Be nice to them. They’re doing an important job. Do not chase them, grab them or harass them.
Always bring some food with you, it’s just polite.
Approach them slowly, and let them come to you. Sometimes you might have to sit on the ground and tap it a few times. This is what you brought food for.
At some point after you have managed to touch the cat it will turn and sprint away. This is when you start following it.
Cats do not want you to get lost, but they can be fast. Never lose sight of them, you should stay with it until your return. This might still look like your usual street but you are in a liminal space already. Try not to get lost.
(NOTE: do not follow cats with mismatched eyes. You can pet them, but the moment they run away you should immediately turn your back to them and walk in the opposite direction.)
Black cats:
Follow black cats into the floor-level vents. Don’t worry, there are many spider webs but there aren’t any spiders.
Do not lose sight of them in the dark.
When you emerge, you will be in the same street you were before, but there will be no people to be found.
Do not stray, follow your cat. Sometimes it might want to just catch a bird and go back. Do not stay longer just to explore.
If you hear the sound of a crowd in the distance do not try to follow it. Your cat will never lead you there.
You can take anything with you but you cannot take pictures or record video or sound.
Orange cats:
Orange cats hang around train stations for a reason. Follow them into the next train. You will not need a ticket.
If the cat wants you to scratch its ears during the trip, do it.
The landscape will not look like the area around your town. Do not panic - this is normal.
The people in the train will not speak a language you understand or recognize, but they will have clothes and devices similar to yours. They are usually nice.
Get down at the same stop as your cat. You will not understand the name of the station, and no one will get off in the same station as yours. You should follow your cat, but it will never leave the station. Follow it into the next train to get back home.
Never stay in the train. Never wait for the last stop.
White cats:
White cats live on the edges. They will take you to many places but at the same time they will never take you anywhere.
If you meet them during the night-time, the sun will start rising, regardless of the time. If you meet them during the daytime, the sun will start setting. It will stay like this for the duration of the trip.
Follow them to the edge of a forest that smells like honeysuckle. You will hear the song of birds and the flow of water. You should never stray and enter the forest on your own. Your cat will not follow.
Follow them to a building where a fancy party is being held at. Through the windows you can see the food and the champagne. The guests will ask you to join them, but your cat will keep walking. Do not accept the invitation, and never eat the food or drink the champagne.
Follow them along the edge of a swimming pool. People will be bathing, playing and laughing. It will be hot, regardless of the season. Do not step too close to the edge, because they will try to grab your ankles and pull you into the water. Keep walking.
Once the sun finally sets or rises you will be back home. Never enter your house until you are completely sure the sky is changing.
Calico cats:
Calico cats are the safest. They will follow you instead.
Walk around your town and you will see everything is the same, but you will not be able to make the connections between the streets.
If you want to go to a certain place you will find it is no longer where it used to be.
You will not recognize anyone. Every single person in the street will be a stranger. They are not dangerous but do not look them directly in the eyes.
Never try to find your house. Because you will find it.
When you want to come back take the cat back where you found it. This might be more difficult than you expect.
Remember to always take some food with you, something made of iron, and comfortable shoes.
I drew a quick chart about good wrist and finger exercise before playing Splatoon (or engaging in any other intense activity such as but not limited to gaming in general, programming, drawing, computer work etc.) As with all stretching exercise, these should only be done in moderate speed. You only want to loosen up, not break your hands!!
yo here’s a useful tip from your fellow art ho cynellis… use google sketchup to create a model of the room/building/town you’re trying to draw… then take a screenshot & use it as a reference! It’s simple & fun!
Sketchup is incredibly helpful. I can’t recommend it enough.
There’s a 3D model warehouse where you can download all kinds of stuff so you don’t have to build everything from scratch.
reblog to save a life
This is an incomplete tutorial, and it drives me crazy every
time I see it come around.
We live in a pretty great digital age and we have access to
a ton of amazing tools that artists in past generations couldn’t even dream of,
but a lot of people look at a cool trick and only learn half of the process of
using it.
