Useful Info - Tumblr Posts

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

Things that will make your computer meaningfully faster:

Replacing a HDD with an SSD

Adding RAM

Graphics cards if you're nasty

Uninstalling resource hogs like Norton or McAfee (if you're using Windows then the built-in Windows Security is perfectly fine; if you're using a mac consider bitdefender as a free antivirus or eset as a less resource intensive paid option)

Customizing what runs on startup for your computer

Things that are likely to make internet browsing specifically meaningfully faster:

Installing firefox and setting it up with ublock origin

adding the Auto Tab Discard extension to firefox to sleep unused tabs so that they aren't constantly reloading

Closing some fucking tabs bud I'm sorry I know it hurts I'm guilty of this too

Things that will make your computer faster if you are actually having a problem:

Running malwarebytes and shutting down any malicious programs it finds.

Correcting disk utilization errors

Things that will make your computer superficially faster and may slightly improve your user experience temporarily:

Clearing cache and cookies on your browser

Restarting the computer

Changing your screen resolution

Uninstalling unused browser extensions

Things that do not actually make your computer faster:

Deleting files

Registry cleaners

Defragging your drive

Passively wishing that your computer was faster instead of actually just adding more fucking RAM.

This post is brought to you by the lady with the 7-year-old laptop that she refuses to leave overnight for us to run scans on or take apart so that we can put RAM in it and who insists on coming by for 30-minute visits hoping we can make her computer faster.

GUYS THERES THIS WEBSITE CALLED SETTEI DREAMS THAT HAS EVERY CHARACTER REF SHEET AND MODEL FOR A TON OF ANIME CIRCULATE THIS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE!!

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Can I ask why the terf and Nazi tags are able to stay unblocked?

I'm getting variations on this theme a lot right now. Understandably, folks are pointing out this inconsistency we definitely have with the block list. We hear you. The block list isn’t good enough.

We’ve inherited it and we’re working on it but we need to make sure that it’s done carefully. We've picked up individual tags over the past couple of days to explore unblocking (which takes hours - longer than you'd imagine), and we want to re-examine the entire block list in a systematic manner. It is thousands of terms, added to ad hoc over like a decade. It's a real mess!

Glorification of violence and hate speech isn’t permitted. If you find that content please report it. We have a backlog to get through, but we will look at it and action as soon as we can; that said, we generally answer reports in order, but prioritize certain issues that demand more urgent attention.

Blocking tags means that people can’t talk about certain issues - including speaking out against nazis for example - so we would rather remove offending content from the platform than censor folks by accident with a blunt instrument. The nazi tag right now includes a ton of anti-nazi content and debunking of myths, etc, which is the sort of content we support. Again, this is the inconsistency that is so maddening to folks! We should definitely be allowing trans terms.

If you come across specific tags that are particularly problematic and blocked, please let me know so we can investigate.

Beware, the long post incoming. Pro tips for artists who work on commissions!

DISCLAIMER: I do not have, like, a HUGE online following and can’t be called a popular or viral artist, but I do have some experience and I’ve been working as a freelance artist for more that five years, so I could share a few tips on how to work with clients with my fellow artists. Scroll down for the short summary!

First of all, you always need to have your Terms of Service written down in a document that is accessible for your potential clients. And by terms of service I don’t mean a set of rules like “I don’t draw mecha, anthro and N/S/F/W”. There is much more into it, than you may think when you first start drawing commissions.

You’ll need to understand how copyright law/author’s rights in your country works (for example, US copyright or Russian author’s rights, be sure to check your local resources). There are a bunch of sites where you can actually read some legal documents (. I know it might be boring, but TRUST me, you WILL need this knowledge if you choose this career path.

Russia, for example, is plagued with shops selling anime merchandise. The merchandise is usually printed somewhere in the basement of the shop and the shop owners literally rip off other people’s intellectual property. If the artist ask them to remove their IP from the shop the owners usually try to fool them with lies about how the IP works. They will tell you, that you have to register copyright on every single drawing and if you don’t do it anyone can reproduce and sell your artwork. In reality, copyright law in most countries simply doesn’t work this way. Once you create an original work and fix it, take a photograph, write a song or blog entry, paint an artwork, you already are the author and the owner. Yes, there are certain procedures of copyright registration, which is only a step to enhance the protection, but you become an author the very moment you create a piece of art, and no one have a right to take your creation from you. Knowing your rights is essential.

