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Mirthless
Mar 27, 2011

by the sex ghost
Hey y'all, I am reposting this from the Miniatures thread over in TG. I thought it might be relevant to a wider audience over here, i'm sure we all need paintbrushes:



Noticed this recently and thought I would mention it. There's a big box retailer in the US that specializes in clearance, last season and closeout goods, called Ross. They're affiliated directly with the craft store Michael's, the slightly less evil competitor to hobby lobby. I think there may have been some Michael's closures recently because every Ross in my area is flooded with very cheap art supplies right now. I really recommend dropping by if you have one in your area, most of what they have is just cheap crap from the bargain bin, but this is maybe the cheapest way to buy decent paintbrushes short of bulk ordering off Wish/AX and with those services you never know what you're gonna get until it arrives




Four gold taklon #2 rounds, Four gold taklon #6 rounds, Four white taklon #6 flat shaders, and a pile of natural hair dry brushes for $8

I also got a couple of royal & langnickel gold taklon brush variety packs for $3 a pack.

Aside from miniature stuff, we also found two packages of Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth Polycolors which are very nice colored pencils, at $3.99 a tin. These are normally $25. They're somewhere between prismacolours and polychromos with a wax/oil core, I love coloring with them and if you can find them at that cost they're really fun to play with, even if you're not very good with colored pencils. They blend and layer well and don't get super waxy. I have prismacolors too and the polycolors are on par for sure

You can find alcohol markers too for a hell of a lot cheaper than copics, probably a roulette spin on whether or not they're any good

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Frog Act
Feb 10, 2012
Probation
Can't post for 11 hours!
So I’m thinking about getting my GF a knitting machine for Christmas. I don’t know anything about these other than that there’s a wide price variability, any reasonably affordable recommendations?

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007

Kanine posted:

I made a post in the OSHA thread about some sketchy poo poo that happened when I was in art school.


I'm curious if anyone else has their own interesting OSHA safety stories to tell about their experiences in art school/in general.

I don't have any stories to add but holy poo poo I'm glad the pointiest tool I use is a micron pen :catstare: I love horrifying OSHA anti-porn

Kanine
Aug 5, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo

Sitting Here posted:

I don't have any stories to add but holy poo poo I'm glad the pointiest tool I use is a micron pen :catstare: I love horrifying OSHA anti-porn

yeah i pretty much work just as a 3d artist now so its funny to think about how many more scars i would have on my hands if i had gone a different route in the art world. i was really close to going into furniture/sculpture

Angrymog
Jan 30, 2012

Really Madcats

What's the best way to offer prints for sale without taking a risk yourself, or just to be able to provide a link to people who go "That's cool, I'd like a print of that" rather than as a main income stream.

Ideally looking for a company based in the UK but that can also do international shipping reasonably.

Doll House Ghost
Jun 18, 2011



Angrymog posted:

What's the best way to offer prints for sale without taking a risk yourself, or just to be able to provide a link to people who go "That's cool, I'd like a print of that" rather than as a main income stream.

Ideally looking for a company based in the UK but that can also do international shipping reasonably.

Maybe Printful? On-demand printing and shipping in the UK seems to be their MO.

Claeaus
Mar 29, 2010

fauna posted:

i wonder what the expiry date is on old art embarrassment? i can look at stuff i made up until about 18 and find it endearingly terrible (i'm 30) but anything after that i just can't bear to look at. it takes about twelve months now for something i draw to go from "that looks ok" to "oh gently caress please don't make me ever have to see that again." i think it's why i only do abstract art now. i hate looking at my hosed-up old human drawings, even badly-drawn buildings make me cringe myself inside out, and i can't imagine it will ever be any different so i've just stopped trying. what's the point in making art if you can't take any joy in what you made?

You can flip this thinking into "look at how much better I am now than back then!". I want my old stuff to look like poo poo (a bit over exaggerating) compared to my new stuff. I work as a developer and if I looked back at code I wrote at university and didn't feel embarrassment and instead thought "This code looks great, I would write it exactly the same today!" then that would mean that I hadn't improved since then.

