Pinned
doodleposting over on > @pearly-scales, wanted a little bit of a fresh start without a sudden and complete revamp. will likely still crosspost here sometimes and will read messages and such.
am pearlyscales on toyhouse as well if any of you are there.
hope we’re all doing ok!
If you want earnestness in art then sometimes it's going to be cringe and sometimes it's going to be pretentious
Thinking about this, still. You don't have to like everything out there, but if people aren't allowed to be cringe they'll never let themselves be overly authentic. If people are afraid of coming across as pretentious, they'll be afraid to take themselves seriously. And once you take that away, what's left are irony-poisoned works that don't really have anything to say
You guys do realise that this is not me hyping you guys up, right? I'm glad you're taking this to heart for your own art, but that isn't what this post is about. This isn't a "thank u op ❤️❤️" post. This is a "you guys should examine the way you talk about art you don't like because you're contradicting yourselves" and a "your specific haterisms fucking annoy me." This isn't an affirmation, I'm mad at you
Please be aware that the "opt-out" choice is just a way to try to appease people. But Tumblr has not been transparent about when has data been sold and shared with AI companies, and there are sources that confirm that data has already been shared before the toggle was even provided to users.
Also, it seems to include data they should not have been able to give under any circumstance, including that of deactivated blogs, private messages and conversations, stuff from private blogs, and so on.
Do not believe that "AI companies will honor the "opt-out request retroactively". Once they've got their hands on your data (and they have), they won't be "honoring" an opt-out option retroactively. There is no way to confirm or deny what data do they have: The fact they are completely opaque on what do they currently "own" and have, means that they can do whatever they want with it. How can you prove they have your data if they don't give everyone free access to see what they've stolen already?
So, yeah, opt out of data sharing, but be aware that this isn't stopping anyone from taking your data. They already have been taking it, before you were given that option. Go and go to Tumblr's Suppport and leave your Feedback on this (politely, but firmly- not everyone in the company is responsible for this.)
Finally: Opt out is not good under any circumstance. Deactivated people can't opt out. People who have lost their passwords can't opt out. People who can't access internet or computers can't opt out. People who had their content reposted can't opt out. Dead people can't opt out. When DeviantArt released their AI image generator, saying that it wasn't trained on people who didn't consent to it, it was proven it could easily replicate the styles of people who had passed away, as seen here. So, yeah. AI companies cannot be trusted to have any sort of respect for people's data and content, because this entire thing is just a data laundering scheme.
Please do reblog for awareness.
signed up to do pet portraits for the Volunteers of the Burbank Animal Shelter fundraiser this year! Donate 25$ and get a pet portrait from a randomly assigned artist, skill levels ranging from professional to beginner. Some of the most popular portraits are done by kids!
More info and submission form here!
The remake reboot prequel sequel industrial complex is killing me but the good thing is I don't have to watch any of that. I can just think "that sounds boring or otherwise doesn't interest me in any way" and do something other than watch it
"They're making a willy wonka origin story with timothee chalamet," you might say to me. "They're doing a live action the last airbender again, didn't you love avatar?" I don't find it necessary. This is nothing to me
Ppl: “Glaze and nightshade all your art!!”
Also ppl: * does not mention that you need to have a fucking NVIDIA GPU and running nightshade on one image takes at best 20 minutes*
Like the online version of glaze/nightshade requires an account. And last time i checked they arent accepting new accounts because of the high pressure.
Like i make my art on my ipad. My MacBook is from 2014. If i tried to download and run nightshade on my decade old macbook and go throufg 10+ years of artworks i might as well just set it on fire.
Like majority of digital artists doesnt actually have a high end gaming pc setup. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to be able to run such a heavy program just so we can feel somewhat ok with sharing our drawings online. It’s ridiculous. I CAN NOT nightshade or glaze my artworks even if i wanted to.
I have a pretty decent gaming PC, and despite this I had to close ALL the running programs I had running in the background (aka Discord and Opera) to let it shade my art, and the result was honestly quite awful even on the lowest setting.
I have already shared it around, but if you can't run it try Artshield.
It will add a big watermark all over your piece (there's also a check button to be sure it worked). It works best on pieces with a colored background, with white backgrounds or B/W piece it won't always work, but it's worth trying it.
