~ sailor v ~

Ha ha, no, of course not.

Yahoo is a notorious repeat offender. Yahoo is the reason the “if you’re not paying money for a service, then you’re not a customer, you’re the product.” saying exists.

Here is some fully general advice: If you’re the user of a free-to-use website, and you learn that it’s being bought by a large company, then this is always, and forever, bad news. If it’s not an acquihire, then it’s something worse. You’re not a customer, you’re the product.

If we’re lucky, this will be a Livejournal-style buyout, where the site just gradually disintegrates over the course of several years. If we’re unlucky, then it’ll be a Posterous-style buyout, and Tumblr will be shut down when Yahoo goes bankrupt in six months. It is vanishingly unlikely that being owned by Yahoo will benefit Tumblr users at all.

Predictions:

More ads. Karp has a weirdly principled dislike of ads, for a guy running a free social network. Marissa Mayer is unencumbered by morals, here. If you spend a billion dollars on something, you’re gonna want a return on income.

NSFW content is probably going to be banned, or heavily restricted. (As in, “verify your age by giving us a credit card number”) Ad networks hate and fear porn, and Yahoo is going to run more ads. No other Yahoo property allows NSFW content, for precisely this reason.

They might try to restrict fan content, due to copyright/CP concerns, as Livejournal did; they might not.

small tutorial/warmup exercise i did some time ago.

I’m gonna type this up while it’s fresh on my mind because some of y’all don’t know how to use Google

SO YOU WANT TO DRAW A woman sitting in the grass.

IF YOU SEARCH: female sitting

Very vogue. Very male gaze. Good for fashion or model pictures, not very good if you’re wanting to draw a natural looking pose on a woman who isn’t a model and whose camera certainly didn’t fucking turn on by itself.

IF YOU SEARCH: female sitting pose

Arguably worse, depending on the use. My experience with “female + pose” searches is that you get a lot of IMVU and The Sims pose sets, and artists making sketch compiliations that… don’t always have great anatomy and are frequently just more stiff model poses. I do use similar searches for pinup sketches, ie, “female sassy pinup pose,” though “posing for pinup photography” and “how to pose for” will give different results if you aren’t finding what you need.

IF YOU SEARCH: woman student relaxing sitting on grass crossed legs

Closer. Still kind of staged looking. Maybe we don’t want her studying. Maybe we just want her relaxing. Still, you start to see how specific keyword searches will really get you results.

IF YOU SEARCH: woman sitting under tree grass relaxing nature summer

Nice. This is only a small handful of the results, but most of them more or less fit my mental image. Mostly stock images, but good for gesture sketches or figuring out a pose. Still… we could go further, and I think I will.

IF YOU SEARCH: woman sitting under tree grass relaxing nature summer senior photography

Jackpot. Senior pictures aren’t always awkward kids in braces. Look at how much more natural a few of these look? Compare that to the “Female sitting” search. Google Search tip #1 is basically “use more and specific keywords.” But just… one more thing I just… can’t get off my mind… what if I… just…

IF YOU SEARCH: black  woman sitting under tree grass relaxing nature summer senior photography

Uh oh. So let me level with you, if you just google “dreadlocks,” expect a lot of white people. I spent over 30 minutes adding keywords to this search, and every page was still white people. Breaking it back down to “black woman sitting on grass” helped but gave me all the boring pose issues of the female sitting search. So basically, Google Search tip #2 is: Google image search is as White as the rest of the damn world. How do we find what we’re looking for now, then?

IF YOU SEARCH: black woman sitting in grass nature tumblr blackout

Beautiful, natural poses. Adding “photography” whitewashed it. Adding “summer” gave me bikini pinups. Searching for POC models using Google image search is infinitely more frustrating than finding a million thin white women, and you’re usually going to be better off supporting POC modeling blogs themselves than fighting with Google all day. Using “tumblr” and “instagram” as keywords may also get you a lot more natural, less Vogue Was Here hits. Pinterest too, on occasion. 

But keep in mind that these are real people–especially using tags like “tumblr” or “blackout.” There’s a difference between referencing a pose or drawing different face shapes, and outright copying someone’s exact likeness without their permission. Maybe also consider liking/reblogging/following them if they’re a model or photographer. Use some common sense. You don’t own images found on google yadda yadda don’t be a dick.

if you have an ipod or iphone or ipad or whatever then Please download the app “Make a Pose”

it gives you a lil figure like this

and you can make them do whatever you want!! Like

Took me about 1.4 minutes to make this sad little guy it’s Really easy to get the hang of

they Happy

you can change the camera angle so easy too so you can get perspective + foreshortening reference

THIS IS ALL FREE TOO but if you pay $2 you unlock the ability to have two figures onscreen at the same time so you can make COUPLE POSES

AND YOU CAN CHANGE THE LIGHTING,

you can also make rooms and place some objects or characters like so:

YOU WANT A CHARACTER W/ A BIGGER CHEST? HERE THEY ARE

YOU WANT A FRICKIN HORSE?

NEIGH NEIGH MOTHER FUCKER

hello i am here today to not lose track of the art cheats i have discovered over the years. what i call art cheat is actually a cool filter/coloring style/way to shade/etc. that singlehandedly makes art like 20 times better

80’s anime style

glitch effect

glow effects

adding colors to grayscale paintings

foreshortening ( coil )

foreshortening ( perspective )

clipping group (lines)

clipping group (colors)

dramatic lighting ( GOOD )

shading metal

lighting faces