melchinafan

[melchinafan]

eye collector 👁️

#eye collector #art #eyes #I love them #they're friend-shaped #and exactly my jam

[melchinafan]

I made an art/anatomy tutorial about birds! I hope people will find it helpful!

#resource #reference #tutorial #art tutorial #birds #I'd never noticed the funky number of bird toe bones #all THREE front toes having DIFFERENT AMOUNTS is so wild

[melchinafan]

Fans' attitudes toward AI-generated works

Irina Cisternino, a PhD candidate of Stony Brooke University, is writing their research on topics related to technology, art and fandom. You can participate by filling out a survey and additionally, signing up for an interview. The survey is expected to last until at least the end of April, those, who signed up for the interview, will be contacted later. You need to be at least 18 years old to participate in either, be able to understand and speak English and identify as a fan.

After the completion of the research, it will be accessible as the dissertation of the researcher. If you have further questions, you can contact Irina Cisternino at [email protected] or Lu-Ann Kozlowsky at [email protected].

#research study #academic research #fandom studies #fuck ai #generative ai

[melchinafan]

#queer #trans #skeleton #music #sasha allen #hell yeah this made me tear up #I love skeletons both as an Addams and being agender #one day I will sort out the design and start doodling myself again #as a skeleton this go-round #but until then I use my skelfie photos

[melchinafan]

does anyone know where I can find good reference images of victorian-era wheelchairs? I want to draw the jovial contrarian but all the wheelchair art refs/tutorials I can find are for modern wheelchairs

#wheelchair #reference #oooh these are neat

[melchinafan]

...I wanna keep this year's April Fool's boop feature. It's a delightful little fun thing, and I'd probably use it as a simple little "I see you in my notifications and appreciate you! :D *boop!* 🐾"

#april fools #boop #I also like that there's a super boop if you hover over the button for a few seconds #lamentations that my sideblog can't have the boop badge though

[melchinafan]

Joy's Birthday Giveaway!

It's my birthday, so you know what that means! It's Giveaway time, baby! To celebrate my completion of another rotation around the sun, I'm giving away 5 copies of the eBook and 5 copies of the audiobook. (You can listen to a sample here)

If you’re new here, Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites (Phangs) is the first novel of my queer, polyamorous, paranormal romance series featuring a deaf, disabled werewolf, a neurodivergent, mad scientist vampire, and all other manner of creatures that go bump in the night. You can read more about it here.

Set in a pseudo-regency meets fake-Victorian Gaslamp Fantasy world, complete with gothic castles, enchanted forests, and just a smidge of industrial coal dust, Phangs has been described as “like reading the queer, goth love child of Terry Pratchett meets Jane Austen.”

There are two editions of the novel, a high-heat version (Flirting with Fangs) with depictions of sex and kink on the page and a medium-heat edition (Fluff and Fangs) containing elements of kink with the sex scenes swapped out/faded to black. You can read more about the differences in rating here.

If you’d like to win an edition of your choice, type either “ebook please!” or "audiobook please!" into the replies or reblogs. If you'd like to try and win both you can feel free to do so.

The giveaway will run from March 13th - 15th, 2024.

I’ll select the winners using a randomizer. You don’t need to follow me or spam reblogs. Once you’re in, you’re in. Good luck!

I'm gonna go have cake.

#Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites #giveaway #phangs #can confirm this book is most excellent #good characters good puns good times #also Shenanigans including but not limited to a late-night library heist

[melchinafan]

#anti ai #ublock origin #reference #oh that was real simple to add to uBlock #and is apparently set up in such a way that it should auto-update

[melchinafan]

...that your audience won't hate.

This is a method I started using when NFTs were on the rise - thieves would have to put actual work into getting rid of the mark - and one that I am now grateful for with the arrival of AI. Why? Because anyone who tries to train an AI on my work will end up with random, disruptive color blobs.

I can't say for sure it'll stop theft entirely, but it WILL make your images annoying for databases to incorporate, and add an extra layer of inconvenience for thieves. So as far as I'm concerned, that's a win/win.

I'll be showing the steps in CSP, but it should all be pretty easy to replicate in Photoshop.

Now: let's use the above image as our new signature file. I set mine to be 2500 x 1000 pixels when I'm just starting out.

Note that your text should not have a lot of anti-aliasing, so using a paint brush to start isn't going to work well with this method. Just use the standard G-Pen if you're doing this by hand, or, just use the text tool and whichever font you prefer.

Once that's done, take your magic wand tool, and select all the black. Here are the magic wand settings I'm using to make the selections:

All selected?

Good.

Now, find a brush with a scattering/tone scraping effect. I use one like this.

You can theoretically use any colors you want for this next part, but I'd recommend pastels as they tend to blend better.

Either way, let's add some color to the text.

Once that's finished,

You're going to want to go to Layer Property, and Border Effect

You'll be given an option of choosing color and thickness. Choose black, and go for at least a 5 in thickness. Adjust per your own preferences.

Now create a layer beneath your sig layer, and merge the sig down onto the blank layer.

