References/Tutorials+Tools And Stuff

Vital - A powerful wavetable synth, my personal favorite VST synth, very easy to figure out creating new synth sounds, with the help of the plenty of tutorials that are out there for the plug-in. (There are paid versions but they are completely unnecessary to get 99% of the features of the plug-in.)

Synth1 - A classic piece of synthesizer software.

Pendulate - An interesting, chaotic synth that you can make weird little sounds with.

Native Instruments' free plug-ins - Various cool VSTs, including the Komplete Start pack.

The Free Orchestra - A set of orchestral instruments for Kontakt Player (see previous link).

BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover - More orchestral stuff! This one has its own player so you don't have to download a separate VST to use it if you don't want to.

Magical 8bit Plug - A chiptune plug-in, intended for producing sounds like that of 8-bit systems like the NES and Master System.

Genny - A synth VST made to emulate the soundchip of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

MT Power Drum Kit - A nice rock n' roll style drum kit plug-in.

This guy's weird VST collection - 6.4 gigabytes of weird VSTs, including some you might know, like Delay Lama and MeowSynth!

sforzando - A free player for soundfont files.

Musical Artifacts - A resource I mainly use to find soundfonts, on which you can find other various things as well.

Kilohearts Essentials - 30 effect VSTs including reverb, delay, compression, pitch shifting, transient shaping, ring modulation, phase distortion, and more.

Xfer's freeware VSTs - Exactly what it says on the tin, including the one and only OTT compressor.

Illformed - The good ol' dblue Glitch 1.3, Crusher, Stretch, and TapeStop.

Hysteresis and Fracture - Two interesting glitch effects, one being a delay and the other being a buffer.

Codec - A cool digital audio degradation effect.

Le Phonk - A slick distortion plug-in.

MAIM - An effect that mimics the sound of MP3 compression.

Soundly Shape it and Place it - One is simply an equalizer VST, the other is an effect that emulates a speaker (ex: a radio) and a space (ex: a cave).

Fresh Air - An effect that adds high end information to your sounds, to provide brightness.

ValhallaSupermassive - A combo reverb and delay plug-in that sounds quite big.

UnplugRed - A collection of various interesting VSTs, most of which have free versions.

Chowdhury DSP - I can't personally speak for all of these but their tape model effect is great for some lo-fi style effects.

TAL-Chorus-LX - A thick sounding chorus, good for "retro" sounds too.

Polyverse Wider - A great effect for widening sounds up, really simple too with only two controls.

Freesound - A good audio file resource, mainly for foley recordings.

Cymbatics Dubstep Starter Pack - A little sample pack with some good drum and synth samples.

fishmonger drum kit - A pack of samples from the album 'fishmonger' by Underscores!

WangleLine's sample packs - Free samples put out by my awesome mutual WangleLine!

aaand I might as well include this set of drums I made awhile back :P

Geonkick - A drum synthesis VST, especially simple to get kicks going, but capable of producing a multitude of sounds.

plugdata - A visual programming environment for plug-in projects, that people produce their own plug-ins for, such as infamous plug-in the gusher.

SoundThread (info in description) - A really cool node-based audio editing interface based on the Composers Desktop Project, great for sound design, although it currently only supports .wav files.

OpenUtau - An open source software for UTAU voicebanks like Kasane Teto, much easier to work with imo than the original UTAU software for a beginner to vocal synths like UTAU and Vocaloid.

Famitracker - More NES style chiptune stuff, this one's a classic standalone tracker program.

Tuğrul Akyüz's gumroad page - A multitude of free plug-ins including TugSpect and TugImgSynth which turn the brightness values of lines of pixels in images into unique spectral EQ shapes and wavetables respectively for an interesting form of sound design.

PaulXStretch - A few different people have suggested this one! It's a great, smooth time stretching effect that comes in standalone and plug-in forms, good for ambient textures/soundscapes.

PanCake 2 - A panning modulation effect with easily customizable LFOs (or, panning patterns).

Minimal Formant - A formant shifter (and also tilt EQ), an effect that's kind of like a pitch shifter but for shifting overtones rather than the base tones of a sound, altering the timbre but not the true pitch of the sound.

Youlean Loudness Meter - A plug-in that analyzes sound as it plays and gives you the values of perceived loudness, loudness range, and dynamics. Has a paid pro version but it's not necessary to pay for it. This one has become practically essential to me in mastering my next album for consistent perceived loudness.

PeakEater - A waveshaper/clipping plug-in that's great for gently shaving the top off of some sounds that are too loud without reducing their punchiness.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Instead of trying to fill paragraphs describing everything, choose one or two things that breathe.

