game series because they have popularity and can do it. They make you dream, with fantastic lands and creatures, give inspiration to a lot of artists. But, when some fans want to thank them and to honor them, with, for examples, some small fan games, that can't even have the potential to surpass the original games, then, the big japanese video game studio simply say: "Listen kid, we make you dream, alright, but we don't care. You're using what we made, we didn't allow it, so go f**k yourself!". I'm sorry for the fans of the studio who understood which studio I'm talking about, but that's what they say when they don't allow this kind of thing.

We can also talk about YouTube, maybe?

Back in 2010, it was great. I was a flash animator, I animated 2D stickmen animations and was watching great other flash animators like Terkoiz, Stone, dbs-1029, miccool, etc... Most of the time, when we were making an animation, of course, we needed a music to come with it, and with the theme. Sometimes, when we change the scene, we needed to change the music, so we could need 5 musics for just one animation (or more). Back in 2010, we COULD do this! And the fair use was working... most of the time. Now, how is YouTube? How animators can share their passion? We come on YouTube to submit our work, we don't monetize the video, because most of the time, young 2D animators didn't do it (and don't have the popularity to do it and gain enough money by the way)... but we sometimes have to pay for the musics, while we work sometimes as long if not more than the musicians who made the music(s)... all of this to gain nothing... Yeah. Great.

And can we talk about the "adopts" contest? Or the copyright about the new species artists are making (and which sometimes are not very extraordinary to be honest). WOW! I'm so glad that wyverns, dragons, elves and dwarves are not copyrighted species. Tolkien and other great authors would have been so doomed! And the "adopts" contest... I mean... What the f**k? Well, of course, it is easy money, but... Let 1 artist selling 6 dragon designs, Ok. Why not 20 artists selling 10 dragon designs? But once we'll have a million dragon artists who will sell 20 dragon designs, will it still be possible to make a dragon from our imagination and to avoid another artist coming, shouting: "HEY! Your design is far too close to the one I sold, you f**king thief!!!"?.

With ideas like the "adopts design", I'm not surprised any more when I learn on an artist beware blog that an artist came to another, complaining that their 2 own anthro tigers have the same number of stripes and that it is a character theft. Seriously... How can we be mad against this kind of artist who complain against a simple number of stripes and a tiger character when thousands of artists propose to sell character designs?

This "adopt" thing is just an aberration.

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And yet, this is just a small part of what I'm thinking about copyright and arts on Internet in general. But I don't want to give you too much text to read. It's already awesome if you have read everything and have reached these last lines.

As a conclusion, as an artist, I have just one thing to say to the other artists who read this. Don't be selfish. Use the copyright when your arts are really stolen, let your watchers take some inspirations from your character(s), from your world(s). Ideally, if the art in question is not accessible for your Patreon's patrons or to people who sold it only, put a CC-BY licence instead of a Copyright. Show to your watchers you're not an intolerant uptight artist.

Art is a way to express yourself, to share your ideas, your opinion and your imagination. It can't be simply resumed as a possession which belongs to you... and sometimes to the person who paid for it.

If you have another point of view, want to discuss about something I say or simply have a question to ask me, then, do not hesitate to do it by comment.

And if you agree with me and want to share this journal, do not hesitate, as long as you credit me for it. This journal has to be shared as much as possible. I'm really disgusted to see how art is viewed by some artists nowadays, and I have difficulties to stand it day after day.

WIP of the map of the world of my comic project.

Inspired by this article, from David Revoy: http://www.davidrevoy.com/article332/tablet-history-log

As I decided that I’ll try to post a weekly article on my tumblr each sunday with the intention to share you some news as a form of self-motivation and as I didn’t have anything constructive to tell you today, I got the idea to tell you my story with graphic tablets when I read the article linked above from David Revoy, a great French artist who’s using only open-source software in Linux OS.