Some of your commissioners may try to scam you too, but most of them might simply not be aware of how copyright law works. I literally had people asking me questions whether or not the character I am commissioned to draw becomes MY intellectual property. I literally had to convince the person (who was legit scared, since the commissioned piece was going to be a first image of his character ever created) otherwise. If you have an idea of the character written down or fixed in any other form such as a collage, a sketch, or a concept art – the character is yours. Artist may have rights to the image they create, but not the character itself. Your potential commissioner must acknowledge that their characters, settings and etc. is still theirs, while your artwork is yours, if your contract doesn’t state otherwise. You can sell the property rights on your artwork to your commissioner if you want, but it is unnecessary for non-commercial commissions. And I strongly advice you to distinguish the non-commercial commissions from commercial ones and set the different pricing for them. Even if you sell ownership of your artwork to your commissioner, you can not sell the authorship. You will always remain an author of your artwork, thus you still have all the author’s rights stated in the legal documents.

Another thing that is absolutely necessary to be stated in your terms of service is information whether (and when) it is possible to get a refund from you. You absolutely have to write it down: no. refunds. for finished. artworks.

You have already invested time and effort to finish an artwork. The job is done and the money is yours. I’ve heard stories of commissioners demanding refund a few months later after the commission was finished and approved by the commissioners, because, quote “I do not want it anymore”. Commissioning an artist doesn’t work this way, artwork is not an item purchased on shein or aliexpress that can be sent back to the seller. It is not a mass production. It is a unique piece of art. Example: My friend once drew a non-commercial commission for a client who tried to use it commercially later on. She contacted him and reminded of the Terms of Service he agreed with, offering him to pay a fee for commercializing the piece instead of taking him to the court or starting a drama. He declined and suddenly demanded a full refund for that commission via Paypal services. My friend contacted the supports and showed them the entire correspondence with that client. She also stated that the invoice he paid included a link to the Terms and Service he had to agree with if he pays that invoid. The money were returned to her.

However, partial refund can be possible at the certain stage of work. For example, the sketch is done, but something goes horribly wrong. Either the client appeared to be a toxic person, or an artist does not have a required skill to finish the job. I suggest you keep the money for the sketch, but refund the rest of the sum. It might be 50/50 like I suggested to my clients before (when I still could work with Paypal), but it really depends on your choise. I suggest not doing a full refund though for many reasons: not only you make yourself vulnerable, but you also might normalize a practice harmful to other artists this way.

The main reason why full refund when the sketch/line-art are done must not be an option is that some clients may commission other artists with lower prices to finish the job. This brings us to the next important point: you absolutely need to forbid your clients from altering, coloring or overpainting your creation or commission other artists to do so. This also protects your artwork from being cropped, changed with Instagram filters or even being edited into a N/S/F/W image. Speaking of which. If you create adult content, you absolutely need to state that to request such a commission, your commissioner must at least be 18/21 years old (depending on your country). And as for the SFW commissions you also have to state that if someone underage commissions an artwork from you it is automatically supposed that they have a parental concern.

There is also a popular way to scam artist via some payment systems, called I-did-not-receive-a-package. Most of the payment systems automatically suppose that you sell goods which have to be physically delivered via postal services. This is why it is important to state (both in the Terms of Service and the payment invoice itself) that what commissioner is about to receive is a digital good.

And the last, but not the least: don’t forget about alterations and changes the commissioner might want to make on the way. Some people do not understand how difficult it may be to make a major change in the artwork when it is almost finished. Always let your commissioners know that all the major changes are only acceptable at early stages: sketch, line-art, basic coloring. Later on, it is only possible to make the minor ones. I prefer to give my commissioner’s this info in private emails along with the WIPs I send, but you can totally state it in your Terms of Service. I do not limit the changes to five or three per commission, but I really do appreciate it when I get all the necessary feedback in time.

To sum this post up, the info essential for your Terms of Service doc is:

- The information on whether or not your commissions are commercial or non-commercial. If they are non-commercial, is there a way to commercialize them? At what cost?

- The information on author’s and commissioner’s rights;

- The information on whether (and when) refunds are possible;

- The prohibition of coloring, cropping, overpainting and other alterations;

- The information on whether or not you provide the commissioner with some physical goods or with digital goods only;

- Don’t forget about your commissioner’s age! If you work with client who is a minor, a parental consern is required. And no n/s/f/w for underage people!