• The way the floorboards creak in one specific spot • A stain on the ceiling no one acknowledges • A flickering light that makes gives everyone a slight headache • The smell of something burnt and forgotten • A crooked family photo • Dust in the sunlight • A cracked mug someone refuses to throw away • The hum of an appliance in silence • A chair that wobbles • A window that should open, but doesn't • Shoes lined up too neatly • A plant flourishing, or showing signs of obvious neglect • The sound of neighbors arguing • A clock that’s slightly off

washing the other's hair

giving a massage

reading with legs stacked on top of each other

swapping clothes

casually bringing their favorite snacks without being asked

comfort when upset

sharing secrets

putting their necklace or bracelet on for them

caretaking after a bad day

making eyecontact and immediately smiling

confiding in one another

casual touches and hugs

knowing the other's tells for being stressed and immediately working to help them calm down

A really good designer has a crazy amount of REALLY GOOD FONTS available for free.

The most they're asking for is a follow and it's worth it for ALL of these.

ORIGINAL POST: https://twitter.com/yuta_ptv/status/1818558025185013903

ACCOUNT: https://twitter.com/yuta_ptv

I'm fascinated by how the animators for TADC handle Caine's impossible anatomy so well. There's so much to balance and they've somehow engineered a solution for his expressions to hold during speech.

A SEAMSTRESS, in a historical sense, is someone whose job is sewing. Just sewing. The main skill involved here is going to be putting the needle into an out of the fabric. They’re usually considered unskilled workers, because everyone can sew, right? (Note: yes, just about everyone could sew historically. And I mean everyone.) They’re usually going to be making either clothes that aren’t fitted (like shirts or shifts or petticoats) or things more along the lines of linens (bedsheets, handkerchiefs, napkins, ect.). Now, a decent number of people would make these things at home, especially in more rural areas, since they don’t take a ton of practice, but they’re also often available ready-made so it’s not an uncommon job. Nowadays it just means someone whose job is to sew things in general, but this was not the case historically. Calling a dressmaker a seamstress would be like asking a portrait painter to paint your house

A DRESSMAKER (or mantua maker before the early 1800s) makes clothing though the skill of draping (which is when you don’t use as many patterns and more drape the fabric over the person’s body to fit it and pin from there (although they did start using more patterns in the early 19th century). They’re usually going to work exclusively for women, since menswear is rarely made through this method (could be different in a fantasy world though). Sometimes you also see them called “gown makers”, especially if they were men (like tailors advertising that that could do both. Mantua-maker was a very feminized term, like seamstress. You wouldn’t really call a man that historically). This is a pretty new trade; it only really sprung up in the later 1600s, when the mantua dress came into fashion (hence the name).

TAILORS make clothing by using the method of patterning: they take measurements and use those measurements to draw out a 2D pattern that is then sewed up into the 3D item of clothing (unlike the dressmakers, who drape the item as a 3D piece of clothing originally). They usually did menswear, but also plenty of pieces of womenswear, especially things made similarly to menswear: riding habits, overcoats, the like. Before the dressmaking trade split off (for very interesting reason I suggest looking into. Basically new fashion required new methods that tailors thought were beneath them), tailors made everyone’s clothes. And also it was not uncommon for them to alter clothes (dressmakers did this too). Staymakers are a sort of subsect of tailors that made corsets or stays (which are made with tailoring methods but most of the time in urban areas a staymaker could find enough work so just do stays, although most tailors could and would make them).

Tailors and dressmakers are both skilled workers. Those aren’t skills that most people could do at home. Fitted things like dresses and jackets and things would probably be made professionally and for the wearer even by the working class (with some exceptions of course). Making all clothes at home didn’t really become a thing until the mid Victorian era.

And then of course there are other trades that involve the skill of sewing, such as millinery (not just hats, historically they did all kinds of women’s accessories), trimming for hatmaking (putting on the hat and and binding and things), glovemaking (self explanatory) and such.

For anyone who hasn't seen them before, Hidden Search Operators are handy tricks you can use when you're either searching or filtering AO3.

summary: string is a generic way of explaining that you can search AO3 for a specific word that appears in a summary. You can do this from the search bar in the header, from the Any Field box at the top of the Advanced Search form, or from the Search Within Results box at the bottom of the filter menu.

Examples:

summary: Bruce

summary: "Bruce Banner"

summary: Bruce OR summary: Banner OR summary: Hulk

You need to put quotation marks around your search term if it is more than one word. The quotes make sure that the site searches for those two words together.

The other two operators listed work best in the Search Within Results box.

expected_number_of_chapters: 1 will return results where every fic has only 1 chapter currently posted.

You can use -expected_number_of_chapters: 1 if you want results where every fic has more than 1 chapter currently posted.

