Went to my first MomoCon! Only bc I got a free ticket from a local Black tech and gaming group.
Quick thoughts:
I could only go for the first day, and I’d love to bring my younger siblings someday.
Thank GAWD for public transit and that the Marta is still a hot mess right now, bc I didn’t pay a penny lol 🚇
OH MY GOD THE BLACK COSPLAYERS
not gonna lie getting complimented solely on my looks just for having a floral afro, purple floral top, and my iconic heart-shaped glasses made me feel a certain wayyyy
Its louddd
lol I haven’t seen con-food prices in a minute. THEIVERY. $5 FOR A SMALL BAG OF CHIPS???
on that note, food prices were more expensive the deeper you go into the con, so I just went back up to the food court
WHERE TF AM I GOING???
I guess I didn’t realize there were panels?! Pleasantly surprised! I only attended 2 tho, mainly bc of schedule conflicts
The comic book panel of diversity and trends was really nice! I forgot each panelist's name, so I’ll have to go back and check the itinerary…
also didn’t realize the con went to like 3am??
LMAO a TADC panel?? The timing. I hope someone made the panelists uncomfortable lol
I didn’t know the con was started by GA Tech students! That was cool to find out!
gonna reach out to the people who invited me, to see if I can get on or create a game dev panel on indie game and another topic to go with it for next time, or another local expo
A lil' evening pixel art practice, this time I'm drawing Zira from @kianamaiart art/show, "Pretty Pretty Please, I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl!"
I'm joining the Magical Girl Game Jam #12 on itch io with a team, and guess what I'm watching for inspiration!
My team has not decided on a specific pixel art style, but I want to practice simplified pixel art to ideally, get my team's art development moving along.
I don't draw humans in my pixel art enough, so I want to play with either smaller/more simplified pixels or more exaggerated proportions...
[Image Description: Two images on an Aseprite--a pixel art program, screen. The left image is a pixel fan art rendering of the character Zira from the indie show "Pretty Pretty Please, I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl!" by visual artist, Kiana Mai. The right image is the original artist's design of her character, Zira. Zira is drawn as a young human teen with dark brown skin, round eyeglasses, and dark hair in two puff looped-hair that's underneath a purple beanie, that has a green pin and moon pin on it. Zira has on a purple shirt with a white bunny head in the center, and a long-sleeved black undershirt. Zira is wearing a long green skirt with a small white-bead chain, and blue jeans, and wearing white and purple sneakers. END ID]
This animation was inspired by a little zine I sketched out. I liked it so much, that I decided to turn it into a pixel art animation!
For my dear friend in G/\za 🍓. No matter what happens to her or myself, I am forever grateful to be under the same stars as her, all these miles and oceans apart. Besan's GFM link @bisanalbalawi18
(long) Image description under keep-reading
Start of all the Image descriptions
Star Scene
Image Description: An animated pixel art of a simple star drawn with a thick black outline. The star's face has two arches that curve down into black oval eyes with small light shines, looking to the right.
Around the star is a dark purple pixel font in lowercase words that reads: "we are under the same STARS".
The placement of the words are: above the star: "we are under", on the left: "the", and on the right: "same", and below in all caps: "STARS"
The background is a solid white color, detailed with light purple diamond-shaped stars and small flecks representing twinkling stars. The details are also animating in the background.
END ID
Moon Scene
Image Description: An animated pixel art of a simple moon drawn with a thick black outline. The moon's face has one arch that curves down into a single black oval eye with a small light shine, looking to the left. The moon is drawn in a waning crescent shape, with dashed lines connecting the moon's points to make a circular shape.
Around the moon is a dark blue pixel font in lowercase words that reads: "we are under the same MOON"
The placement of the words are: above the moon: "we are under", inside the dashed lined circular section: "the same", and below in all caps: "MOON"
The background is a solid white color, detailed with light blue swirls and diamond-shaped stars and small dots. The details are also animating in the background.
END ID
Cloud Scene
Image Description: An animated pixel art of a simple fluffy cloud drawn with a thick black outline. The cloud's face has two arches that curve down into black oval eyes with small light shines, looking to the right.
Around the moon is a dark green pixel font in lowercase words that reads: "we are under the same CLOUDS"
The placement of the words are: on the right with each word below the next: "we are under the same" and below in all caps: "CLOUDS"
The background is a solid white color, detailed with light green clouds and wide "M" arching lines drawn for four birds. The details are also animating in the background.