Also, one thing that can be interesting is that I got in April a new Cintiq model from Wacom: The Wacom Cintiq Pro 16, which, I think, doesn’t have a lot of review yet and you could learn here that this tablet is really terrible, in the good sense of the term, but also have some terrible... choices that we can reproach Wacom, in my point of view.

As I intend to tell you about my tablets in a chronological order, this review will be left at the end of this article.

SUMMARY:

- Genius G-Pen M712 (2009 - Windows XP and Seven)

- Wacom Cintiq 12wx (December 2010 - Windows 7 and 8.1 and Linux Debian-based)

- Wacom bamboo pen & touch (2012-2013 - Windows 7)

- Wacom Cintiq 13hd (December 2016 and January 2017 - Windows 8.1)

- Wacom Cintiq pro 16 (April 2017 - Windows 8.1)

Genius G-Pen M712 - Bought in 2009, used between 2009 and December 2010 - tested in Windows XP and 7

(I was too inexperienced to judge the stylus pressure)

PRO: A big amount of shortcuts buttons, usable for left-handed and right-handed persons (probably too much I’d even say): 34 shortcuts buttons, 2 scrolls with 1 button in the middle of each scroll and 5 buttons to edit some parameters for the tablet. A good format to draw (A4). Love the design.

CON: The stylus needs battery, on the contrary of the Wacom stylus. Though, I never changed it even after 1 year of frequent use. No eraser on the stylus.

Initial price: around 120 - 140 € if I remember well.

Still in my possession and still working (didn’t try it on my latest computer in Windows 8.1 though).

Wacom Cintiq 12wx - Bought in December 2010, used between December 2010 and April 2017 - tested in Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Linux Debian-based (Ubuntu, Crunchbang (RIP), Debian, Mint)

PRO: This is a monitor tablet. The screen is really strong, in high quality and soft enough to avoid the nib of the stylus to get worn out (I didn’t change the nib even after 6 years of use and there’s no scratch on the screen). 5 shortcut buttons and a scroll bar on the left and on the right of the tablet (for left-handed and right-handed persons). Tablet of high quality with a high life expectancy (6 YEARS!). Plinth very useful to put the tablet in a tablet position OR in a screen position. Eraser on the stylus. No battery needed for the stylus.

CON: Screen too small and in a too small resolution. Screen too dark, it is impossible to color calibrate it correctly. Cables very bulky (with a big box to change the screen parameters). The frame around the screen is very large.

Initial price: ~ 900 €

Still in my possession and ready to be plugged in and used.

Wacom Bamboo Pen&Touch - Bought between the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, used only at my 3D arts school or when I travel - tested in Windows 7

PRO: Very light and easy to carry when I’m traveling. 4 shortcut buttons. Love the design. Pen & Touch functions. Eraser on the stylus. No battery needed for the stylus.

CON: A bit too small to draw (A5 format). The nib is worn out really fast compared to the ones used on Cintiq tablets (had to change it after 6 months of use).

Initial price: 80 or 90 €

Still in my possession.

Wacom Cintiq 13hd - First one bought in December 2016 and Second one in January 2017, used less than 1 month each and sent back - tested in Windows 8.1

PRO: This is a monitor tablet. Light. 1080p resolution. Cables not bulky at all. 9 shortcuts buttons. Eraser on the stylus. No battery needed for the stylus. Love the design.

PRO and CON (in-between): Still a bit small, but it’s clearly better than the Cintiq 12wx screen size. The plinth propose 3 position, in addition of the flat position, but the most vertical position is not vertical enough to allow us to use the tablet as a second screen when we’re not drawing, on the contrary of the Cintiq 12wx screen. Plus, the plinth is made in a plastic material which looks and sounds... really not strong.

CON: 2 tablets bought, 2 tablets received with a problem of white light escaping from the low part of the screen. Damn! I sent the 2 tablets back almost immediatly. The screen feels more granular than the screen of the Cintiq 12wx, which made me worried to have to change the nib of the stylus as regularly as with the Bamboo pen&touch to avoid to get some scratches on my screen with the time.