- You may also want to include that you can refuse to work on the commission without explanation in case you encounter a toxic client or feel like it might be some sort of scam.

- I also strongly suggest you work with prepay, either full or 50% of total sum, it usually scares off the scammers. I take my prepay after me and my client agree on a rough doodle of an overall composition.

- I also include the black list of the themes: everyting offensive imaginable (sexism, homophobia, transfobia, racism, for N/S/F/W artists it also might be some certain fetishes and etc). Keep your reputation clean!

- Ban N/F/T and blacklist the commissioners who turn your artworks into them anywayss, don’t be shy <3

These are the things that are absolutely necessary but are so rarely seen in artists’ Terms of Service that it makes me sad. Some of these tips really helped me to avoid scams and misunderstandings. I really hope it helps you all!

This is a very useful info for ‘‘Wuthering Heights’‘ readers, like me - the family tree of the characters in the book.

@ ppl who envy those of us with big boobs, this happens literally every time i try to shop at a place that sells cute lingerie.

this happens obnoxiously early and is stupidly detrimental to body image, even when i’m at a healthy weight and running three times a week. no bralettes. no cute lacy cheap things. anything that makes me feel good, look good, and lasts longer than 2 weeks or doesn’t make my skin itch is always at least $65.

The secret to accomplishing what matters most to you is committing your goals to writing. This is important for at least five reasons.

Because it will force you to clarify what you want.Imagine setting out on a trip with no particular destination in mind. How do you pack? What roads do you take? How do you know when you have arrived? Instead, you start by pickinga destination. The same is true with the milestones in your life. Writing down your goals forces you to select something specific and decide what you want.

Because it will motivate you to take action.Writing your goals down is only the beginning. Articulating your intention is important, but it is not enough. (This is where I disagree with Rhonda Byrne, author ofThe Secret). You must execute on your goals. You have to take action. I have found that writing down my goals and reviewing them regularly provokes me to take the next most important action.

Because it will provide a filter for other opportunities.The more successful you become, the more you will be deluged with opportunities. In fact, these new opportunities can quickly become distractions that pull you off course. The only antidote I know of is to maintain a list of written goals by which to evaluate these new opportunities.

Because it will help you overcome resistance.Every meaningful intention, dream, or goal encounters resistance. From the moment you set a goal, you will begin to feel it. But if you focus on the resistance, it will only get stronger. The way to overcome it is to focus on the goal—the thing I want. Steven Pressfield’s book,Do the Work, is must-reading on this topic.

Because it will enable you to see—and celebrate—your progress.Life is hard. It is particularly difficult when you aren’t seeing progress. You feel like you are working yourself to death, going nowhere. But written goals are like mile-markers on a highway. They enable you to see how far you have come and how far you need to go. They also provide an opportunity for celebration when you attain them.

[SOURCE]

If you’ve been unable to stick to the goals you set just 30 days ago (like me), you get a second chance today because it’s Chinese new year! Set those new year’s resolutions again but this time, write them down. I, for one, will be whipping out my journal and putting it to good use. It would be a shame if I designed the whole thing but didn’t get to use it!

Kung Hei Fat Choi and happy goal-writing! :D

If any nurses/retail workers/doctors/... are following me, I just want to thank you all for your service. I know you're overworked and probably underpaid, but without you, this outbreak would be even worse.

important PSA about when your car is smoking

like literally smoking from the engine

white and you smell pancakes? it’s the coolant. panic and pull over, but you’ll live

a slight blue tinge? it’s the oil. panic and pull over, but you’ll live

grey, looks like fire smoke? gasoline; the most combustable and dangerous. pull over and leave the vehicle, pray.

sharing because i didn’t know this when my car started smoking white yesterday and i was so afraid for my life.

How to start again ✨

delete apps and social media that lowers your mood 

wear a new scent, throw away things you don’t need, delete contacts of people who make you feel unworthy, unfollow social media that makes you feel bad in any way

make a new playlist that makes you feel confident and happy 

in a journal, write down why you want to change, the traits of the person you truly want to be, the places you want to go and people that make you feel inspired

write down the things that stop you and bad habits you have, and replace those with new mindsets and habits 

before you sleep, make a detailed, achievable routine for the next day, that includes everything you want to do, including activities that genuinely make you happy

try new hobbies, like baking/cooking, playing a musical instrument, making art, learning a new skill, a sport, or a new language. you can easily get free resources online 

think about the ideal version of yourself. you can be like that, if you try your best and work hard. 