This effectively 'locks in' the border effect, which is exactly what we want.

Hooray, you've finished your watermark!

Now let's place that bad boy into your finished piece.

You'll get the best mileage out of a mark if you can place it over a spot that isn't black of white, since you'll get better blending options that way. My preference is for Overlay.

From here, I'll adjust the opacity to around 20-25, depending on the image.

If you don't have a spot to use overlay, however, there's a couple other options. For white, there's Linear Burn, which imho doesn't look as good, but it still works in a pinch.

And for lots of black, you have Linear Light

Either way, you're in business!

EDIT since this has escaped my usual circles, and folks aren't as familiar with my personal usage:

An example of one of my own finished pieces, with watermark, so you can see what I mean about 'relatively unobtrusive'-- I try to at least use them as framing devices, or let them work with the image somehow (or, at the very least, not actively against it).

I know it's a bummer for some people to "ruin" their work with watermarks, which is part of the reason I developed this mark in particular. Its disruption is about as minimal as I can make it while still letting it serve its intended purpose.

There's other methods, too, of course! But this is the one I use, and the one I can speak on. Hope it helps some of you!

#art reference #watermark #tutorial #anti ai #self-reblog because might as well share it on both #I think I have more folks who follow me here #though that's 'cause my artblog is relatively newer

[melchinafan]

I sent a long message to Support to share my thoughts on the Open AI and Midjourney deal.

You can contact Support via the link below; select the 'Feedback' option from the dropdown:

https://www.tumblr.com/support

While it may be too late to change things, I think it's worth letting companies know how you feel and the impact decisions will have on you.

It's best to remain polite in any messages — and please bear in mind that this decision has not been made by regular tumblr staff.

One of the reasons why tumblr has struggled financially so much over the years is because there was a strong stance against selling user data. At the moment, I can't find the posts from a few years ago that talked about this, but I recall that staff were instrumental in preventing things precisely like this deal going through, because they understand what tumblr is about — and because they understand the tumblr user base. As far as I am aware, staff were made aware of this decision very late in the day (link to jv's post with the 404 Media article).

(Also, the article names one staff member consistently — please note that he's been critical of AI for months. This isn't on him, either.)

#ai #ai training #fuck ai #anti ai #tumblr feedback #I'm tired and my brain's gone to static

[melchinafan]

Well, see you, friends

https://www.404media.co/tumblr-and-wordpress-to-sell-users-data-to-train-ai-tools/

Don't go after staff members because of this, for what I know they weren't even informed until later in the process. You know who this comes from.

#long post #ai #ai training #fuck ai #anti ai #glaze #nightshade #been trying not to share hearsay but this at least has the full article in it

[melchinafan]

Remember to opt out of the ai update in your blog settings so tumblr cant steal your art

((Not a joke, its above mass post editor))

Aw, thanks for looking out and giving a heads up, anon. I have seen some posts about it (and will reblog some of them in a moment), but I appreciate you making sure I knew.

For the record, the relevant setting is under Blog Settings -> Visibility -> Prevent third-party sharing. It has to be done individually for every blog/sideblog, and (currently) doesn't seem to be available on mobile, from what I've seen.

There are a number of questions on the actual efficacy of the setting (it's possible that data may have already been sent? why is it fucking opt-out instead of opt-in, yet again, when there were huge uproars and really damned solid points made on why that's shitty when places like deviantart did it, like "what about folks who have left/died"?)...but better to do it than not, just in case it actually does something.

I have been...struggling very hard not to fall to the nihilism in *gestures vaguely* all of this, for a long while now. But boy howdy, does it keep getting harder.

It may also be worth it for folks to try editing old posts to update their images with a Glazed and/or Nightshaded version, in the hopes that those are what get trained on. (Glaze is intended to protect from style imitation, and Nightshade poisons training data so incorrect outputs are given relative to their word prompts. If you use both, the dev team recommends Nightshade first, Glaze second.)

Also, I was gonna wait until I got an email response to a few questions I had about the site (mostly like "hey can we ramble in tags or are they purely archival haha"), and then maybe poke around myself to see how I felt about it, before bringing it up. But if you're looking for a new combo art portfolio/social media site, there's one called Cara. Their small team has worked with the Glaze team to incorporate a webglaze version into their site (and will eventually include Nightshade, when a web version of that is also made available). It seems like it could be a good option for folks who are interested in using Glaze, but don't have a computer able to run it themselves.

#ai #ai training #fuck ai #anti ai #glaze #nightshade #cara #I am very tired #absolutely fighting the sense of 'what's the point' #can't stop won't stop making art because my brain and hands just won't #but fuck man I just wanna show my friends the funny shit I make #and not have to worry about it being blenderized into exploitive math

[melchinafan]

I see a lot of people joking about the adhd thing of "I have a appointment/phone call at 3pm, guess I won't do anything all day!"

But no one seems to make the connection that it's a time blindness thing. One of the symptoms of ADHD is not having a good and accurate sense of time. And not doing stuff prior to an event with a hard deadline is an obvious coping mechanism for that.