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
Flipping back from the flip side, I had that experience where I went back to a massive project I've been stalled on for the better part of a year or two, and went through it armed with a red pen and a fresh set of eyes sharpened from a NaNoWriMo win. Three hours later, it's covered with scribbles, a lot of crossed out sections and entire swaths circled with comments like "DOESN'T WORK" and "NEEDS WORK".

I thought I was three quarters of the way to the finish line, but I am so close to throwing half of it out and starting over. :cripes: :supaburn: :emo:

EDIT: though if I do this now, it's like getting a head start on my third draft right??? This wouldn't be the first time that I've thrown out half of what's been written.

Leng fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Dec 18, 2020

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Over in the Thunderdome thread (our local weekly competitive flash fiction group) we've been debating the usefulness of a Thunderdome tradition: the losertar. Each week, or at least most weeks, the people judging goon-submitted stories choose the one they thought was the worst, and that poster gets a cool new Mad Max-themed Thunderdome Loser avatar. They can change it back themselves if they want, or they can earn a new avatar through improving in the subsequent weeks.

We're trying to figure out whether this is worth keeping around, so I figured I'd ask here and in Fic Advice: Does anyone feel reluctant to participate in Thunderdome because of the threat of losing their avatar? The competitive nature of Thunderdome is something we want to preserve, and we know that's not for everyone so if that's the case for you, that's cool and valid. But if you're interested in participating, we don't want you to feel like you can't take part because it puts your avatar at risk. (We've also been considering having a Thunderdome gang tag with a 'loser' variant that gets swapped out, if that sounds more palatable than an avatar change.)

Djeser fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Dec 23, 2020

Axqu
Nov 28, 2016

I'm a hot bitch angel named Panty. And no matter what anyone says,
I DO WHAT I FUCKING WANT!

Djeser posted:

Does anyone feel reluctant to participate in Thunderdome because of the threat of losing their avatar?

...

(We've also been considering having a Thunderdome gang tag with a 'loser' variant that gets swapped out, if that sounds more palatable than an avatar change.)

Absolutely 100% this is why I've never participated. I'm happy to take harsh criticism, since it's going to make me a better writer, but being publicly branded as a pile of dogshit for coming in dead last in a popularity contest (in a way that takes real money to remove) isn't my idea of a good time.

FunkyAl
Mar 28, 2010

Your vitals soar.
This year's theme is "Winter Wonderland"

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Does anyone in here use colored pencils? I need advice on how to find the best quality ones for my mom, as she's unhappy with the current quality of prismacolors and wants better and I know nothing about these things.

Kanine
Aug 5, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo

StrixNebulosa posted:

Does anyone in here use colored pencils? I need advice on how to find the best quality ones for my mom, as she's unhappy with the current quality of prismacolors and wants better and I know nothing about these things.

ive had good luck with staedtler

perepelki
Dec 11, 2020

know before Whom you stand
derwents are my favourite, if they're available where you are. they're very expensive, though. all of mine have been gifts.

Angrymog
Jan 30, 2012

Really Madcats

I've got a Faber Castell polychromos set.

Caran D'ache are also very good.

Thing with pencils (all art supplies really) is that they'll have a student range and then one of more pro-ranges. The student range will be much cheaper, but in many mediums just isn't as nice to use

Derwent and Caran D'Ache frankly have a confusing number of ranges.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

I ultimately got my mom a Caran D'ache supracolor set, but added the note that if she doesn't like them I'll get her another set. I want her to be drawing things happily this year! Thank you all for the responses, I'll go through them if mom needs me too.

Angrymog
Jan 30, 2012

Really Madcats

StrixNebulosa posted:

I ultimately got my mom a Caran D'ache supracolor set, but added the note that if she doesn't like them I'll get her another set. I want her to be drawing things happily this year! Thank you all for the responses, I'll go through them if mom needs me too.

They're watercolour pencils, so slightly different techniques to get the best out of them, but they're really nice. I've got a set of them too

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG4WcRAgm7Y

I'm in the planning stage for a mod to a video game, specifically a visual novel, and I'm at the point where I need to start outlining the story beats. I've found that Dan Harmon's adaptation of the Hero's Journey has both been a good match for the intent of the story, and a good way to plan it out.