Initial price: ~ 900 €

Sent it back almost immediatly (x 2)

Wacom Cintiq Pro 16 - Bought in April 2017, used once received and once I bought a cable Mini-display port <-> Display port and still used - tested in Windows 8.1

PRO: This is a monitor tablet. Perfect screen size to draw and work on a normal desk. 1440p (used in 1080p though because I prefere). Parallax problem resolved: I didn’t have to calibrate the stylus on the screen, on the contrary of the Cintiq 12wx and 13hd. It’s still possible to do it if for you the problem is not resolved enough, but I didn’t feel the need to. Screen really strong and soft (not granular as the Cintiq 13hd). Pen & touch function. Perfect screen quality. Eraser on the stylus. No battery needed for the stylus. Love the simplicity of the design.

CON: No more shortcut buttons. The plinth now allows us only to draw with the tablet in a flat position, or in a lightly slanting position only (though, it definitely looks stronger than the cintiq 13hd’s plinth). To use it as a second screen when I’m not drawing, I have to use a book holder, which is not very... practical.

BIG MISTAKE: In the French amazon store, they made the mistake to add this line: “The wacom expresskey remote allows you to[...]”. Oh really? What a shame this remote is not included and costs around 100 € then. Especially that it makes us think that it’s not a problem then if there is no more shortcut buttons on the tablet. At least, we’ll have the remote. LOL! ... Unless we don’t have the remote when we pay the tablet in the wacom website 1612 € but that we get it when we pay the same tablet in amazon fr 1507 € instead of 1600 €. o.O (Well, OK, we have the “contents of the box” discretely written below, but though, this is still misleading.)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: You bought your computer some years ago? It’s a bit old, but still young enough and it’s extremely powerful? Oh, and you thought about buying this model of Cintiq? Well, you can. You’ll just have to add 15 € for the cable mini-display port <-> display port + 65 € for the adapter display port <-> HDMI Wacom recommends you and you have to cross the fingers to hope that the adapter will work because... not all the adapters are working, or not always correctly. After all, we all know it. The HDMI is definitely done. One year before, everyone was using this but now, in 2017, it’s so old-fashioned! ... No, seriously, wacom, there, I don’t understand this choice. For Mac users, there should be no problems apparently. There is a special port for Mac. But for PC users, there is just ONE port for the screen! And this is not a HDMI one. This is a mini-display port. A port which is all fresh and almost unused. I mean... WHY? When I talked by phone with one of the Wacom staff about it, I really thought to myself: “But this is crazy! What a stupid choice! This tablet is awesome and I’m sure that this choice will disappoint A LOT of customers.” And I was definitely right. That’s simple, on the French amazon store, there are 4 reviews. 1 is rated 5/5 (the person noticed however a problem with the fan in the tablet if you work in Windows 10, but it can be solved in the control panel). 1 is rated 4/5 (it’s me). And the 2 others... Well, they all say that this tablet is, I quote, “extremely disappointing” and “should not be recommended”. For both of them, the problem is due to this port choice. Soooooo... maybe I wasn’t this wrong when I felt that this choice could have some bad consequences...

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: I am not really good in term of hardware / electronic / informatic knowledges yet. But recently, I was wondering: Wacom did a HUGE improvement with the parallax problem with this Cintiq Pro 16. I ever heard from an artist on YouTube (probably one of the first persons whom let a review about this model) that this Cintiq is the first one in that case. True or not, I can’t say that the difference is not huge and enjoyable. But WHAT IF this improvement was the price to force Wacom to stop using the HDMI port and use instead the new ones, to know the “mini-display” port. Of course, it’s just an hypothesis and it still needs an answer from Wacom services to be confirmed or not, but... in my point of view, that could be an explanation which could explain the choice of Wacom.

