gather round tumblr it’s time for a story about why you shouldn’t solicit conversation with a stranger with a put down about their generation
i sat down about 30 minutes ago in the lobby of a very nice hotel, intending to do some writing. i have my laptop and my cellphone. as i settled, i checked some stuff on my phone, then turned to my laptop. because there aren’t many plugs, i’m sitting in a cluster of couches and instead of being by myself there’s an he’s an older gentleman across from me, polo shirt, salt and pepper hair. was very polite when i asked if he minded if i tucked myself in the corner of the couch
but apparently
apparently
he thinks computers are full of satan or something
because no sooner have i opened up goddamn word when he goes, “you kids and your electronics.”
ah, excellent, unsolicited conversation with a perfect stranger that comes with a critique of modern communication. fight me, bro, you got no idea who you’re tangling with. so naturally i push up my metaphorical sleeves (metaphorical because i’m in a goddamn resort and pavement is melting; i’m wearing a very nice goddamn dress and i’d look like a fucking soccer mom named helen if i had blonde hair) and very politely, i smash his face into the floor with “i’m sorry?” in an utterly flabbergasted tone because dude wtf and no one delivers slick put downs when they’re caught off guard
“i’m here reading my newspaper and after this my wife and i are going on a hike” (lol good luck with that dude the pavement is melting and you want to hike in the mountains) “and we’re going to interact with each other.” he gives my computer a v pointed look
naturally, i have the perfect response to this. it is pithy and eloquent and will surely put him in his place: “i… like to write, and it’s easier on a laptop?”
“it seems to me” (HERE WE GO) “that your generation” (OH GOOD) “is losing the ability to interact with other people.” (O OK) “my grandchildren never take their eyes off their cellphones anymore!”
and here he pauses and looks at me. as if he expects me to agree.
so i say “you were born in the 50s, right?” he says he was born in 59. “well, it seems to me that your generation is really fond of adultery, embezzlement, and corporate fraud, among other things, and i’m really enjoying paying for your retirement.”
i admit: i had this line canned after a little snarl i had with my mom the other night.
he stares at me. i stare back.
“you also realize,” i say, quickly typing socrates kids these days quote into google, “that people have been saying kids these days since socrates said, and i quote, children now love luxury. they have bad manners. contempt for authority. they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” i look up at him. he’s staring at me still.
i’m shaking because man fuck confrontation but also how hilarious is this because i literally had a fight with my mom about this twelve hours ago. i literally have a cranky tweet about it. “so it seems to me that making sweeping generalizations about people based on pretty arbitrary age groupings is kind of ridiculous since i’m pretty sure you’re not cheating on your wife or stealing from your company.”
he goes beat red because now i’m embarrassed him, and i feel really fucking bad because i didn’t mean to embarrass him, but also hey dude fuck you
SO OF COURSE he says “did your parents teach you any manners?”
and there goes the last of my embarrassment because hey fuck you dude the only person who can insult my parents is fucking me. and i say, without even thinking because this is when you have the snappiest rejoinders, “well they did teach me not to open unsolicited conversation with a stranger by insulting them so.”
at this point the dude’s wife shows up and they leave, and the waiter asks me if i want anything to drink and i’m like “yes please give me all your vodka” but instead i say “ice water” because the pavement is melting and if i puke from nerves after that, i don’t want to snort alcohol out my nose
– Praise the living daylights out of a show and shove its greatness in everyone’s face
– 2 years later, pick it apart violently and insult everyone who still enjoys it in as edgy a way as possible because negativity is cool
!!!
uhh maybe marginalized ppl were excited at the possibility of a show (such as su) representing them, only to be rightfully angry when the show ends up racist, homophobic etc. anyway, super bad post all around
I feel like a lot of hardcore accusations of problematic and offensive content that get thrown at media that was previously lauded as progressive come from a few sources; first, the creators are often a lot more accessible than the creators of mainstream media. you can message rebecca sugar on twitter personally to call her a racist bitch, but you can’t do the same to, say, jj abrhams or another large-scale creator. likewise, you can’t stand on a streetcorner and scream at people until they agree to stop watching law and order, but you can certainly bully large groups of people online until they stop supporting an independent creator.
