#i should really use tumblr more!... a platform where i can make an image post ...Amazing... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mibyledraws · 10 months

Text

alt text 101 for artists

I’m not an accessibilty expert, but I gathered these tips here and there, and it has really been helping me writing better alt texts - and I hope they will help others too!

Alternative text is a description of an image that can be read by a screen reader. It also can help the understanding of an image for people who don't use screen readers.

What do you write?

It all goes down to including what is relevant to give the user an accurate idea of your artwork:

the medium you used to make the artwork (is it a digital illustration? a traditional oil painting? a graphite pencil sketchbook doodle?)

the subject of the artwork

anything that is relevant for understanding the meaning of the artwork. For instance, is the lighting important, or does it bring a particular meaning or mood?

Write sentences - don’t just throw away key words. EDIT: don't write full sentences, but phrases and fragments to keep your description concise

adding one more thing after getting feedback: keep it concise! Under 125 characters (even 100 is best)

Where/how do I add it?

The alt text feature is more or less obvious on the apps we usually post on. In doubt, please just search for it on a web browser, you’ll find how to add it in the blink of an eye :)

On Twitter

enable the alt text reminder! Everytime you post an image, it will remind you to add alt text if you forgot it. Go in your settings, then “accessibility, display and languages”. Then “accessibility”, and in the media section, check the “receive image description reminder” box.

on web browser: once you’ve uploaded your image, click on “add description” under it.

on the app: once you’ve uploaded your image, click on the “+alt” bubble in the right bottom corner that appeared on your image.

On Instagram

at the bottom of the posting page, go in “advanced settings”, then “accessibility”, then “write the alt text”.

On Tumblr

once you’ve uploaded your image, click on the three dots icon that appears when your mouse is on the image, then click on “update the description”.

On Mastodon

once you’ve uploaded your image, click on the “description missing” message that appears on it.

On your website (portfolio, shops, etc)

Where and how you can add it depends on the platforms but there’s always a way! My tip for this would be to schedule yourself an alt text audit of your website to take a moment when you would search how to do it and when you would add all the necessary alt texts! I’d also encourage you to pay attention to some other accessibility features - for instance contrast between background and text. There are lots of ressources out there and I admit it can sound overwhelming: digital accessibility is an expertise, a job field in itself after all. In my opinion, taking it a few steps at a time is a good way to go! For instance I like to do little accessibility audits of my portfolio every once in a while and check a new area that I might have missed before.

I forgot to add it, what should I do?

On some platforms, you can add it after posting if needed - it’s the case on the Instagram app for instance. Always try to see if you can add it afterwards. If you can’t, add it in the replies (if it’s on twitter for instance) or edit the body/caption of your post if you can change this but can’t change the alt text.

Adding it as a “simple description” instead of an alt text that will be read by a screen reader in lieu of the image isn’t perfect, but having it somewhere very close to the image in plain text that will get to be read by screen readers is way better than nothing to my knowledge :)

It's Disability Pride Month (July, when I'm writing this)

I wanted to take some time to encourage you to take some time and energy this month, and at anytime of the year, when you can, to learn about Disability Justice. I’m not the best at explaining what it is, and how much there is at stake. I’m better at this, making small guides about what fellow artists can do to make their work more welcoming to disabled people. But it doesn’t mean Disability Justice isn’t close to my heart and that I shouldn’t even mention it.

There’s a documentary about the Disability Rights movement that I can only highly recommend - it’s Crip Camp. It’s on netflix, and even watchable in full on Youtube.

youtube

Pay attention to us, disabled people, to what we have to say. ”Nothing about us without us”: our perspectives and opinions are those you must focus on when it comes to disability and to our lives.

#disabled artist #disability pride month #disability community #artists on tumblr #art community #illustration #artist on tumblr #illustrators on tumblr #cute art #accessiblity #art resources #art tips #tips for artists #Youtube

167 notes · View notes

art-res · 1 year

Note

How should I self promo? I wasn't interested before, but recently I read a post about it and decided I should try it. I really want to get my art out there but I don't know where to put things or what to say without coming off wrong.

Hi anon!

Great question!

I made a lil article about this topic of art marketing & hopefully you find it helpful!

Here are some additional pointers that I have, and may be time to update the article lol.

Self-promotion can be a powerful tool to get your art out to the world, but as you said, it can also be a delicate balance between showcasing your work and not coming off as overly self-promoting.

Use social media: Social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are excellent places to showcase your art. Make sure to use high-quality images and engaging captions that describe your art and provide context. Reddit can be good, but read rules carefully! Discord is also good, but again, read rules or join art specific ones ones. Ads can also help, but I am not the most experienced in paid ads..

Collaborate with other artists: Collaborating with other artists is a great way to gain exposure and tap into their audience. Consider reaching out to other artists in your niche and see if they're interested in a collaboration.

Drawing challenges are great ways to network with other artists. There's draw this in your style challenges as well as just word prompt contests like inktober, febroarary, creatureanuary, etc.

Create a portfolio: Having a portfolio is essential to showcase your work to potential clients or art collectors. You can create a digital portfolio using websites such as Behance, Squarespace, or Wix.

Attend art fairs and exhibitions: Attending art fairs and exhibitions is an excellent way to network with other artists and art collectors. It's also a great opportunity to showcase your work and gain exposure.

Do not forget to engage with your audience and be genuine in your interactions, as this can help a lot too!

Sincerely,

Thanks for reading! If this post helped, please consider reblogging it or sharing it with your friends! ❤️

More useful articles and resources / support Art-Res | my art tumblr | Idea Generator | Check out the Art-Res Anatomy Ebook!

#art tip #art help #art marketing #social media #networking

68 notes · View notes

steampaul · 4 months

Text

i've started a little series of weekly posts documenting every MoC i made (digitally) over the last few years:

Week 9: 2022

some old MoCs returning, lego art, 90th anniversary toa team, video game stuff and more Rock Raiders (yay)

this one will be the penultimate week.

remember back in week 2 (2018) where i tested out the differences in rendering between stud.io 1 and 2? i tested out the mecabricks extention for Blender to render some digital bricks.

this took way too long to setup and render, so i decided to not use blender for rendering after that (escpecially after the win11 updated fucked with my graphics card)

another mandalorian s2 set MoC. din djarins N1 starfighter, based on the last N1 set we had back in 2015. i think these proportions aren't good, but a bit better than the official set. (its still too big though)

the Horizon: forbidden west set was also teased/revealed around that time, so i decided to make a diorama with just the watcher (and one with a corrupted one) that would be a bit more managable in both cost and size than the tallneck.

i still got the tallneck, becauce those robot dinos are cool as hell and i want to support video game based sets, even though i am a big supporter of the concept that LEGO should make more original themes instead of big and expensive licensed sets (like rivendell....)

some greebles inspired by the ones on the Icons (formerly master builder) "theme" of sets, also my header image for tumblr.

back in 2017 (week one) i made The Slugcat Portrait mosaic, and i decided in 2022 that i would remake it to be more in line with the way i would built with bricks at that time. i think i improved wuite a bit.

i like the 90 years of play tahu, even if his design was considered to be controversial, so i decided to make the full 2001 set lineup for bionicle. i think they turned out pretty good, but i find it a bit annoying that the maccaroni piece does not exist in tan or medium blue (a dicontinued colour)

anyone remeber Valley? the momentum-based FPS platformer? no? it wasn't really mind-blowing, but i still enjoyed the movement and flow of the game. i also always wanted to try out the Legoland Miniland style of character building. this was the perfect opportunity to combine both of these things.

i think the proportions might be a bit off, but i still like this little desk friend

someone asked me on twitter to send them the instructions for my marble machine MoC (as seen in week 7), but i didn't want to give them such and outdated build, so i re-designed it to be more up to date.

they ended up giving me about 14 $ for these instructions, which made me pretty happy.

i tried to make a micro-scale version of the exo-force set 7701 Grand Titan. i really dislike the way this one turned out.