Initial price: ~ 1600 €

Favorite tablet I am using actually (Happily, I have a recent computer from March 2016)

And you? What kind of tablets did you get / are you using? What do you think about them?

Don’t hesitate to share your opinion and story... and to share them with David Revoy in his article I linked above as well, because he was the first to ask and my article is heavily inspired from his one.

Kind regards.

I'm actually learning Cinema 4D and WOW! How can professionals work with autodesk products? #cinema4d and Blender #b3d are by far easier, more intuitive, more stable and with a better interface organization. That's just crazy!

Of course, I maybe talk a bit early because I still need to learn Cinema 4D more, but from what I saw and learnt to begin... WOW! I'll maybe send another article if my opinion changes when I'll go further with my Cinema 4D learning. I still have to see if Cinema 4D is good to symmetrize poses for example.

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If I’m saying all of this about Cinema 4D and Blender against autodesk products, that's mainly because I really have the feeling autodesk is craming full Maya with the most recent tools and don't really focus on implementing them well in their programm, which bring us to an anarchic organization of the interface.

To give you an idea, it came to a point that even following tutorials of Maya is INSANE! Not long ago, I tryed to start again with Maya 2014 and improved my rigging skills. So, as I didn’t learn this step at my school, I searched for how to make an IK arm twist in Maya. I found 2 tutorials about it in Youtube. I followed them. In the video, the rig works perfectly. But do you think that I would have the same result with my skeletton? Of course not. And that’s not because I didn’t try to think or to solve the solution by myself. I HAVE knowledges with Maya! Thanks to my school! I tryed to orient the joints to the world and not, to see what will happen if I change the relationship of my bones or of my IK solvers in the outliner or if I add / delete / modify some constraints, in case of. NO! That DIDN’T work!

And that’s not the only point! Maya is known as the 3D general software number ONE for animations! ... I mean, OK! Why not? But well then, where can I symmetrize the pose of my rigged models? For running / walking / ... cycles, isn’t it the BASIS a programm of 3D animations SHOULD have? How can I stretch a succession of bones or even just one bone easily? Why do I manage to animate a constraint value only on a locator and not on a nurb or joint?

Also, about the interface... I have a screen of 27′ and in 1080p resolution. But when I need your tools, the shelf, the attribute editor, the tool settings and the outliner (for rigging / skinning for example), how can I work with the ridiculous workspace I got? Seriously? Is it really necessary to have a 4K screen or at least to have a second screen beside!? In Blender, we can at least zoom in and out the panels (except the outliner) with CTRL + Middle Mouse Click and if we’re not satisfied we can zoom in and out EVERYTHING by coming to the “user preferences - System tab” and in “General” change the “DPI” value. There, with the maya interface, I have the feeling it was made for partially-sighted persons and that the persons who are not partially-sighted can go jump to the lake, to stay polite.

See? Small faults... that makes us wonder if they really THINK before implementing things in Maya and if they really care to their Maya users or if it’s just a philosophy of “Learn how we present and programm our software and shut up”. This kind of philosophy can suit to an office programm like microsoft office, libre-office, etc... but... not for a very complexe software. Especially from a commercial and professionnal-considered one. 3D IS complexe! If they can ask 4′000 dollars for a single license, they have to simplify their softwares.

For 3DS-max, I have the feeling that it's like an alpha version of Blender (even if apparently Blender is inspired by 3DS-max, not the contrary), it’s less stable, heavier and with less tools / options (example: where’s the outliner, the thing that every 3D general softwares has... except 3DS-max apparently). And also, why, while there are less tools than in Blender, 3DS-max needs at least 10 seconds to open while Blender opens between 1 to 3 seconds at worst?

And Softimage, I have nothing against it... except that it's just less used by professionals, like Cinema 4D and that I have the feeling that this programm is a bit left on one side by autodesk because of that?

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Of course, I'm just talking about 3D general softwares (not specialized ones like Z-Brush) I know. Houdini, for example, I didn't try so I can't judge.