second, the fandoms that tend to form around progressive media tend to be younger, more volatile, looking to media and fandom as forms of activism. mainstream media they can write off as garbage, but progressive niche media that makes a sincere attempt to represent marginalized folks must be Absolutely Perfect. the idea that a piece of media can have good parts and bad parts, that it can try and only partially succeed, but that that partial success is still worth something, is completely lost on many young fans. either its irredeemable garbage or its the literal messiah, there’s no in-between. so if a show falls short of perfect, as is inevitable, then it goes straight into the “total garbage” pile and must be condemned by the masses.
genuinely trying to represent certain groups and making a few missteps is not the same thing as being ignorant or malicious. making a sincere effort to mean something to folks who don’t get a lot of things made for them is something to be proud of. would you rather go back to the times when fucking nothing got made for us? when the only characters we saw that we could relate to were only there to be made fun of? you’re spoiled by a rush of new creators who took “go make your own thing then” to heart and set out to make content for people like them, you have the gall to look at what they’re trying to do and spit on it for not being better. no creator owes you shit, no creator has to bow to a bunch of teenage bullies who do nothing but demand and harass, that’s all there is to it.
Dear lord can everyone please read this post because it’s so relevant
YES. Yes, please read this. This has pissed me off for a while now.
As an independent content creator, you have to be fucking perfect. And if you mess up just a little bit, be sure that hate groups are going to get to you.
The same is not true for big, mainstream media products. They’ll be forgiven, no matter what they do, cause people do not expect them to be progressive anyway.
And YES we have to criticize when people mess up – it makes us better and people can learn from that. But PLEASE stop harassing independent content creators. You’re just making people stop creating the progressive content you consume. It’ll be your loss anyway.
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The Walking Dead: Road to Survival
Why does everyone say “eat the child” on these posts
@ihatebananasdealwithit it’s an inside joke that started on one of these ads that was like “if had to choose between feeding a child or saving your food for yourself, which would you choose” and since these ads tend to be kind of stupid somebody decided the best option was to “eat the child”… it just caught on from there lol
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.
Great comments and tutorials!
I’m a 3d artist and have been exploring the possibilities of using 3d as reference for 2d poses. I want to add a couple of tips and things!
Sketchup is very useful for environment references, and I assume it’s reasonably easy to learn. If you’re interested in going above and beyond, I highly recommend learning a proper 3d modeling program to help with art, especially because you can very easily populate a scene or location with characters!
Using 3ds Max I can pretty quickly construct an environment for reference. But going beyond that, I can also pose a pretty simple ‘CAT’ armature (known in 3d as a rig) straight into the scene, which can be totally customized, from various limbs, tails, wings, whatever, to proportions, and also can be modeled onto and expanded upon (for an example, you could 3d sculpt a head reference for your character and then attach it to the CAT rig, so you have a reference for complex face angles!)
The armature can also be posed incredibly easily. I know programs exist for stuff like this – Manga Studio, Design Doll – but posing characters in these programs is always an exercise in frustration and very fiddly imo. A simple 3d rig is impossibly easy to pose.
By creating an environment and dropping my character rig into it, I have an excellent point of reference when it comes to drawing the scene!
Not only that, but I can also view the scene from whatever angle I could ever want or need, including the character and their pose/position relative to the environment.
We can even quickly and easily expand this scene to include more characters!
Proper 3d modeling software is immensely powerful, and if you wanted to, you could model a complex environment that occurs regularly in your comic or illustration work (say, a castle interior, or an outdoor forest environment) and populate the scene with as many perspective-grounded characters as you need!
Stop talking and start doing: My Fallout Shelter for my Tumblr blog 