Lego Ideas had yet another contest. this one was about designing a poster for the then new 21334 Jazz Quartet. i called this one "Golden Sounds" and it is the first mosaic-type MoC that i made where i first sketched it out to kinda figure out how i wanted it to look.

i like the way this one turned out, but i think i should've built it in such a way that the colours in the background wouldn't be as dim.

remember last week when i said i wanted to make more Rock raiders MoCs? turns out i did. a lot too.

this VTOL-style transport vehicle was kinda inspired by those industrial transport helicopters and was supposed to be some sort of reimagining of 4980 tunnel transport. i think it's a bit too clunky and a bit too skinny at the same time. not my favourite.

also there's a modular open container (is that what they're called?) that can be fixed under the vehicle. (as well as the room container that you'll see next)

Modular bases are so cool you guys. this one is inspired by 4990 Rock Raiders HQ and those big old moving platforms Nasa uses. it could be controlled with a motor, has a removable cockpit (with an access hatch) and the platform has a lot of room for modules. like the crystal refinery, the room container, the high platforms, the crane and the crane attachment holder.

here are a few variants for the room container: an artifact storage with workbench, a small break room and a laboratory. i like those and i might do more in some time in the future. idk yet.

my take on the rock monsters. some crystal infested/energized Fauna.

first some bipedal designs (the left one is a modded version of a deviant form an eternals sets) that could be more agressive carnivore types.

in the middle are some quadrupedal guys that could be a bit less agressive and even friendly. Left is a modded version of my SCP 860 creature from week 4 (which was based on either an legendary beast from Chima or a dragon from elves) and the right one is a recolour from the fluffy-tailed Hog from my satisfactory series from week 3

and lastly, some insectoid designs, a kind of beetly creature and two ants, one of them with wings. these could be some sort of neutral (like in minecraft) swarm that might be a problem for buildings and cocky miners.

this is probably my favourite of my Rock Raiders Builds from 2022. it's 4920 rapid rider built with modern pieces that has been overtaken by the energy crytals. it can be fully freed from crystal and reassebled, which is nice.

we'll see another rapid rider next week...

first week last week final week

#lego #lego moc #lego minecraft #the mandalorian #horizon zero dawn #rain world #valley #wintergatan #marble machine #exo-force #lego jazz quartet #90th anniversary tahu #rock raiders

5 notes · View notes

destinygoldenstar · 9 months

Text

Ninjago: Crystalized Redemption (Calling All Artists)

You guys asked for it.

Yes, I have officially started the work of a full on season rewrite of the final season of Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitsu.

I say 'final' because Dragons Rising is a sequel show. Kind of like the Star Wars sequel trilogy. That doesn't count.

I think we can all agree that an 11 year story we've all grown up with deserves a better conclusion that ties everything together into a grand finale that's entertaining, action packed, heartfelt, and maybe a tear jerker?? (We'll have to see)

I swear there's more cartoons that's endings crash and burn than ones that actually work. (Star Vs, Steven Universe, blah blah other stuff) What is up with that?

In actuality, and this may come as a shock, I don't hate this season as much as everyone else seems to, though I do agree with pretty much all the complaints. I think Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitsu is a worse season personally. But Crystalized has a lot more requirements to fulfill than that, and is even more disappointing as a result.

And I do have experience with rewrites, as I also rewrote Total Drama Action, which you guys seemed to really like that. So thanks for the confidence.

However, this has far higher stakes than that... my luck.

Anyway, I am currently working on the outline of the rewrite as we speak. It is still going to be 30 episodes, 11 minutes each. However, some episodes will not have the same titles as canon, because from my structure so far, it's not the same as the show.

The rewrite will be posted here, and we will be going episodic once we feel the rewrite is good and ready, so stay tuned.

And here's the purpose of this post:

You know in my TDA rewrite posts where I had some of those bad quality images showcasing a scene?

I'm going to allow fan artists to get a moment to shine and shed some love to the show with this.

And also help with criticisms towards my outlines and drafts of the rewrite, to make this work. Or if you have any crazy ideas for the story you want to suggest.

On a discord, I have a server for artists and potential writing editors.

This is where I'll be posting my outlines for episodes when I get them done, and on that server, artists can draw out the scenes. (Any scene, from the show or a completely new scene I add)

If I think the artwork is good, I'll add it to the post of the episode where viewers can get a great visual of the rewrite, and you will get a shoutout for your Tumblr blog.

This is also a place for said artists to suggest ideas for the narrative or scenes, so I can get a perspective on what people want to see. Criticize my outline or drafts so I can fix that before I officially post the episode, or otherwise.

Any art style will be allowed. You can replicate the show's style, or do your own, I will allow that. I do have some rules with that and it will be said on the discord too: Age appropriate. This is still a kids media. (Very high chance your work won't be on the post if you break that rule) In terms of non-lego artstyles, in the discord we will agree on a certain look for certain characters so that the story is consistent. We're not gonna have one image with massive bulky Cole and another where he's the same side as the others, that's what I'm getting at. We'll decide collectively what works, and I'll have some people make specific character designs as a board for other artists to use.

Also, this is unpaid. This gonna be for fan artists who love the show and want to help me give Ninjago the ending it deserved. And if they just want to get recognized and credited for their work.

What's on the discord stays on the discord and should not be posted on any other platform, unless you go to me first and get permission. We'll see what happens ninja artists.

#ninjago #rewrites #join the discord #ninjago crystalized #fan project #artists on tumblr #writers on tumblr

12 notes · View notes

goodlucks · 4 months

Text

not that anyone wants to really address this in any way nor can i really articulate this properly but the downward spiral we’ve let happen thanks to reposts and uncrediting artists has led to them creating discord servers for them to post a flow of their art. guys. this is such a disgrace that we’ve all helped lend a hand into having previously stapled and hailed platforms for artists to no longer feel comfortable posting on these social based sites, and yes, while i understand sometimes they’re rescaled and warped a little depending on what the platform wanted to do at the moment..

we’ve lost so many people that used to post to either both tumblr and twitter and all these microplatforms aren’t sticking. they’re good as a second spot to store media should someone want to curate a gallery where you can have the full res, or etc but the publicity that an artist needed to grow is no longer there for people who are starting off. this is primary for just image uploading by the way.

i don’t want to have to make a vlog post on tiktok to share that i made a drawing. i don’t need to make a whole ensamble if my intent was only to make an image.

with artists making servers, it is a great way to streamline commissions, and potentially bridge that gap that you might think the person behind the art is a huge entity, and so on, but they do not get publicity, they cannot get any traction since it is a closed circle.

discord servers are also so fragile in the way that the delete button is always there. the artist can always get rid of the entire server whenever. i know it is the same thing for any account on a platform, but i find that accessing that button on discord is a lot easier and might be stressful since it cannot prove as a good archive. meanwhile, on tumblr, your reblog can serve as a snapshot of that post. discord doesn’t necessarily have any means to do that unless you’ve gone out of your way to save every little thing.

you can recommend all the same secondary platforms that have been trying to replicate the other ones i’ve mentioned, say for example i guess pillowfort,bluesky,cohost, i don’t know all of them but they are not people’s first platform of choice to enter and spend more time on to discover new content.

when you see a budding artist on here, or twitter, or anywhere else, what needs to change is the behaviors because we’ve been doing a lot of standing away and silently saving the art instead of interacting and sharing. and the obvious, if you must see someone else’s art on a different platform, you should ask first if they have an account, and if NOT, then ask permission for reposting with credit back to their pages. even nicer, tack on to leave a nice like or anything on that original page.

this is a mess of a post. whatever.

edit: instagram or Threads is NOT being mentioned because i am not using a facebook product. thanks.