Also, post at the lowest resolution possible (I go with 72dpi, keeping the highest one for clients and Ko-Fi rewards only), maybe add a noise effect too. I always did it but I read a while ago it makes a bit difficult for the A/I to scrape the piece. Not sure if it's still true, but still, worth a shot.
Glaze and Nightshade are great tool, but they're sadly unusable for a lot of people, and I hope they'll find a solution.
Just to clarify some things, the only reason it's hard to get a web glaze account right now is because the team behind it are all full time academics folks who are SWAMPED with so many duties. They're working towards getting more help to screen requests, but it's like 5 people or something running the whole thing. This is a tool in its most baby infant stage, don't write it off just yet because they're still working out the details and coming up with plans to expand the team behind it.
Also they absolutely are planning to add Nightshade to the web version! They just need some free time to get that all sorted.
With that being said, I do have a webglaze super user account and I can hand out invites if anybody needs one.
They are already selling data to midjourney, and it's very likely your work is already being used to train their models because you have to OPT OUT of this, not opt in. Very scummy of them to roll this out unannounced.
here's some instructions for anyone who doesn't know how to opt out:
you will have to do this individually for each sideblog you have too, no way to do it for each account in one go
I don't think people truly understand the gravity of Rafah being bombed.
There is nowhere left to go.
The lowest cost is $5,000 USD to flee to Egypt. There has been people paying over $10,000 USD.
That is the only option
Pay or die.
Rafah was the only place in Palestine promised not to be bombed. That promise is broken.
1.5 million people have nowhere to go!
Reminder, if possible, please donate to the PCRF, ANERA, Islamic Relief, Palestine Red Crescent Society, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Defense for Children International - Palestine, Doctors Without Borders, and all other trusted organizations.
gazaesims.com is a website dedicated to helping people donate esims for people in gaza. there are multiple options for where to purchase an esim to donate, for the price i listed you want to use nomad esims. you can get a $3 discount by using someone's referral code from the notes of this post. it also will give the referrer credit to buy more esims! (you can only use a referral code on your first purchase) BACKPACKNOMAD is another code to get $3 off your first purchase, it's been working for some people but not others so try out a referral code instead if you can't get it to work. also it took over an hour for the email with my information to come through so don't panic if it doesn't show up right away. (logging back into your nomad account seems to have helped some people get their emails to send!) (nomad promo codes do not work on plans that are already on sale, unlimited plans, and plans under $5)
edit as of 1/1/24: they are running out of all esims types right now! please donate esims from any of the platforms: nomad, airalo, holafly, simly, and mogo. here is a purchase guide i made that covers all of them. the crew is asking for people to reply to emails they sent that contain esims that are still unactivated. you can see gothhabiba’s guide for how to tell if your esims have been activated.
1/12/24: once again super low on esims! all of the above links should still be accurate on what to do.
we've been fostering kittens for the past few months and i wanted to doodle them in little outfits! Pepper has since gone to a new home but Rugby and Violet are still looking for places to land, if you're in the Los Angeles area and looking for a small friend to add to your life I can confirm these are very good small friends indeed. meanwhile, they are having a great time over here romping around!
should've mentioned sooner but i also have a foster pet ig for more pics and videos!
Happy to report that Rugby and Violet went home together this week :') they're SUCH sweeties and we'll miss them, but glad they have each other, hopefully for the rest of their lives, in their forever home!
we've been fostering kittens for the past few months and i wanted to doodle them in little outfits! Pepper has since gone to a new home but Rugby and Violet are still looking for places to land, if you're in the Los Angeles area and looking for a small friend to add to your life I can confirm these are very good small friends indeed. meanwhile, they are having a great time over here romping around!
should've mentioned sooner but i also have a foster pet ig for more pics and videos!
Hello.
I've seen you posting detailed information about the WGA strike and wondered if you had any suggestions as to how those of us not directly involved can show our support for the Union?
Okay, bearing in mind that all this is entirely subjective at the moment (and so far lacking any more useful input from other sources): a few thoughts.