Here’s the missing part of this tutorial:
How do you populate your backgrounds?
Well, here’s the answer:
If the focus is the environment, you must show a person in relation to
that environment.
The examples above are great because they show how to use the
software itself, but each one just kind of “plops” the character in front of
their finished product with no regard of the person’s relation to their
environment.
How do you fix this?
Well, here’s the simplest solution:
This is a popular trick used by professional storyboard and
comic artists alike when they’re quickly planning compositions. It’s simple and
it requires you to do some planning before you sit down to crank out that
polished, final version of your work, but it will be the difference between a background
and an environment.
Even if your draftsmanship isn’t that great (like mine),
people can be more immersed in the story you tell if you just make it feel like
there is a world that exists completely separate from the one in which they
currently reside – not just making a backdrop the characters stand in front of.
Your creations live in a unique world, and it is as much a character as
any other member of the cast. Make it as believable as they are.
This post makes me feel quite dumb.
I don’t understand the difference between the first two pics that “plop a character down in front of the background” and the third example under #4.The character is still “in front” of the BG with their feet cut off at the bottom. I’m missing something, clearly.
This might make it easier to understand? If we put a grid down we can say maybe the dimensions of the room look something like this;
So if you put a dude at the door, he’d probably be about this size in relation to the other things in the room;
If you look at his height against the horizon line versus where his feet land on the ground plane, you can scale him up in perspective and see what size he would be as well as where his head and feet would be if he were standing at the other side of the room;
So if you wanted a shot of this guy standing at the back of the room, looking at the fireplace, you’d want him to be about this size in the frame based on how big/tall relative to the environment we know he’s supposed to be;
if we scale him up to the size of the dude who was dropped in the scene initially, we know he’d have to be a lot closer to the camera in perspective, he might not even still fit in the dimensions we decided the room could be;
and if you drop him down to the same height compared to the horizon the other guy is, it looks like he’s standing in a knee-deep hole;
Conversely, if you were trying to reverse engineer the size of the guy they were using as an example, keeping him in the room, he’d be something like this
or possibly this;
Which is totally fine if you’re trying to put dwarves or lounging giants or that kinda thing in your room, it’s just about being conscious of the size of your character relative to the ground plane/horizon to make sure they’re telling the story you want them to be.
Vulgar is a conlang (constructed/fictional language) generator created to help literally generate a language for you. No, really. No tricks, and it’s super simple to use. It’s my favourite tool right now for writing fantasy, even as someone who loves creating his own languages, it’s an amazing starting point.
Want a random conlang, straight away, with no prep or fuss? Just visit http://vulgarlang.com/index.html and click “Generate New Conlang”… and that’s it. Scroll down and through your brand new, generated, completely original conlang.
If you’re a little more advanced in terms of conlanging and want to specify IP phonemes to be used, you can add them too, but even with no knowledge of linguistics you can create a language at the click of your fingers.
This version of Vulgar is completely free, sure…. but! the guy who created it has not only made an amazing thing (which I repeat, is absolutely free at it’s most basic point), but is also planning on updating it more and more!
Under the “Buy” tab on the Vulgar website, he links to his email, where you can offer to pay for the full version of Vulgar, which is a total steal right now at a sale price of only nineteen dollars. Considering professional conlangers and linguists could charge you, like, a metric fuck ton of money for the same data you’re getting here for just nineteen, that’s a major steal.
Not to mention, buying the alpha build now gives you free access to all of it’s updated versions, which I can guarantee are just going to get better and better! I’ve already bought it and I adore it, and this is a tool the likes of which we in the conlang community have never seen in such an awesome way.
Please consider helping Vulgar out, because the creator is a damn genius
someone created a random generator that creates randomized inspirational quotes overlaid on random images in a soothing fashion and each and every image is comic gold
it’s pretty much the best thing ever and here are some of my favorites so far
so good
I’m getting this one made into a motivational poster for my home office