4 notes · View notes

vanessaroades-author · 1 year

Photo

Happy April!! Camp NaNoWriMo, the first month it actually feels like spring in Canada, my birthday month, and the start of a lot of new big goals!

I had a strange first quarter. Big wins. Big changes. Big grief. Most notably is that I’m back in my hometown after running around (and taking way too many flights) for a year, leaving behind a lot of people I love and miss.

Life responsibilities are coming up quick (ahhh taxes!), but let’s go through my writing & publishing goals!

Words Written from January - March: 37 748

cover image: commission of rho and eirjatal from deep roots, by ireen chau

— q1 completed goals

BIG BOOK NEWS: - Got the cover for Deep Roots and revealed it in a mini-campaign! As always, it’s in my icon, on my project page, and is by shinirikaya (on most platforms). - My books are all up on Goodreads! - Deep Roots is open for eBook preorders! This is a surreal step. Hope to get more interest in it as I reveal the preorder goodies and get the paperback set up—lots of people have expressed wanting a paperback because of that beautiful cover. - Prints for the preorder goodies have been ordered. Now I impatiently wait…the cover to this post may or may not be a sneak peek… - Moved Queensmen to ScribbleHub and Tapas.io. Trying to remind myself over and over that this is a fun no-pressure project to write when I’m having a good, wordy day, but it’s hard to feel that way when I wonder if I should be strongly advertising it. hahhh :’)

SOCIAL MEDIA & PLATFORMS: - Set up and started using TikTok. I’ve lost some inspiration with it and, well, who knows what’ll happen with that bill, but for now it’s getting me that extra bit of attention. - Set up BookFunnel and moved Other People’s Heartache onto there for better distribution. This is also where I hope to distribute ARCs of Deep Roots. - Set up this Tumblr right here!

— q1 missed goals

The big one was that I really wanted to publish a short or novella and didn’t. This is symptomatic of an ongoing burnout problem I’ve had for a long time now, and I’m trying to work through it.

I missed entering a story in an anthology via a writing group—by literally one scene. I just couldn’t get it done and gave in.

Thankfully, the other anthology I wanted to submit to—with The Whumpy Printing Press!—extended their deadline by a month. This piece is far more inspiring to me than the other one and I hope to get the last couple scenes in the first draft done next week. Fingers crossed I can manage it.

— q2 goals

- The big one: RELEASE DEEP ROOTS!! - In smaller steps: Finish edits by the end of April, release ARCs in May, and get it out by late May. Paperbacks need to be set up a couple weeks ahead of time for preorders, and I am not looking forward to messing with IngramSpark… - Get all the preorder goodies ready (so, receive the prints, finish drawing the stickers & order them, and hopefully finish a couple backstory novellas) - Submit to the Whumpy Printing Press anthology - Make significant progress on my current novella WIP and hopefully get her out in June. She’s connected to Deep Roots so that would feel pretty great to have her out in the world! - Revamp my website!!

#vanessa.txt #wip: deep roots

3 notes · View notes

mossfrogpress · 1 year

Text

Mossfrog Blog #1 - It Begins

Who would have thought I’d be so nervous to make a post on the blogging platform I’ve called home since 2013. The Mossfrog Press tumblr is not that old but I, Brooke, have thoroughly enjoyed many years formed by my relationship with Tumblr. I of course would not say that to even a therapist much less anyone outside tumblr, but it’s true. I love tumblr, but truthfully I have only ever made inconsistent, halting attempts at contributing to the massive pool of creativity and consciousness that has grown here.

In recent years, I have to keep my blogging brief--there’s a dopamine addicted ghoul in my brain that will let me waste away looking at funny images if I let them. But I do want to use this platform more thoughtfully and actively than I have ever before.

It’s gonna be a little rocky on these first few entries I’m not gonna lie, but I hope to have fun with the experimentation!

🐸🍀 Below the read more are the details of plans going forward with this blog, but tl;dr is: I plan to share more art, sketches, and behind-the-scenes content with you, as well as engage more directly and share information on events and deals!

- Sharing sketch journal entries This is perhaps what I am excited about most at this time, even though it’s a ways off. I hope to share most if not all journal entries of the development of my personal style and brand direction. I’ve always wanted to share more behind the scenes processes, and my sketch journal is the primordial soup of Mossfrog development. I’ve always been a fan of artists who share the intimacy of their sketchbook, and I look forward to doing the same. In 6 months to a year I should have a more solid backlog of content to begin sharing!

- Sharing weekly/monthly inspiration Knowing a work contextualized by the framework of its inspirations can add so much richness to it. I hope to collect the various works that are inspiring me in the moment and share them in some sort of retrospective newsletter format. Theoretically, once my journal posts begin circulation, one would be able to follow the dates and see the trends of inspiration to execution, which I always love to see from other artists.

If I'm feeling spicy we may just see reviews or essays on things I'm interested in. I can only keep the infodumping in for so long, so I don’t think I foresee a way out of becoming a blogger without letting my media analysis freak flag fly. I have so much to say about Dune

- Regular art posting As I currently do, I will be posting the art I create as well. I’ll work on formatting my Instagram cross-posts not to have the tags and shit lol - Community Engagement Replies, asks, fanart, customer photos, sharing cute, funny moments or additional behind the scenes. Lifestyle blogging if I have anything to share. and things of that nature

- Marketing/News Of course this is also where I will notify you of sales, deals coming up, live events, and anything else time-sensitive/salesy. (Or notifications for twitch streams, Tiktok/IG Lives, and other engaging activities I don’t actually do yet but really want to start!)

And most importantly, I hope to see this blog become whatever it’s supposed to be. These are guideposts towards a grand goal and intuition and time will ultimately determine the path ✨

🎨 If you’ve made it this far, great! I’m shocked. Hopefully the text-dense posting will be infrequent lol. I gotta get back to feeding the ghoul that likes to look at funny images.