This will be my third WGA strike. (My first one was in 1988, just after I'd made my first live action sale—s1e6 of ST:TNG). And the thought keeps occurring to me at the moment that this time out, there's a potentially gamechanging player on the field that wasn't there before: truly pervasive social media.
(Adding a cut here, because this goes on a bit...)
non-loop version of my loopdeloop. I miss this little snot so immeasurably much.
Small Dog Dreams
Shelley Low, Singapore, Singapore fawndogart.co
I’ve been meaning to do loopdeloop for years now and this April’s theme just happened to mesh with my grief over recently losing my dog. I wish we had managed to take her to see the wildflowers in the sun.
I was on a plane this weekend, and I was chatting with the woman sitting next to me about an upcoming writer’s strike. “Do you really think you’re mistreated?” she asked me.
That’s not the issue at stake here. Let me tell you a little something about “minirooms.”
Minirooms are a way of television writing that is becoming more common. Basically, the studio will hire a small group of writers, 3-6 or so, and employ them for just a few weeks. In those few weeks (six weeks seem to be common), they have to hurriedly figure out as much about the show as they can – characters, plots, outlines for episodes. Then at the end of the six weeks, all the writers are fired except for the showrunner, who has to write the entire series themselves based on the outlines.
This is not a widespread practice, but it has become more common over the past couple of years. Studios like it because instead of paying for a full room for the full length of the show, they just pay a handful of writers for a fraction of the show. It’s not a huge problem now, but the WGA only gets the chance to make rules every three years – if we let this go for another three years and it becomes the norm? That would be DEVASTATING for the tv writing profession.
Do I feel like I’m mistreated? No. I LOVE my job! But in a world of minirooms, there is no place for someone like me – a mid-level writer who makes a decent living working on someone else’s show (I’d like to be a showrunner someday, but for now I feel like I still have a lot to learn, and my husband and I are trying to start a family so I like not being support rather than the leader for now). In a miniroom, there are only two levels – the handful of glorified idea people who are already scrambling to find their next show because you can’t make a decent living off of one six-week job (and since there are fewer people per room, there are fewer jobs overall, even at the six-week amount), and the overworked, stressed as fuck showrunner who is going to have to write the entire thing themselves. Besides being bad for me making a living, I also just think it’s plain bad for television as an art form – what I like about TV is how adaptable it is, how a whole group of people come together to tell a story better than what any of them could do on their own. Plus the showrunner can’t do their best work under all of that pressure, episode after episode, back to back. Minirooms just…fucking suck.
The WGA is proposing two things to fix this – a rule that writers have to be employed for the entire show, and a rule tying the number of writers in the room to the number of episodes you have per season. I don’t think it’s unreasonable. It’s the way shows have run since the advent of television. It’s only in the last couple of years that this has become a new thing. It’s exploitative. It squeezes out everyone except showrunners and people who have the financial means to work only a few months a year. It makes television worse. And that is the issue in this strike that means everything to me, and that is why I voted yes on the strike authorization vote.
I explained this to a young writer recently. They could not understand why the WGA might go on strike, and worried that it would hurt younger writers.
They had worked in TV for 4 years, been on 3 major TV shows, primarily in “mini rooms”, had their name listed as cowriter on one broadcast episode and had never been on set for any of their shows. Had never seen anything they wrote being filmed. They knew next to nothing about the actual process of getting TV made.
I explained that we weren’t going on strike for people like me, we were going on strike for people like them. Because we need more writers to be there, to work their way up. We need a generation of showrunners to take over from us, and to, I hope, have an easier time of it. We need the young writers to be properly paid, not to be on a six week writers room once a year, and a crack at having their names on a script.
some progress shots from the Rusted Moss release trailer - it was a lot of fun getting to define my own hybrid puppeted-handdrawn workflow, and making it work with the style that the devs and publisher wanted. done in my faithful old copy of Toonboom Animate 3!
worked on these animated sections for the Rusted Moss release trailer! my friends created such a rich and visually fun world to play around with in their game, it was a delight to help them realise their vision. it’s out now on PC and I hope you’ll check it out if you like bullet hells, action-packed metroidvanias, or eldritch faery magic in the post-apocalypse.
Storyboards, animation: me ( @shelzie ) Background art: @dewmanna Composite: @mtbobo