That said, I'm having a bit of trouble characterizing a protagonist where the protagonist is literally the player themselves, or I guess the reader. I don't want to write any dialogue for the reader, I want the reader to bring their own motivations to the story. It helps that the entire premise of the mod's story is to wrap up a lack of resolution in the original game, so there's an existing conflict - but it's hard to write the You and Need sections when I have zero control over the reader as a character.

Is it a bad thing to just forge ahead with the assumption that the protagonist has XYZ motivation and conflict, when the protagonist is the reader? Or are readers willing enough to suspend disbelief and take on that motivation for themselves?

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









How defined are they, either by the story or their actions?

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


sebmojo posted:

How defined are they, either by the story or their actions?

They're not very defined, and where they are defined, it's via their actions in-game rather than established backstory or internal dialogue. They're the one who installs the mod, they're the one who makes choices in the story to help the characters resolve their arcs, they're the one whose actions contribute to things going wrong towards the end, and they're the one that pays a price to put everything back together.

The only assumptions made by the game/story are that the player has a vested interest in seeing the characters again, and later, that they are willing to pay a price for said characters' well-being. No other assumptions about the player - gender, age, reason for starting the mod, what they want out of the mod, etc. - are made.

The advantage of being a game is that you can Show rather than Tell who the player-protagonist is. I'm hoping to use that by railroading their actions, at least unless I decide to blow up the scope and add multiple endings or more choices or some poo poo.

Did that help answer the question?

perepelki
Dec 11, 2020

know before Whom you stand
in a stunning break from tradition, the body types i can't draw are the ones that make me horny, because it fills me with shame and embarrassment to be assailed by horny feelings while i draw so i can never practice them

perepelki
Dec 11, 2020

know before Whom you stand
"can you just whip up a quick three-minute animation"

Thirteen Orphans
Dec 2, 2012

I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher. But above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.

perepelki posted:

"can you just whip up a quick three-minute animation"

It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant some non-artists are about the creative and creation processes.

perepelki
Dec 11, 2020

know before Whom you stand
hello friends. if i wanted to do some artwork prints, is redbubble still ok re quality and ethics, or is there somebody new i should know about?

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today
So April is coming up and while Script Frenzy isn't really its own thing anymore, Camp NaNoWriMo is running an April thing and they still keep a Script Frenzy forum open.

Are there any other playwrights/librettists/songwriters/theatre folks/other people interested in writing stage plays/musicals here? If so I'll start a Script Frenzy thread for SA folks.

EDIT: oh and screenplays and stuff (film, TV, radio plays or podcast scripts) would count too! Basically anything where your final output is a script that is meant to be performed instead of prose.

EDIT EDIT: and since I have a friend working on an opera I should say that an opera counts too since there is a libretto for it, technically, but opera is mostly music with a script wrapped around it, so :v:

EDIT EDIT EDIT: be the change you want to see, :justpost: and all, so here's the thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3962725

(please somebody join me so I'm not attempting this all alone during April)

Leng fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Mar 20, 2021

FunkyAl
Mar 28, 2010

Your vitals soar.
What does everyone do for framing paintings? I need to get some together quick but I don't have a lot to spend right now.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Second hand shops?

Last Visible Dog
Jul 30, 2015

Yeah, hitting up Goodwills is the way to go for cheap frames.
Since you can't control what kinda frame dimensions you'll find, I'd recommend taking a piece of scrap paper that's the same size as your painting and sketching a rough approximation of your painting onto it. That way you'll have a good visual idea of how big a frame you'll need, and how much margin space you can afford to either trim or have hidden beneath the matting.

Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

Art goons, what’s been the NFT talk in your circles? One of the big blender content creators has been going super hard into them and I don’t know if he’s an outlier or not. On one hand I totally get that there are problems with monetizing your work as an artist that the whole concept in theory helps address, but on the other, you know, the environment.

Warbird fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Apr 13, 2021

dupersaurus
Aug 1, 2012

Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'
It is absolute complete scammy horseshit

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

All the artists I know despise NFTs, think everyone who wants to make one is an idiot libertarian who wants to destroy the environment, and barely understand how they work. I, an intrepid bitcoin thread poster, have had to explain to them numerous times how exactly NFTs are stupid, why they're not quite stupid in the way they think they are, and why they're more stupid than they thought in ways they haven't realized.