#mossfrog blog #long post #text #intro #i'm pretty proud of myself for typing this out #yes i can string together coherent paragraphs #frog art #frog artist #illustrator #mossfrog press #mossfrogpress

4 notes · View notes

blueberry-lemon · 1 year

Text

blog thoughts: hub world vibes

Like any millennial who spends way too much time online, I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on using social media. Every social media platform I use has some huge benefits but also some disappointing drawbacks. I gravitate most towards Twitter, despite hating Twitter with every fiber of my being. I genuinely love using these services (or, at least, I'm addicted) but...they're also pretty unsatisfying. It's hard not to be a little nostalgic for how the web was before: a bursting collection of individual websites that were all completely personalized and had individual uses. I think we all had a lot more of an appetite back then to diligently use RSS Feeds and Bookmark folders. Even when I tell myself I should do that now, I can barely muster the effort. Aside from typing a few URLs into Chrome's auto-complete, I mostly just gravitate towards clicking links I find on social media posts. Then I go back to infinite-scrolling. The older I get, the more I wish I had a sort of "home base" online. A sort of hub world. A place I can put all my stuff, decorate and customize it, and people can enjoy it.

For years, I think that place actually was Tumblr for me. I stopped using it around the time of the NSFW ban and now here I am, trying to get back into it, but it shares the same flaw as any timeline-based platform: your posts eventually get washed away among dozens and hundreds of other posts. I want a place that will stay put. My own little pond to cultivate, instead of pouring my stuff into the rivers and streams we're all dumping into. Honestly, I have a huge soft-spot for the era of Geocities, Angel Fire, all that type of stuff. Where people made personal sites based on themselves and their interests and literally just said whatever they wanted on there, even if it seemed pointless. Back then, even the novelty of saving and sharing JPEGs was so huge that people made website pages literally just to collect their favorite JPEGs. I feel like images and text had so much more value back then, and now we obviously take them for granted. I recently discovered Neocities, a service that was created to host people's new websites made in the 2000s-era HTML style. A place where people nowadays are going to make their own sites that collect their work and go for a retro vibe. I'll admit that it feels so corny, but I do think there's a value in doing this. Also it just looks really fun in a self-indulgent sort of way. AND SO...I have decided that my goal, someday and somehow, is to learn enough basic HTML and CSS to make my own Neocities page. A bit of a "hub world" for all of my work, my social media links, and such. A page I can decorate however I want, much more freely than Twitter allows. I'm doing this despite being absolutely allergic to learning programming languages. It's so hard for my head to grok anything coding-related, and I used to vow that I was an artist and would never try to wrap my head around code. But now...I think all the work will be worth it! It'll be like a mid-life crisis hobby thing where you learn to repair bicycle chains or tune-up cars or do woodworking in your garage. I'll share my progress here as I start building up my little baby website. Keep your fingers crossed for my fried brain.

#blog #blog thoughts #neocities

5 notes · View notes

hospitalterrorizer · 6 months

Text

diary62

11/12-13/2023

sunday - monday

single is out now, wow.

my mom texted me a bit ago, just because, which is nice. in other news i finally put out the single i've been sitting on/trying to get right, and i got it right today, by adding a tiny bit to the left channel, and remixing the b side, which was very easy, now that i'm used to that process. like i said in the main post, the cover art had to be messed w/ to get it right for various platforms, the png was too big and all that stuff. when i make the next cover it needs to be at 3000x3000, which bites kind of, i like how much you can do w/ 5000x5000.

anyway, here is the image as it is as a jpg (actually png):

and there is the song, is it even possible to link to playlists on tumblr? also i can't even put anything abt this on instagram, how weird and annoying.

okay i got the insta thing to work (they too cannot handle the 5kx5k image and instead wanted it to be 50% the size (but they would not tell me that!!)). i wonder what i'm gonna do tomorrow, with music or cooking or anything really. i wanted to get this out because i want people to hear this if they come to me from that interview i did (lol), so they get a better idea of where i'm at musically i guess. this isn't really super representative of the whole record still though, but i like that. it's different angles on roughly the same kind of sound(s)/idea(s). i really like the ugly feedback stuff i added today.

all the weird hiccups i ran into today w/ cover art was really baffling, it's not like anyone is gonna notice this stuff really but i don't really like how it looks at 50% size because it makes some of the pixellations weird (i overuse dithering/indexed images in a weird way where they overlap and create new patterns (i hope)) this whole process fucking with the things i do, sort of. i don't think it's absent entirely it's just different/more disordered. if i focus on 3k x 3k and a pretty precise colorspace (that i need to figure out) then i think i'll be good. what i'm thinking of is doing 2 different 16 color palettes for 2 different sides of the collage / different pieces. so certain things can pop, i guess. anyways i guess sometime soon i should assemble the things i want to use for the cover art, and create at least the one thing i am certain on wanting for it (pink and black bull's eye thingy).

also i was able to get the image on sc to just be the jpg of the real cover, which is kind of crazy to me, but whatever.

regarding my life as i live it, nothing really happened, my gf dyed her hair blonde, which is funny, it's already blonde. she's been doing this a while but it makes me wonder, i guess, about how she likes it more blonde, more than natural. it looks good on her, it's just funny how i thought it was pretty bright normally, but apparently not bright enough, i wonder if it corresponds to how she imagines herself, i remember the first time, it was very crazy to her, it felt/looked perfect on her, it was sort of like she was meant to be that cartoonishly blonde, in like a 1970s anime kind of way.

and now i am just sat here eating pretzels to stave of cravings for sweets (trying to keep my mouth occupied i guess (i do that a lot)).

anyway i am tired, i ought to just turn in soon, soon:

byebye!!!!!!!

1 note · View note

ask-redditxtomblr-migration · 10 months

Note

hullo! I'm a returning tumblr user after the whole reddit fiasco.

how has the relationship between users and the staff around here been recently? i'm still salty about the purge but it seems like staff is a lot more easygoing than they used to be. certainly more than reddit lol

I would say that they're just different. The purge was forced onto Tumblr. Staff might not have handled it well, but it was the ban it or can it. Tumblr wouldn't be on the app store without it, which could be quite a problem for a lot of people. It would lose users if they switched to an download or online login in platform.

Now staff being more chill here? Sort of? They aren't doing what reddit is doing, but they aren't perfect. A lot of us still war against staff. One war we are currently dealing with is layout changes, or unwanted new additions. It's not the fault of the majority of staff, only a few are a part of it. The random changes and updates come from having to prove a paycheck and keep the development team. It happens with other social media. You have to constantly innovate or your position is useless, but development teams are important to keep, the corporate world just doesn't care.

As for the bad side of staff? They don't do much about far-right people on the platform and their hate. Staff also bans people indiscriminately. They don't deal with some of the bots who post porn all the time and dm people, or a guy whose whole Tumblr is promoting something illegal, but they'll get rid of the blogs of Kinksters, and poc, predominantly black women.

There's also the claim that staff has terfs, which would make a lot of sense. There are terfs who get off free even after talking in their spaces about hurting and hating a majority of the user base. They'll have unhinged tirades and stalking with no repercussions. That doesn't make this place safe, and staff doesn't seem to care while also saying they are friendly to Queer people.

A post was circling a few months ago where a bunch of terfs, who most have blocked, they were talking about a woman. She's a disabled wheelchair user who's bisexual and in a heterosexual relationship. She'd gotten a tattoo of the f-slur, and the terfs on here hate that stuff, want to police who can do what and why. They talked about shoving her down the stairs and we're joyously laughing about it. They posted popular reaction images made in mspaint, but they were using them as references to killing her. Those reaction images are usually used on Tumblr as the feeling of being unhinged, or reactions to news, not threats of violence. It took a large group of people reporting it to get anything done.