do not overwork yourself or set overly lofty daily goals and forget to do things like drink water. make your sleep and health your number one priority.

spend less time on your phone scrolling through social media. have a method of focusing on other things, like Pomodoro method or using the Forest app. 

if you can’t concentrate, commit yourself to doing it for 5 minutes. once you get into the flow it’s much easier to concentrate.

be patient and kind with yourself. it’s hard to change overnight. you’re the only one who can help change you, so be a friend to yourself.

once you start something, promise yourself you will finish it. 

have new weekly routines, like going to a cafe every Wednesday afternoon or indulging in your favourite tv show every Friday night.

do not deny yourself of good things; there needs to be a balance. similarly, do not be too generous and overdo it too much. 

dedicate a day to clean your room and organize your things if you feel stressed out. 

it may feel scary to change, as you may feel like it’s not the real you. but you’re still you, just the best version of yourself.

have a relaxing morning routine to look forward to, like making a nice breakfast, having a skin care routine, stretches, journalling, or thinking about nothing for a few minutes

have a mental image that makes you excited to do something. visualize yourself completing the goal and concentrate on it every morning.

however, learn not to rely on motivation because your brain will often turn off motivation, especially when you first begin something. have a routine, a specific time to do something, and do it. 

notice the places and people that drain your energy, and try to avoid them. find people who make you feel energized and places that calm you.

think about an enjoyable part of something. for example, when studying you can look forward to learning new things and when exercising, listening to calming music or using nice stationery. it’s actually more fun than you think. 

even though it’s hard, don’t compare yourself. you’re on your own path, and it doesn’t matter if people are better than you, because there will always be someone better than everyone. don’t be afraid to suck. so draw badly, write bad poems, run slowly, make embarrassing mistakes and fail everything. you can’t be good at something unless you’re terrible at something first. and doing anything badly is so much better than doing nothing.

don’t tell anyone about your new beginning, just start and let the results speak for themselves.

you can change and be your ideal self. but it will be hard to do that if you don’t believe in yourself. so make sure you challenge negative thoughts telling you can’t do something. tell yourself firmly that you can do it and then prove your negative thoughts wrong.

How to work around tumblr’s new update to access your ancient likes

If you use the “like” button to bookmark cool posts and you have thousands of likes, today’s tumblr might have made you upset because the likes pages are only available as endless scrolling.

Try this:

instead of: tumblr.com/likes/page/602

type: tumblr.com/liked/by/[your blog url]/page/602

This will help access your old likes on web browser if you have your likes enabled for public view in your blog settings.

❀ Things to do on a very bad day ❀

💗 Do not forget to drink water. No matter how bad you feel, simply taking a sip of water is going to make you feel at least a little better!

💗 Although you might not feel like making an effort to prepare something to eat, you need to eat something. Your body needs the energy to get you through the day (even though you might not want to).

💗 No matter how exhausted you feel, taking a shower and changing your clothes will always leave you feeling refreshed.

💗 Open your curtains and windows. It does not have to be for long but just let some fresh air inside your room.

💗 Write down your feelings and thoughts. Do not worry about how it looks, just get everything out of your system. Once everything is on paper, you will feel a little lighter.

💗 Make a list of things that make you happy. It does not have to be a lot, just a few things that exist and make your life a little brighter.

💗 Change your bed sheets if you have not done so in a long time. Similary to taking shower, this will instantly make you feel fresh and a little better.

💗 If you have a lot of things to do, just pick the simplest task on your list and do it. Completing one task can make such a huge difference.

If nothing on that list seems doable for you, please do not feel bad about it. Sometimes spending an entire day (or two or more) in bed is all you can do and that is okay. Sometimes you are here, sometimes the only thing you can do is breathe and let time pass. That does not make you any less of a fighter. You are so brave for sticking around and you can absolutely do this. I love you.

is there any truth to those 911 "codes" people see circulating (like ordering a pizza)? Is there a good way to tip you guys off that we need help without saying for sake of an example, "my ex husband is here and drunk and dangerous"?

There is absolutely no truth at all whatsoever to the "pizza code" and definitely not established set of "this topping means this and that one means that" at all. Don't kill yourself memorizing them, that won't mean anything. There are no codes that 911 calltakers are trained on, other than our local 10-codes for the police (and those are not standardized, so knowing them in one jurisdiction won't help you in another).