END ID
Sun Scene
Image Description: An animated pixel art of a circular sun drawn with a thick black outline. The sunrays are drawn connected together in each arching U-shaped point. The sun's face has two arches that curve down into black oval eyes with small light shines, looking up.
Around the sun is a dark yellow pixel font in lowercase words that reads: "we are under the same SUN" The placement of the words are around the sun from the the bottom left, curving around the sun, back down to the bottom right.
The background is a solid white color, detailed with light yellow squiggly-wavy lines representing sun rays. The details are also animating in the background.
END ID
How Wonderful - Note Scene
Image Description: A four-lined, pixel art sentence in black color that reads: "how wonderful we are to be under the same stars!" The layout for the sentence is: "how wonderful", "we are", "to be under", "the same stars!"
Animating below each word is a dark blue looping line, where each loop connects with the additional line underneath the next word.
The background is a solid white color.
END ID
Outro Scene
Image Description: A pixel art of the words "by" in black, with the artist's name "bloomzeye" in a purple pixel art font style, with three small hearts inside the center of the "b" and "o"s. Each heart animates within three frames to change colors from purple: blue in the "b", pink in the first "o", and yellow in the second "o". The background is a solid white color.
END ID
A lil' evening pixel art practice, this time I'm drawing Zira from @kianamaiart art/show, "Pretty Pretty Please, I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl!"
I'm joining the Magical Girl Game Jam #12 on itch io with a team, and guess what I'm watching for inspiration!
My team has not decided on a specific pixel art style, but I want to practice simplified pixel art to ideally, get my team's art development moving along.
I don't draw humans in my pixel art enough, so I want to play with either smaller/more simplified pixels or more exaggerated proportions...
[Image Description: Two images on an Aseprite--a pixel art program, screen. The left image is a pixel fan art rendering of the character Zira from the indie show "Pretty Pretty Please, I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl!" by visual artist, Kiana Mai. The right image is the original artist's design of her character, Zira. Zira is drawn as a young human teen with dark brown skin, round eyeglasses, and dark hair in two puff looped-hair that's underneath a purple beanie, that has a green pin and moon pin on it. Zira has on a purple shirt with a white bunny head in the center, and a long-sleeved black undershirt. Zira is wearing a long green skirt with a small white-bead chain, and blue jeans, and wearing white and purple sneakers. END ID]
This animation was inspired by a little zine I sketched out. I liked it so much, that I decided to turn it into a pixel art animation!
For my dear friend in G/\za 🍓. No matter what happens to her or myself, I am forever grateful to be under the same stars as her, all these miles and oceans apart. Besan's GFM link @bisanalbalawi18
(long) Image description under keep-reading
Start of all the Image descriptions
Star Scene
Image Description: An animated pixel art of a simple star drawn with a thick black outline. The star's face has two arches that curve down into black oval eyes with small light shines, looking to the right.
Around the star is a dark purple pixel font in lowercase words that reads: "we are under the same STARS".
The placement of the words are: above the star: "we are under", on the left: "the", and on the right: "same", and below in all caps: "STARS"
The background is a solid white color, detailed with light purple diamond-shaped stars and small flecks representing twinkling stars. The details are also animating in the background.
END ID
Moon Scene
Image Description: An animated pixel art of a simple moon drawn with a thick black outline. The moon's face has one arch that curves down into a single black oval eye with a small light shine, looking to the left. The moon is drawn in a waning crescent shape, with dashed lines connecting the moon's points to make a circular shape.
Around the moon is a dark blue pixel font in lowercase words that reads: "we are under the same MOON"
The placement of the words are: above the moon: "we are under", inside the dashed lined circular section: "the same", and below in all caps: "MOON"
The background is a solid white color, detailed with light blue swirls and diamond-shaped stars and small dots. The details are also animating in the background.
END ID
Cloud Scene
Image Description: An animated pixel art of a simple fluffy cloud drawn with a thick black outline. The cloud's face has two arches that curve down into black oval eyes with small light shines, looking to the right.
Around the moon is a dark green pixel font in lowercase words that reads: "we are under the same CLOUDS"
The placement of the words are: on the right with each word below the next: "we are under the same" and below in all caps: "CLOUDS"
The background is a solid white color, detailed with light green clouds and wide "M" arching lines drawn for four birds. The details are also animating in the background.