The problem with this is that one person or a small group flagging a trans person's suggestive or kinky photos gets them canned really fast. The same can't be said about people who threaten minorities on here. There's a lot of antisemitism (that's sadly common on every platform) and it harms Jewish users who have to deal with being harassed and stalked. It was really bad a few months ago because JKR made herself relevant again and a bunch of arguments started and a lot of people who are out about being Jewish, were getting hate mail and harassment by a lot of users. Staff doesn't do much about that type of stuff, even letting people make hate blogs around harassing minorities. Nothing happens to them.

There are some bad people on staff, they have their own blogs and they sit around reading and reblogging our posts. Staff sucks, but it's not because of everyone working at Tumblr. Since a few can't really be trusted, staff shouldn't be seen as laid back or kind. They are not our friends, this is their job and not all of them do it well. Some don't leave their biases at the door, but rather, indulge themselves on the job without repercussions. That's why staff isn't actually chill. They seem nice, but that's their job. They also help aid reports against many minorities who should feel safe, and they see it as doing their job.

#ask response #reddit migration #reddit #reddit refugee #tumblr staff #reddit going dark #reddit protest #staff don't nuke this post or me #but you probably will #ask: nicoconot

0 notes

andhaveapleasanttomorrow · 1 year

Note

i realised recently (as in, thursday or friday but i can't remember which) that i've been spending inordinate amounts of my time each day just mindlessly scrolling through reddit. and i think that the reason it took so long for me to realise what was happening was that it's just become another compulsion. i open reddit, i read each post i see, if it's interesting i open the comments and almost force myself to view the thoughts and opinions others have shared—even though i often don't actually care, or even very much do not want to read them. and i just do that for literal hours, at least three or four times a day.

i'm not sure where i'm going with this. i think i just felt...something...at having seen that you seem to be doing something similar (though i'll admit i'm extrapolating a fair amount of information from what you shared; a surface level, it simply reminded me of this recent realisation). i think it frightened me a bit because i saw it just as i was falling asleep (i opened tumblr for some reason that i can't remember now) and it seemed like some sort of set up. but i think it also felt comforting? despite the fact that if your feelings on this habit are at all similar to my own, you're probably just resigned to the fact that you keep doing it at this point. or maybe you enjoy it, idk. i don't know your mind.

i'm rambling. sorry. whatever. i'm just glad (and maybe a little wigged out) that i saw your post about it. and...i hope that we're both able to break this habit and find a better use of time because honestly i know it's not doing my mental state any favours, and i imagine it's probably not doing any for yours (though if i'm wrong you should definitely keep doing it. or don't. i'm not your boss).

anyway, there wasn't really a point to this ask. i just felt like sharing. hope it hasn't come off as annoying or rude. (also sorry you're going through it right now, all reddit browsing aside. hope things get better for you, or at least more tolerable.)

thank you for sharing :). I think it is probably a common issue. it's not much different than doing the same with any social media platform. something in my brain finds it a bit more forgivable because I'm reading words as opposed to image or video (although it's not like I use instagram, tiktok, etc anyways). but each comment ends very quickly (depending on the sub) and I can skip over stuff if I don't feel like reading it, so it's "easier" than actually reading, like, a book or something, which I don't think is good. I don't view it as a good use of my time. most of it does not really make me think about anything at all (again, depending on the sub). a large amount of reddit comments say basically nothing, or otherwise repeat what most everyone else is already saying, as much as possible the reason for the "thousands of words" comment is that I find it sort of baffling I can expend the mental energy to read that much but it's all going towards something with hardly any nutritional value. it's like chewing gum. engaging in the act of reading without actually receiving any information. sometimes it's cool because I find little communities I wouldn't have otherwise known about but maybe 80% of the time I'm just looking at empty bullshit that means nothing to me (and another fraction I'm looking at bullshit that probably actively harms me). I don't place the blame on reddit itself so much because I know if it wasn't this it'd be some other mind-numbing thing... think I need to get some kind of shock collar hope you can figure something out yourself but to be h I think trying to replace distractions with distractions is a vain pursuit I need to like, get up in the brainworks with a wrench and bang that shit out

#ask #anon #long post #I guess I view it as some sort of anthropological exercise on a conscious level #(esp wrt what I said earlier about sad and lonely and nervous people)#but actually I just want to be rolling my eyes across words without doing the thinking part (aside from going man this is fucking stupid)#brainless television for pseudointellectuals

0 notes

summonhouse · 1 year

Text

im going to ramble abt art websites for a bit and its maybe going to be disjointed and potentially mean bc 1. i speak for myself im not here to convince anyone of anything so i dont care about sounding nice? and 2. im feeling a little offkilter lately BUT

these are no more good art websites and its a pain to see a new art website crop up every week and everyones like, thisll be the one guys! bc i dont think in this day and age its possible.

first; websites should not be profittable. ive been thinking abt this w like, twitter and tumblr and deviantart too where the problem is that people want to make more profit- they dont want to break even, theyre not trying to cover the cost of hosting and paying employees, they need an excess. it shouldnt be like this bc thats how we get the lower in quality, thats how we get this trying to appeal to third party money providers and not users and its always bad and more than that its just unnecessary. every art website that people love are the ones that remain stagnant because its reliable, people do not want continual updates to the ui of something they depend upon for posting and money. new experimental features esp on art websites are just.. useless unless theyre asked for and the garbage fed to us isnt what we asked for.

what makes a good art website? something you can post images, gifs, perhaps low quality videos on, have larger text posts for pinning and smaller text posts for status updates. id say an important feature is a gallery and featured page- profile customization is also important, at the very least have icons, text around a username, descriptions, and headers.

can you tell im thinking of deviantart? i think deviantart is the premium art website and i am so sad everyone left at eclipse- honestly not even that sad at eclipse. it was bad, it was broken, deviantart now has a fuck ton of little holes in it where pages just dont load right, ill get on the fucking new notification page and user profile later, but the way that, in the old days, it had huge spanning galleries, and it had “post type” search too! and it was annoying at the time, we hated this, trying to pick what kind of art your posts were, but it helped make searching for specific posts so much easier (now trying to find gifs on my old accs without it is impossible..). thumbs were good easy ways for ppl to spread content meant to be spread while immediately linking to the actual post- it stopped people from reposting art or using html linking the image itself without a hyperlink to take back to the post and credit, because the thumb was immediately easy to use and way easier than working around it. there was so much... community. like ok from 14-16 i was harassed hard fucking core by adults on deviantart because i was an annoying whiny kid that used dA as my support platform, because from 11-14 it really was! everyone was nice to me- my art was hot dog shit, but i dont think i EVER got a comment calling it bad. i got a LOT of comments telling me that it was good, and i really did believe that! being a preteen drawing dogs online and getting genuine support, often from other artists of my ilk but not uncommonly by artists who were immediately visually BETTER than me really really helped me get to where i am now- i never doubted myself because i was surrounded by people who were so happy to draw just like me, and people loved to see everyone elses work and characters- the joy for characters and stories is really what propelled popularity even when my art wasnt good enough to uphold this. i remember seeing a post a long time ago mentioning that like... sites like dA remained bc they werent just for visual artists which is a great point too- it hosted lurkers really well, artists were really friendly to people who commented on their stuff even if they didnt post anything, im p sure it did fairly well for people who wrote a lot of content, i know some people got popular just because they commissioned people a lot, not bc they drew anything but bc their characters and name got popular.