All you need to know as an artist is that with NFTs, either someone's paying you to make one, in which case they're the idiot and you should take their money and humiliate them afterward, or you're paying someone to make one, in which case they're hoping you're the idiot.

Doctor_Fruitbat
Jun 2, 2013


An NFT gives you a link to a URL and nothing else. It doesn't confer ownership, and as soon as the URL goes down (which it will, even if in a matter of decades), then you've lost the file. Unless you back it up elsewhere, which defeats the purpose of the whole thing. Throwing a PSD in a password encrypted zip file gives you vastly more security and credible claim to ownership of the original piece than an NFT, all for a penny's worth of electricity.

There's more to it than that, but as with all crypto it's a bunch of sharks, grifters and money launderers funneling money at the expense of starry-eyed rubes.

readingatwork
Jan 8, 2009

Hello Fatty!


Fun Shoe

dupersaurus posted:

It is absolute complete scammy horseshit

I don’t know if I’d call it a scam as much as a very stupid form of gambling. Is anybody buying NFTs that sees them as anything more than poker chips in a weird buying/selling game? I have yet to meet anybody who thinks they have any sort of objective value.

dupersaurus
Aug 1, 2012

Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

readingatwork posted:

I don’t know if I’d call it a scam as much as a very stupid form of gambling. Is anybody buying NFTs that sees them as anything more than poker chips in a weird buying/selling game? I have yet to meet anybody who thinks they have any sort of objective value.

It’s a pyramid scheme but only the first buyer-sellers get any chance at a windfall

So yeah a scam

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Considering that they're non-fungible tokens, they're really more like pogs than poker chips.

NFTs exist in this weird quantum space where they're simultaneously a new paradigm of digital ownership that's going to revolutionize the way people purchase digital goods, but also are meaningless and valueless and literally just tokens anyone can create.

The ad copy for NFTs claims the former, while the fine print claims the latter, likely because that specific language is what keeps NFTs from counting as pump and dump schemes. Instead, they're just a regular old bubble, and it's not a scam to speculate during a bubble. You can even make decent bank from speculation, as long as you're sure that you're going to find someone else to buy your pogs before the bubble pops and everyone realizes that pogs aren't actually worth something.

tldr: they are technically legal so if you think you're a finance genious then feel free to get into NFTs. i am sure the VC startups will be delighted to charge you service fees

Djeser fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Apr 14, 2021

dupersaurus
Aug 1, 2012

Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

Djeser posted:

You can even make decent bank from speculation, as long as you're sure that you're going to find someone else to buy your pogs before the bubble pops and everyone realizes that pogs aren't actually worth something.

That's the key line, right there. For an artist there's maybe the vague hope that some moron wants to overpay you and hope that you can cash it out before the ETH market crashes, but it's really designed for people rich in ETH that want to "buy" random art off the internet for internet pennies and then flip the fake ownership of it to someone for massive internet profit, and then hope that they can cash it out before the now-hot ETH market crashes.

The actual case for artists in this, which has been documented happening, is people scraping images off twitter et al, making NFTs of it themselves and pocketing the profits all for themselves.

perepelki
Dec 11, 2020

know before Whom you stand
you know, it would have been very helpful for me as a kid for someone to sit me down and say "the simpsons are the pinnacle of a very specific kind of drawing, don't feel bad because you can't draw simpsons"

perepelki
Dec 11, 2020

know before Whom you stand
instead everyone around me just went "oh don't you draw that simpsons rubbish! trash! trash! TRASH!"

so i grew up thinking of fine art as a kind of continuum that went simpsons -------> michelangelo, and i couldn't even master the bottom tier

perepelki
Dec 11, 2020

know before Whom you stand
if i recall correctly, the scale went

simpsons --> anime (pokemon) --> anime (dbz) --> kingdom hearts official art --> anime (evangelion) --> final fantasy official art --> frazetta --> ??? --> sistine chapel

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Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

the ??? is airbrush van wizards

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