END ID
Sun Scene
Image Description: An animated pixel art of a circular sun drawn with a thick black outline. The sunrays are drawn connected together in each arching U-shaped point. The sun's face has two arches that curve down into black oval eyes with small light shines, looking up.
Around the sun is a dark yellow pixel font in lowercase words that reads: "we are under the same SUN" The placement of the words are around the sun from the the bottom left, curving around the sun, back down to the bottom right.
The background is a solid white color, detailed with light yellow squiggly-wavy lines representing sun rays. The details are also animating in the background.
END ID
How Wonderful - Note Scene
Image Description: A four-lined, pixel art sentence in black color that reads: "how wonderful we are to be under the same stars!" The layout for the sentence is: "how wonderful", "we are", "to be under", "the same stars!"
Animating below each word is a dark blue looping line, where each loop connects with the additional line underneath the next word.
The background is a solid white color.
END ID
Outro Scene
Image Description: A pixel art of the words "by" in black, with the artist's name "bloomzeye" in a purple pixel art font style, with three small hearts inside the center of the "b" and "o"s. Each heart animates within three frames to change colors from purple: blue in the "b", pink in the first "o", and yellow in the second "o". The background is a solid white color.
END ID
Tried my hand at drawing @kianamaiart oc, Aika, from her story and upcoming pilot "I Don't Want To Be A Magical Girl"!
image description in alt text, and under keep-reading
[Image description: A pixel art rendition of the character Aika, who is smiling at the camera, who has brown-skin and has her hair in two yellow-blonde star-shaped buns, star-end pointed black hair at the base of head. Aika is wearing an oversized, horizontal color-blocked shirt that's dark blue, then yellow, then light blue. Aika is wearing black biker shorts, and sneakers with light blue socks with two yellow heart at the tips of the shoes.]
[Image Description: Animation of a square pixel art drawing with black background with a thin white frame within in. Inside the frame is a white-colored character with no features or details, that has a circle head floating above a dome-shaped body. On the right to the character is a white oval with two lines pointing down out from it, representing a table. On the table is a white apple with two vertical eyes, facing the character. The words “eat?” is animating in and out of the camera, every other frame. END Image description]
Crochet Tapestry Raffle Giveaway to support a 🍉 family!
Hey Y'all, it's Afro Flower! I've been communicating with a member of the AlBalawi family over on my game dev account @bloomzeye, and I'm well enough (I was sick for a few days) to start my art-raising for them!
CLICKABLE INFO GRAPHIC PDF LINK HERE
ALL LINKS HERE
If you wanna help a family and be one of the two people a chance to win one of my handmade crochet tapestries, keep reading on how to enter! (Atl text version coming soon)
Quick overview:
The raffle will last until August 31st, EST.
Enter by donating at least $5 to the GFM. But the conversion rate is like $1 = $0.75!
You can also PP me at AyyAvv!
Email me proof!
One prize per winner
Details may changes as the situation does.
Family vetting proof: They have been vetted by 90-ghost here and here.
They are also a part of Gaza Champions on IG, as the organizer for their new GFM has said in the GFM description.
AlBalawi Family @yasminalbalawiigaza @bisanalbalawi18
They have started a NEW GFM with a smaller goal for immediate survival funds. They also received the additional displacement orders 💔, which they shared about in their original GFM here.
Please donate and share this, as my family contact has said one of the children is in dire need to immediate medical supplies!
Tagging accounts under the read-more for reach (I haven’t used this account in a while, and I’ve only been following people on my game dev page, so I don’t think I can directly link them right now?):
Afro Flower is me! Bloomzeye is my separate game dev account. I will try to be more active on Afro Flower since that is where I’m hosting the art raising funds for @bisanalbalawi18!
Making this post for the AlBalawi Family @yasminalbalawiigaza @bisanalbalawi18 who I have been dm’ing and emailing for a couple of weeks now!
They have been vetted by 90-ghost here and here.
They have started a NEW GFM with a smaller goal for immediate survival funds, but I have not seen it shared here. They also received the additional displacement orders 💔, which they shared about in their original GFM here.
PLEASE consider the conversion rate/fees! For example: I sent $5/USD, it converted to like, $3/USD. And that’s not even considering any instant transfer fees.