i miss the old dA notification page, it was SO GOOODDD the folders for where you could store old notifications, the way it was so perfectly set up to maintain a bunch of different notifications all categorized by type, the way that they took note to stop posts that were submitted in multiple groups from appearing again and again in your notifs, the birthday warnings, it was just.. so sweet! page customization too- it was just so fun finding cute little things to put on your page, and so versatile and useful too because you could get like, boundary or commission status or language stamps on there! and like, when i was 14 i had recoded my page a few times over myself, it got me interested in html coding! and now its all gone- for what? because the sleek look is modern, and modern things get more money from investors, and the platforms dont appeal to users anymore, they appeal to investors, because they want more money- they need more money. its a hole they dug for themselves, kind of- i feel like people down the line hosting THEM want more money and so it dominos.

i loved points too, ik people thought they were useless and the worth was hard for ppl to get but $1=100 points was SO GOOD like i know buying points w usd incures a fee and so ur not getting 2000 points if you spend $20 but trading between people for a lesser fee was SO FUN i got banned for doing this a few times LMAO but it really brings a community together. it encourages younger ppl without paypal to try and do commission artwork without breaking the law, and it wasnt as if points were WORTHLESS, because i know i traded usd for them!

and like, everyones like.. twitter is better. twitter is chock full of algorithm nonesense, theres ads between every post, video audio doesnt really work right (if you click on a video on mobile it just decides you will hear every video you pass now. which will be in between every normal post in the form of a fucking ad), images get compressed to hell and ive never heard any information as to how to avoid this, gifs turn into bad videos, you still cant post multiple gifs (i think youre supposed to but well it doesnt fucking work!), just fucking try and host pixel art on here, theres on way to say long form things to people easily- “use threads” real talk, as a user, if i see a thread i do not click it, its too much work if not offered to me. i am 1 person and i represent hundreds who see your tweets. if you scroll down onto any featured popular post you will see nsfw or violent bigotry. i used to report every bit of bigotry i saw and got fast reception, near immediate banning- since owner turn over, a post disparagingly saying faggot has not been responded to in the past 48 hours. the community is fucking insane and i cant blame them, its how twitter is built- there is no separation between official posts and casual posts, like on deviantart wher ethere was differences between journals and statuses- everything youd post as a status that would have gone under the radar is a big proper real post, every comment you make is a big real post as well, it forces a lot of passing commentary to the forefront of peoples attention which of course incurs drama. and ofc its an ALGORITHM BASED PLATFORM which means it REWARDS RECEPTION, inlcuding NEGATIVE- any of your posts that you intended to have as private and only for your 5 followers if it gets enough traction gets blown out of proportion and every single other user will see it only as the post itself, as a big number post which means its open for ridicule. i feel like it was host to more psyops than dA ever was? dA had a bunch of trolls but never any govt psyops like that drug minor one

anyways new art platforms dont work out bc they dont have enough people or draw- if you just are allowing people to post images and text posts, even if you have better page customization id just use twitter because despite its cons it has the major pro of, you know, having people using it- if you make a new art platform every week, theres no real point to pursue any of them, id just wait and see which one flourished- and because i dont participate, they dont get clicks, they dont continue to grow, and they ALL die. anyways moderation is impossible in the way people like- i know everyone wants to believe their niche discourse is clean cut and actually go to show deeper oppression but moderators on websites do not care- discourse is ever evolving and so heated that they cannot afford to throw out a guess and likely no one ever explains themselves, just say This ideology is something or other. and we all want it to be so simple that everyone has the Right opinion on pro/antiship, or fetishes, or terfisms, or mogai, but i promise no matter how easy it seems to you there are thousands who violently refuse and will make up their own buzzwords about how their side is right and the other is something or other. like aside from banning slurs or cruelty they really cannot do much and likely would not ban people who have a special word in their description that you and you alone recognize as a dogwhistle for x ideology. this is the problem i know a few art websites had where they had to say clearly what they would and wouldnt allow and NO ONE was happy. also to revisit that point on hosting a lot of people, an art website that is JUST an art website is like.. its not going to get community or that response i mention from other ppl. if i get on a website just to post art, why would i comment on anyone elses?

and like, dA i know it has like front page or new algorithm which spotlights a LOT of fetish content, but honestly like. you just have to accept that theres going to be fetish content, its an art website, if you want new unseen artists spotlighted you have to acccept that in the fallout of that theres going to be fetish content.

so uhmmm theres nowhere to go and nothing to do. get your asses back on dA eclipse was glitchy and sucked and showed dA didnt respect user opinion but it has not been that bad. its functional at the very least and its only ever dysfunctional because YOU all left. i cant get reception not bc dA is broken but because theres no one left to see it

1 note · View note

liberty-barnes · 2 years

Text

General Guidelines For New Users

(this is an ongoing list of just things I compiled from other blogs, so if you have anything else to add, let me know and I'll put them here)

Reblogs are everything. While in other platforms, likes help the algorithm find good posts to put on your recommended and stuff, here it doesn't really happen. So the only way for people to get recognition for their posts is to reblog them. So even if you have very few followers or whatever, reblog!!

Don't add your thoughts, comments, etc. directly onto someone else's post when reblogging, unless you're sure they're okay with it. Instead, just add your comments to the tags, or if you have something else to say about that discussion, either make your own post relating to it or ask first if you can add to the discussion. AKA:

This one seems pretty self-explanatory, but since some people still don't get it: don't go being a dick on someone's blog/in their inbox. Seriously, if you're even thinking about sending someone death threats, hate, or whatever, just don't. Find something better to do with your time, cause that's just not it.

Tags serve multiple purposes here: we use them to rant or add on thoughts sometimes, but also to just generally organise your blog. For example, I tag everything I write with #libby writes, that way if you're just looking for my fics, you can search my blog for that tag and it'll all show up, tagging makes it easier for you to find what you want in blogs. Tags also work as a way for others to blacklist content, for example, if you haven't watched a movie yet but everyone's talking about it, you can just blacklist content related to that movie and it'll all be hidden/show up with a disclaimer that it contains content you blacklisted until you take away the restriction.

Don't keep the default Tumblr images cause people will think you're a bot. You can change it to something as random as a Google picture of a park bench, as long as it isn't the Tumblr default picture cause most people have a tendency to block those. Just take the time to personalise your blog a little bit.

Don't be impatient when it comes to asks. Some blogs, especially the bigger ones, get dozens of asks a day, so don't be impatient or get mad if they didn't answer yours. At the end of the day, it's their blog, they decide what to post and what not to, and people have lives outside of Tumblr so they won't always have time to answer.

If you don't like something, don't interact with it, it's as simple as that.

Don't press people for information about themselves. Tumblr thrives on anonymity, so if people want to share, they do, but if they don't, you need to respect that. This isn't like Twitter where everyone has their names, age, picture, address, social security number or whatever on their accounts. Here, if you want to be faceless and nameless, you can, and that should always be respected.

Those are the ones I remember at the moment, but like I said, this can change and be lengthened as time goes on, but I hope it helped all you new users get a better idea as to how this works!

Also, if you're a Larrie or in the One Direction fandom, look these up as well, they're a bit more catered to our fandom.