The situation you described would be tricky to navigate, honestly, but let's see. If I get a 911 call, it's going to start with, "911, what is the address of the emergency."

If the caller says, "Yes, I'd like to have a pizza delivered to 111 Underhill DR." my first thought is going to be that they dialed a wrong number.

So now, I'm gonna confirm that thought. "I'm sorry, you've called 911. Did you intend to call a pizza place?" Or maybe—now that you've got me gamplanning this out—I'd say, "Do you have an emergency?" as the question there, instead.

At this point, anyone who doesn't have an emergency is going to give me their schpiel about how their phone called by mistake or that it was a butt dial or their kid grabbed their phone. Whatever happened. We get a lot of accidental dials.*

If you are not able to speak freely, you're not going to say that. You'll answer that question however you answer it, but whatever it is won't be an explanation of why you called by mistake, and it will almost certainly not be a direct answer to the question I asked either. Whatever you say here is gonna be weird.

(Don't start spouting wacky nonsense, as we do have actual literal crazy people who call and report their hallucinations on 911. So, what you say here should follow the thread of the question asked, but don't tell the calltaker you don't have an emergency or that you dialed by mistake.)

From there, I'm gonna start asking yes-or-no questions, to allow you to answer without whoever might be listing hear you say things other than that. "Is there someone there with you?" "Can you speak freely?" "Do they have a weapon?" Stuff like that. If there's a point where you have to stop talking, I am going to ask you to put the phone down, but not hang up the call, that way I can still hear the noise in the background. By this point, police are already on their way. And I am definitely going to stay on the line until they arrive. So whatever I hear in the background gets relayed to the responders in real time.

* Even for accidental dials, I will double down on getting confirmation by asking, "If you had an emergency, would you be able to tell me?" I do this now for every single person who says they accidental dialed or didn't call because one of the times I just happened to ask it and the caller immediately hung up. To this day, I don't know what was happening, but I do know we absolutely did our due diligence and sent police to go check.

folded version of my new mini zine! in case any of you babies out there decide it’s time to hit a bong!

[image description: a tweet by user @indigenousAI saying

“fun fact: as a DV survivor i cannot register to vote because doing so makes my address public. anyone who is fleeing or hiding from an abuser is automatically disenfranchised from the political process and this is a feature, not a bug”]

[link]

I'm trying to write a post about tick safety and avoiding tick bites, but a lot of the info on websites is like "Avoid going in the woods, in plants, and where there are wild animals" and "Activities like hiking and gardening can put you at risk" and I'm like thanks! This is worthless!

As ticks and tick borne illnesses are expanding their range, I think it's important for people to be educated about these things, and I think it's especially important to give people actual advice on how to protect themselves instead of telling them to just...avoid the natural world

Rough draft version of Tick Advice:

Ticks don't jump down on you from trees, they get on you when you brush against grass, brush, bushes etc.

Ticks get brought to an area when they get done feeding from an animal and fall off them. In the USA, the main tick-bringing animal is deer, but I've seen plenty ticks on feral cats and songbirds.

Ticks get killed when they dry out so drier areas with more sunlight are less favorable to ticks.

The above is useful for figuring out whether an area is likely to have lots of ticks, and how vigilant you have to be in that area.

Wear light-colored, long pants outside. Tuck your pants into your socks, and tuck your shirt into the waist of your pants. Invest in light, breathable fabrics idc

IMMEDIATELY change out of your outside clothes when you come back from a tick-prone area, wash them, and dry them on high heat to kill any ticks that might be stuck on.

Shower and check yourself for ticks after coming inside. Hair, armpits, and nether regions in particular. You can use a handheld mirror or rely on touch; an attached tick will feel like a bump kinda like a scab

While you're outside, you can just periodically check for ticks by running your hands down your legs and checking visually to see if anything is crawling on your clothes. Light colors make them easy to spot, and they don't move fast.

Combing through each others' hair to check for creepy crawly critters is a time-honored primate ritual and is not weird. When hiking, bring a friend who will have your back when you feel something on your neck and need to know if it's sweat or a tick

If you're careful, you can usually catch ticks before they bite you, but if one does bite you, it's not the end of the world. Since tickborne diseases are different regionally i suspect this advice will differ based on where you are, but the important thing is remove the tick with tweezers (DON'T use butter, a lit match, or anything that kills the tick while it's still attached, please) and contact a doctor to see what to watch for. Most illnesses you can catch from ticks are easily treatable if you recognize them when symptoms first appear