And they are also a part of Gaza Champions on IG. Their new GFM was set up by their Champion pen-pal who is helping them with fund transferring.
I have been working on creating a raffle art-raising on my non-game dev side of things, but I have fallen sick 😖, and can’t move as fast. But I’m still working on it! I’ll share it once it’s done.
Hey, so, Patreon is lying to you about Apple forcing their hand.
Patreon is getting rid of 1st-of-the-month/per-creation billing, claiming a new decision by Apple has forced their hand. This will hurt a lot of creatives, and their excuse is bullshit. Allow me to explain.
In 2018, Patreon tried to impose a new ill-considered fee structure on everyone that would have cost creators a lot of smaller pledges. They ended up apologizing for this profusely; they have now deleted this apology from their website and unfortunately I was unable to find it on the Internet Archive. This was shameful, but to their credit they backed off quickly when things got ugly.
Back in 2021, Patreon discussed plans to force all creators into a rolling bill structure and get rid of first-of-the-month/pay-up-front billing. The community once again very decisively shouted them down, and they had to walk it back again. This whole fiasco damaged the already shaky trust between Patreon creators and staff.
This week, Patreon announced that, along with extra fees, Apple's policies were supposedly forcing them to move everyone over to the rolling fee structure that they first tried to get us to agree to in 2021. Patreon will tell you they are not happy about this. As a person who spent a long time watching Patreon make terrible decisions, I can tell you-- they are probably very happy about this, because it's exactly the smokescreen they needed to do what they've been trying to do for years, which is pull ALL Patreon creators away from 1st-of-the-month and per-creation billing.
The spin in the news I've seen so far is "Apple bullies Patreon, boo hoo hoo poor Patreon". This is very obviously not what's happening. Mind you: Apple does suck, and they are doing something bad here. Fuck apple. But Patreon and Apple are BOTH the asshole in this situation; Everyone Sucks Here. Patreon has options: they can make the iOS app a reader app and do billing through the browser to avoid the restrictions and the extra fees (Netflix and Amazon, notably, both do this), or they can allow creators to opt-out of iOS billing if they want to use billing models that don't work with it.
It seems most likely to me that the Apple situation is a real fire that Patreon has chosen to use as a convenient smokescreen to do what they've been wanting to do since at least 2021, and maybe since 2018.
What do we do?:
They have a feedback form specifically about this.
They also have a creator discord.
And they have lots of social media pages where they probably really, really hope that this doesn't blow up again, because they never learn. The incidents I've described here aren't the only two other times Patreon has pissed off their creators. They know if they don't contain the noise it'll be harder to get away with it, so make some noise. They've done a lot of work to spin this cleverly so you'll have sympathy for them and they won't get the kind of backlash they know they deserve.
Please don't misuse these links and make threats or spam or something. All you have to do is give well-reasoned feedback. Patreon hates feedback. Make sure they get a nice heaping helping of their least favorite vegetable.
It's 8 am where I am and I am FILLED with rage already, but here we are with yet another news story about how the US approved a 20 billion dollar arms deal to Israel. So when Palestinians tell you to take your Kamala discourse out of our faces, understand that we don't see the logic in discussing how you feel about someone who's part of this administration just because they uttered the word "ceasefire" somewhere sometime. Our people have been enduring this genocide for ten months and this administration has never once stopped funding it. I hate you all.
This blog has been started to document and share fundraisers vetted by @nabulsi, @el-shab-hussein, and Moh'd Ayesh. We felt it would help to create a space dedicated to this documentation process.
The fundraisers we are vetting will be added to this page as well as included in our google sheet.
We will continue to reblog and share on our personal blogs, and that will not change, but this blog will help better organize these fundraisers.
Please spread this as we'd like to start using this primarily to share newly vetted fundraisers.
Support My Family in Gaza: Help Us Reach Our Goal 🇵🇸🍉
We are in urgent need of your help during these challenging times. Our family is going through difficult times and we are trying to rebuild our lives. Every donation, no matter how small, will help us greatly. If you cannot donate, please reblog and share our GoFundMe link ..
Hi world , it’s Mahmoud
Please read this as if you were in my… Mahmoud AlBalawi needs your support for Help save my family to survive th
Your support brings joy to our hearts and alleviates our stress and anxiety about the uncertain future. Thank you for your support and efforts. 🙏🩵