-Love, Miah <3

#helpful resources #tumblr discourse #twitter vs tumblr #twitter comes to tumblr #tumblr guidelines #tumblr dynamics

351 notes · View notes

oocsydney · 2 years

Text

Ok @wip tumblr staff, we need to talk about how to improve this hellsite's user experience issues.

Since this is too large for an ask (and touches on a few points), I'd like to share some of my feature requests below that could help with improving the overall UX design of tumblr, with the ultimate goal of making this site more enjoyable (and safe) for its users.

------

1. The ability to change or switch your primary blog

My first primary blog is not the one I primarily use anymore. It sucks that my old one is the "default" one for post comments or sending asks, as that's not the one I want people to follow.

2. The ability to change your blog username without changing the blog URL

Look, sometimes we all make mistakes we regret, but that doesn't mean we should have to live with them forever (/silly).

It'd be nice though to be able to change your username that appears in the dash without it affecting the blog URL, similarly to how you can change your username on Twitter.

Other users should still be able to tag blogs via their blog URL or current username.

3. The ability to "favorite" mutuals, so that they always appear at the top of the list for sending messages/DMs

I send some of my mutuals DMs multiple times a day with posts and other things I like, and it's a bit cumbersome to always have to search for them to send them posts.

↪ additional feature request for this:

One "send post to favorites" button for messages so that I don't have to find all of my mutuals every single time.

🔨 needs fixed: There is also some pretty strange behavior when sending post DMs to mutuals, as the original poster for the blog always appears near the top of the DM list.

Logically, this doesn't make much sense from a user perspective, as the user would likely not send the original poster a message with the same post that they wrote.

4. The ability to "spoiler" images, text, and video

Not only would this help with preventing (or at least reducing) potential spoilers from the latest games/movies/shows/etc, but this also could help folks that are triggered by specific content, such as graphic depictions of violence, etc.

I think a spoiling feature similar to Discord, where the user chooses to place spoilers on the content before posting, would be highly beneficial.

↪ additional feature request for this:

Allow another user to anonymously request that the original poster spoil the content in their post. Then, the OC will receive a notification that they've received a spoiling request linking to their post.

The post should be auto-spoiled for the person that originally requested it then anyway (so that it won't cause issues for them again in the future if it pops up on the dash through other reblogs), but then the original poster can decide to edit the content based on follower feedback.

5. Fix/address the infamous "disappearing post" issue on tumblr desktop/web

I can't count how many times I've run into an issue where a mutual will DM me a post they want me to look at, but then when I open it on web, the post looks to be taken down. However, if I open it on mobile, the post is still there.

It seems that this particular issue has happened to some other mutuals as well, and the only workaround I've found is just opening the post on mobile. I don't even think I've experienced the issue on mobile at all, actually, so it seems to be a tumblr web-based platform problem.

------

I totally understand if some of these things can't be implemented though, especially due to backend or technical limitations, but some of these features or fixes would be really welcome and nice to see!

#tumblr feedback #user experience

155 notes · View notes

mack3030 · 3 years

Text

Things the Sims 4 Community Can Do About Paywalls...A Post...

[This is going to be a bit long, so you may want to save it and read it when you have time, or just...you know, buckle in.]

I thought I would ring in the new year by talking about something that I feel we as a community need to finally decide on. (It’s been debated since 2017 or so, and it’s now 2021...) I’d like, if possible, to try to suggest some real solutions and choices that we can make that will hopefully create a better and more honest community out of all of us. Now I would like to start by making some postulates. In geometry, postulates are facts that do not need proven with a mathematical proof. They are assumed to be true. Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers would call these “Self-Evident Truths”. I would like to use these as a bit of a basis for my arguments.

Truth: The Sims 4 has been enough of a cash cow for EA. If you buy the base game ($40) plus all expansion packs (40 each x 10) + all game packs (20 each x 9) + all stuff packs (10 each x 17) you would come to a total of seven hundred and 90 dollars ($790) plus tax. This is of course, without sales, bundling, etc, which many people DO take advantage of, but STILL. That is a TON of money for EA’s pockets. EA makes a majority of its money on the fact that the Sims 4 is an “incomplete game”. It “completes” the game further and further by adding more “expansions” to the game to the point that it seems almost useless to buy the base game alone without adding to it.

Even with sales and other things, it’s easy to spend over $500 dollars on the sims 4 game + expansions. Still a lot of cash for a game that is years old. This is just money that is spent on the game that goes to EA. This does not account for: * Money spent to buy a new computer because your old one wouldn’t run the sims. * Money spent supporting CC artists who have donations open or early access. * Money spent on access to sites that have ads/paywalls/exclusive sims 4 CC such as Leosims, etc. (Which are the problem, frankly)

We should be able to respect the fact that a majority of us paid a hefty amount for this game. It is unfair, and frankly greedy to REQUIRE people to pay MORE just to unlock or gain access to specific user created content.

I am not talking about a VOLUNTARY support or donation because they like what you offer. I am talking about FORCING people to pay if they want to ever be able to use the CC or mod you offer.

Now, the typical defense for this is “Well, I’m an artist! I spend time/effort/etc working hard on these meshes, the code, etc to make this content!” Which leads me to point #2.

Truth: Mods, CC, and other content for the Sims 4 are useless without the game. Once they are created/uploaded to the game, all copyright to those objects IMMEDIATELY transfers to EA.

I teach art in a Missouri public school. Our state standards dictate that when art students are in middle school grades, they have to learn about copyright, fair use, and creative commons. While I am not a copyright lawyer, I have had to learn enough about this subject to teach it. So allow me to break down a few facts about copyright:

First, when ya make it, ya own it. There’s not a process to apply for a copyright. The moment you create something that is 100% your own work, you hold the copyright to it.

Second, when you make something that is created based off of or USING someone else’s intellectual property as a reference or resource it is a fan creation. In art, we call this “fanart”. It is not 100% your own work. Someone else’s intellectual property is involved.

Fan creations always have tread a very thin and shadowy line when it comes to different companies and the legality of them. You can easily search google for various articles explaining it, but to summarize it in a short method:

Most companies do not actively go after those who create fan creations unless they are making profits that could instead be going to the creators of the intellectual property. If the fan creation is discovered to be making profits and/or taking the intellectual property in a direction the creator does not approve of, they have legal options to pursue (court, cease and desist letters, etc).

Third, Copyright can be transferred from person to person. In most cases this is done through a written document that both parties sign, however there IS an exception to this that EA uses to allow itself to transfer your copyrights to your content to them:

EA’s agreement with you is non-exclusive, meaning that the moment you hit “agree” on the sims 4 terms and conditions, you have handed over your rights to any CC you create for the game.

If you want to maintain full creative rights over the mesh/mods/etc you make then, you have to not make that content for the sims 4 and make your own platform to host it on. This is way easier said than done.

Truth: There have been various examples in the past of CC creators who have stolen meshes, bases, bits/pieces of work, or “inspiration” for CC from other sites/companies, who have been called on it publicly.

The most recent event concerning this was drama concerning itsbrandysims and their use of meshes from imvu/secondlife (you can see my opinion on the subject HERE), but there have been other documented cases. Leosims, for example, has been listed as an example of someone taking meshes from secondlife creators and reuploading them (when it was told to me, I was shown THIS thread as evidence). Another well known creator was accused by a former sims 4 cc creator (who now makes content from second life), and was called out in THIS post in 2019.