Any time you want help with how to use AO3, look for the question mark bubbles. Clicking or tapping on those bubbles will open up a pop up window with information on that specific part of AO3. For example, here's the information for Include filters.

2. When you log into AO3 for the first time, you'll have a banner on your dashboard that gives you a ton of links and information that's useful for new users. A lot of people will dismiss this banner without ever reading it, but you can get it back at any time.

Go to your Preferences, scroll down to Misc. and check the box next to Turn the new user help banner back on. Update your preferences, and the banner will return.

3. When you first tap or click into the search in the header bar, a little popup tip appears below the text box. This is showing you an example of a search that you can do.

4. If you've never seen the filters before, click or tap on any tag that you're interested in. On a wide screen like a laptop, the filters will appear on the right hand side of the screen. On a narrow screen like a phone, you can tap on the Filters button for the menu to appear.

5. The FAQ has a series of questions related to Searching and Browsing on the Archive. You can find the FAQ in the dropdown under the word About in the header.

6. You can also just click on stuff and see what happens. For example, if you're wondering what the four icons at the top corner of each fic blurb mean, you can just click on them and get a popup with the key. Same thing if you're wondering about the icons at the top right of a bookmark.

7. I almost forgot ☝️If you want to see fics based on the primary pairing but you're okay with additional ships being in the fic (so otp:true won't work for you) - there's a script for that! AO3 Only Show Primary Pairing.

Another tutorial I‘ve made, about digital brushwork this time!

You can find more tutorials for a few bucks on my Ko-Fi Shop if you've found this helpful and would like to support me in making more resources like this🙏 ☀️🍃

Image 2: A diagram of two hands. The first has the numbers one to twelve, the same as in image 1. The second hand has the number 12 over the thumb, and 24, 36, 48, 60 over the fingers, to indicate how using a second hand could allow you to count to 60.

Image 3: A screenshot of tumblr tags, which read, '#wait what that's smart as fuck aksjska #small smooth modern brain: "waaah i can only count to 10" average babylonian: "i can count to 60" #galaxy brain: there are 12 spaces on the other hand too, if i tap a new one every 12 taps instead of raising a finger i can count to 144'

Image 4: Another diagram of hands. Whilst one hand has the one to twelve as shown in the original, the other hand now counts up in twelves, from 12 to 144. Notably, 136 is written instead of 132.'

Image 5: A tumblr tag, reading 'oh I wonder if that's why a gross is 144'

End ID]

🔶 Partially Reliable 🔶

Base 60 (aka sexagesimal number system) actually originated with the Sumerians, but was further developed by the Babylonians.

From mathetmaticalmysteries.org: 'The genesis of the base 60 system lies with the Sumerians, an advanced civilization flourishing in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) around 4500 years ago. Faced with the challenges of agriculture, trade, and resource management, the Sumerians developed a sophisticated mathematical framework. This system was subsequently refined and expanded by the Babylonians.'

It's exact origins aren't known, although there are several theories as to why the number 60 was chosen. One of the most widely suggested theories is that 60 is it's easy divisibility.

From Britannica: 'The reasons for the choice of 60 are obscure, but one good mathematical reason might have been the existence of so many divisors (2, 3, 4, and 5, and some multiples) of the base, which would have greatly facilitated the operation of division.'

Other theories include the combination of a base 10 and base 6 system, and the benefits of base 60 in astronomical observations.

From the California Learning Resource Network:

Integration of Existing Systems: Some historians speculate that base 60 may have emerged as a composite system, merging a base 10 system (associated with counting on fingers) and a base 6 system. Astronomical Observations: Early astronomers may have found the base 60 system advantageous for tracking celestial cycles, where divisions of the circle and the year played a crucial role.

However, the theory suggested in the post has been posited too.

From the New York Times: 'Georges Ifrah, a 20th-century French mathematician, proposed that the sexagesimal system grew out of an alternative method of counting known as the duodecimal system, common throughout Asia. Instead of counting the five digits on each hand, the thumb is used as a pointer, touching each of the four fingers on the right hand, beginning with the pinkie. When the count reaches 12, a digit on the left hand is lowered to mark the place — making “60” when all five digits are balled into a fist.'

It should also be noted that the diagram showing how to count to 144 on fingers has an error. 11x12=132, not 136.

The use of base 12, or a dozen, also comes from the Sumerians, who used both base 12 and base 60 systems. A gross is then 12 dozen, or 12 squared.

From Live Science: 'The use of 60 began with the Sumerians who used different number systems. While you and I write numbers using base 10, or “decimal” this civilization used base 12 ("duodecimal") and base 60 ("sexigesimal"). It is not known exactly why they chose these systems, but there are a few theories'