Can I go to the store? It's 10am and the appointment is at 3pm. How long does going to the store take? An hour? Three hours? Five hours? I DON'T KNOW!

I get anxious trying to do things before appointments because I'm aware that I don't know how long those things take, and that if I think I do, I may be very wrong. Too often I've been like "hey I can walk to the corner store and grab a drink, that'll take like 15 minutes!" and then an hour later I get back and whoops my rice has burnt.

Plus there's also the fact that ADHD people know that motivation and focus is a two-edged sword.

Like, let's say you decide to play a video game. You've got time, you can pause/save whenever, so this should be a perfect fit to make good use of your waiting-time. So you start playing and WHOOPS you get really focused for some reason today (because people with ADHD do not get to pick when their brain decides to focus) and the next time you look at the clock it's 2:49 and you haven't showered or dressed and the appointment is 30 minutes away. Fuck. (you could have set an alarm, but now you're asking people with the forgetting-things-and-time-ignoring condition to remember it set alarms)

And with motivation, it can be almost worse. Instead of playing a game, you so something useful or creative. You clean your room or fix your plumbing or write a story or draw a picture. And suddenly it's great. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You've got all the motivation you can ask for, and you are FLYING. the ideas are brilliant, your hands are nimble, you're getting stuff done you've been putting off for weeks or months. And then the alarm goes off. Time to go to your appointment. Fuck.

You drive there, your brain still full of ideas and plans. But by the time you get back, the motivation is gone. You may still have the ideas but you don't have the drive to write them down. You can't force yourself to do it. Your sink is still in pieces. Your room is half-cleaned, and you have to shove all the sorted clothes into one big bin just so you have somewhere to sleep. You've left things half finished again, in a cycle that has been repeating your whole fucking life. It seems sometimes that nothing ever gets finished.

So next time you don't even start. There's not time. You've been burnt too many times. Why add another half-completed project to your pile of shame?

My point is that people seem to be going "lol I can't do anything all day if I have an appointment at 3pm" like this is a quirky "oh I'm so scatterbrained!" weirdness they alone have, and not a major complication of a disabling mental illness.

(and that's not even getting into the secondary effects. If you know that having an appointment ruins your whole damn day, you're going to avoid them. Even when it's things like "going to that party" or "meeting your friends for a drink/game" or "going to a movie with that cute girl from your math class". Things you should enjoy. Things that'd help you be social. Things that make you feel human.)

#ahaha yeah #adhd #adhd problems #time blindness

[melchinafan]

my jaw hit the floor

#music #improv #guitar #shovel #holy SHIT that's amazing #if there were some way to make that easily/quickly/functionally convertible from shovel to guitar #I'd be tempted to give something like this to Bones #who is a necromancer bard with a shovel

[melchinafan]

KARASU SAYS

[Image ID: an illustration of Karasu from Yu Yu Hakusho, glaring while two of his bat-winged-eye bombs fly near his shoulders. In place of his typical mask, he is wearing an N95-rated one. Along the top and bottom of the image, in allcaps, is the text: "wear a fucking mask; yes this is a threat."]

HI I'M TIRED

You don't know if a place you're going is gonna have someone high-risk there (because some disabilities are invisible), and folks can be contagious without showing symptoms, and long covid can absolutely fuck you up, SO PROTECT YOURSELF AND THOSE AROUND YOU ANY TIME YOU GO OUT WITH A WELL-FITTED MASK, PLEASE

Also please heckle the CDC/local politicians/etc. if you can, to get them to implement better protections because layering multiple methods is more effective than trying to rely on just one. (Yanno like scientifically appropriate isolation length instead of ONE FUCKING DAY, paid time off so folks don't have to weigh safety against finances, better filtration indoors, etc.)

#my art #fanart #rebelle #karasu #yu yu hakusho #covid 19 #mask up #wear a mask #I'm rewatching YYH #I'll draw Hiei and Kurama eventually I'm sure #but this Karasu meme came to me first

[melchinafan]

#who framed roger rabbit #warner brothers #I'd like the toons to be hand-animated rather than cg #at least for Roger/older characters #though digital would be fine for the sake of sanity #WFRR was bonkers costly on so many levels

[melchinafan]

Look if there is absolutely nothing else you take away from the nonsense I am posting, it's this: Make Art.

Make art, with whatever you have. Use scrap cardboard and tape and build something; doodle in your notebooks, make a beautiful dinner, grow a plant, write, paint your nails. Learn to whittle, to knit, to cut straight lines, to sew, to cook, to run at a problem and not solve it the first time. Learn to try again.

Make things the wrong way.

If it works, do it again, better. If it doesn't, do it again, different. Draw badly. Look at the way the light hits something and try to figure out the colors it makes. Watch the way strangers walk and how the weight of them shifts in motion.

Creating art--beautiful things, ugly things, silly things--is not something that you should be leaving to people who are better at it or can afford the expensive materials or have a deep message or whatever. Do it anyway. Do it worse, do it cheaply, do it just for the joy of doing it. The work itself has merit. The work itself is rewarding. Make art.

And pet your cat.

#art #inspiration #creativity