The horrible part of this? Many of these creators are charging people (often at not so great rates as well), for STOLEN content. Content they don’t even own, that they ripped from another place. This should not be accepted by a community that loves a game as much as the Sims 4 community. Truth: EA has provided a way for people to make money while not hiding content behind paywalls entirely, and the INTENT of this was to OFFSET COSTS. Almost every post about content locked behind paywalls features this post found on the Sims Forum from 2017. In it, SimGuruDrake, who was the community manager at the time (she has since left the Sims 4 team for another job). Most of you who have seen this discussion topic before know this post by heart, but I’d like to highlight one important aspect of it:

One thing that is always important about communication is the intent behind it. The intent for people to be allowed to make patreons and allow early access wasn’t so people could just make money for themselves, the idea was to offset costs to buy programs to make the content. For example, a yearly subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (which has photoshop, illustrator, etc) costs a couple hundred dollars US a year. If someone was using photoshop to help them create their CC in addition to blender or other free programs, EA/Maxis wanted to allow the creator to not have to pay for making the CC out of pocket. Can EA/Maxis control what people spend the money they make off of patreon on? No. But it should be noted that the intent of this action was to help people pay for supplies for their hobby more than to make a business out of it.

Onto the next truth! Truth: There is an image that disputes this post above, however the authenticity of it and timing of it are very disputed.

This image is often thrown around by people who lock content behind paywalls, but I would like to take a second and try to provide an honest assessment of it. First of all, I have a bit of a problem with the fact that the original person who “messaged” SimGuruDrake this question has not been identified. This image was not posted on the tumblr of a CC creator who claimed “Hey I reached out to a sims guru and this is the answer I got!” The main pages that have this image are either tweets from CC creators using it to defend their stance on paywalls (ex: here), or tumblrs/tweets “debunking it” (ex: here, here). I even reverse image searched this image using google, and another platform and could not figure out where this originated from. Of course, I’m not an expert, but...still.

The fact that the origin of this picture is unknown casts doubt on it. If it were a well known CC maker who is known for being honest, that’s one thing. But the fact that we don’t exactly know where it came from is suspicious. Because frankly, anyone with some decent editing ability could photoshop this.

Here’s my imperfect edit, but I’m just a self-taught graphics nerd and I am not as dedicated at faking screenshots as some. (And the crap photo quality didn’t help.) Another common issue is that at the supposed “time” that this question was being asked, some state that SimsGuruDrake had already left the Sims 4 team. I will admit, this photo is within the correct timeline, as SimsGuruDrake did not officially depart the sims 4 team until February 2018. (There is a post on the sims forums that has a timestamp that confirms this.) But, if you were in the process of leaving your job within the next month (as a two week/30 day notice is common when leaving a job), would you REALLY be answering questions in DMs on twitter, or be focusing on packing up, and training your successor? The last thing that really makes me doubt the validity of this picture is the fact that it’s not really easy to message the sims gurus on Twitter. This appears to be twitter from the screenshot (although there are some things that are a little out of place from the current UI): But when I attempt to direct message a sims guru I get this message:

I even tried seeing if I could reach out via DM to Drake herself, (who now posts under a different twitter) to see if it was possible:

Could the policies have changed since 2018? Possibly, but I feel that opening up direct messages is just asking for Sims 4 team members to get angry messages, so this could very well be a long running EA policy. I have also reached out to her via a twitter tag (as of 1/2/21), and will update y’all if I get a reply:

Okay, so now that we’ve gone through all of this, let’s talk about the last truth that’s really important: Truth: Putting content behind paywalls has generally been considered disgusting by many in the sims 4 community, and TAKES AWAY the choice of people to support CC creators they love/appreciate WILLINGLY. A few notable posts sharing the disgust with this practice can be found: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE). And these are just what I can find from a simple precursory search.

Okay, Brainiac. So what can we do to solve this problem?

Well, there’s a few methods we can employ, and sadly, it’s going to take a bit of a commitment and concentrated effort from the community.

Step #1: Make the COMMUNITY the VICTIM instead of EA.

Now when I say this, I don’t mean we’re actually victims, but mean that instead of constantly saying things like “WHEN YOU DO THIS YOU VIOLATE EA’S TOU!”, thus making EA the “victim” of the crime. We change the dialog to saying “When you lock stuff behind paywalls, you cheat the sims 4 community and disrespect their choice to support you or not.” Because let’s be honest. Maxis/EA really doesn’t give much of a care about if people aren’t following this rule. You can report people to the team, but as far as most people have seen, it doesn’t get anywhere. But if we make it where the community is the party being “wronged” it is much harder for those who have paywalls to not be scared. Because the community, in the end, has to be with them. DepthofPixels had a really amazing post about this HERE.

Step 2: Decide to not support anyone who puts their content behind exclusive paywalls and do not hesitate to spread the word about why you choose not to do so.

By that, I mean

not paying any patreon accounts that don’t offer either their content 100% for free, or offer early access.

And sharing about why you choose to do that on your social media. Something I might suggest would be to make it a bit personal and share something like:

Instead of spending $15 a month to get exclusive content from Leosims (or any other patreon/paywall creator here) I’m spending that $15 supporting creator x, creator y, and creator z, who don’t put their work behind paywalls!

Link their patrons, share why you like their content, and why you take the stance to make the community better. Make it a positive thing, praising the people who are doing RIGHT by the community.

Yes, you may not get their content for a while (although there are some different places (

) to find them *cough*. But in the end, is it worth supporting someone’s content when they’re treating the community badly?

Step 3: Report creators who actively steal content from IMVU/secondlife to those respective companies, and all others to EA. (Even though nothing may happen.)

Here’s the deal. When people steal from either of those sites, they are infringing on someone’s copyright, as well as Imvu/secondlife’s copyright as well. It’s not okay, and they should be held accountable for it. Here’s the LINK for submitting a ticket to Secondlife. I haven’t been able to find one for IMVU, but maybe someone else will find one. Let those companies know and allow them to handle those specific creators. As to the other creators, EA may not handle them at the moment. But IF (and this is a wishful thinking “if”) there were suddenly a flood of messages about certain creators...? I think they might have to pay attention to some of those messages. There is an official report form, but it might even be worth tweeting to SleddingGuruFrost, who is the current community manager asking about their stance on paywalls. And last but not least:

Step 4: Make sure that those who are doing the right thing and not putting their work behind paywalls feel appreciated. Show them some love via a tumblr ask, or by tagging them on twitter, or by going up a tier on their patreon (or pledging for the first time). Celebrate these heroes who are creating content and not forcing it on us.

Us asking for people to give us a choice to support them isn’t being greedy, or disrespecting their time. We just want transparency, and respect from those who create content for the game we love so much versus them treating us like we’re just a source of income. I know it might seem a bit hard to do this for some of you, and for some it may seem like I’m preaching to the choir, but we have to decide where we stand on this issue and stop letting those who abuse this system keep doing it. We can make a difference if we decide as a COMMUNITY to work together.

With commitment, ~Sunny

#sims4cc #sims4mm #maxismatch #sims4alpha #sims4cccommunity #paywallssuck #downwithpatreon #EA #maxis #TOS #thievessuck

345 notes · View notes