art and gamedev

blog to post my art and occasional gamedev updates Main: toucansafari

[oldweb-sailormoon]

[fontseeker]

Matrix Tall (1992) [Fonts In Use]

[digitalkiddo]

If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.

[pywurm-fr]

All of the elemental lair scenes for Flight Rising, together! This was a hell of a project, and you can really see where I learned as I went. There's a lot I'd go back and change if I could still but overall I'm super happy with these and so glad to get the opportunity

[tofupixel]

I've been using aseprite for several years now, but I'm curious about some of the add-ons you have installed, based on the names. I work with indexed palettes, and I still don't have a good process for recoloring sprites without swapping/editing the palette itself. Would any of the add-ons you're using help with that situation?

I'm not sure what exactly your workflow is, but yes I think it would be helpful, that one in particular is by Carbs, here is a video on how it works!

I really recommend checking out his stuff, he made a couple for me specifically just to fix issues I had in my workflow. He has saved me hundreds of hours of time on a couple of my projects

[arunyi]

Pixel Badges from my shop! 🍀

[pinnedwings]

one of the most difficult things about deciding you want to write a fictional doctor (of the non-who variety) is writing actual medical scenes. we all know that medical dramas are notoriously cliched, and i for one fully understand how unimportant factual accuracy can be to the emotional importance of a scene. sometimes you don’t have to get it write for your story to work. i have a disclaimer on my blog that i myself am just a layman, but i like to at least know what i’m writing about! in the interest of being as accurate as i can, i would like to spread that love around. here’s a list of medical fiction/fantasy writing resources i’ve found!

surgeonsblog

article i found this from^ (w/even more resources)

redwoods medical edge

^article where i found that

this article is short/basic/doesn’t link anywhere else, but i found it very helpful anyway

supposed to be good but to me, seemed difficult to navigate. (dp lyle)

this on the otherhand, is the jackpot (novelmalpractice)

tumblr blog centered around this topic

this is more about the common pitfalls/anachronisms of medical fiction but still helpful

writing medical scenes: useful links by paul anthony shortt

the last one im going to include is an article by a doctor about common mistakes in popular medical shows, i liked this one

tagging who liked the interest check on this @hesjustcarter @prodigiumamare @frankengeeks

[harimoheji]

Final Fantasy IV Prestory Comics

Artist: Takehiko Itō

[themarchingbeetle]

[luchsyy]

Been practising my BG skills lately! process pics under the cut

[rhymewithrachel]

closeups of the guys

[linghxr]

A Closer Look at Chinese Names

This post has been a long time coming. In spring 2020, I posted two of the most popular posts on this blog:

Reading Chinese Names: Female Names

Reading Chinese Names: Male Names

More recently I have wanted to revisit the idea behind those posts but with a different, more in-depth approach. I also made some decisions while compiling data for those posts that I now regret. So in late summer 2021, I set out to completely redo my data collection with the eventual goal of creating this very post.

About the Data

I will include more information about my data collection process at the end of this post for those interested.

I gathered 3,277 names (1602 male, 1675 female) from idol shows and groups. In the grand scheme of things, this is not a lot of names at all. But I think it’s enough that we can explore names, observe some generalities, and have fun! These names belong to individuals roughly 15-30 years old. Most names belong to individuals from Mainland China, but there are some Hong Konger and Taiwanese names as well.

Some of the name sources include:

偶像练习生/青春有你

创造101/创造营

明日之子

以团之名/少年之名

SNH48

快乐女声/快乐男声

菱格世代DD52

Various groups like 时代少年 and SING女团

I also wanted to note something important: the definitions I am using (via MDBG) are only the surface. For example, a name containing a character meaning jade might also have implications of beauty and virtue. So the meaning is more than just “jade.” However, it just isn’t practical to go into all the nitty gritty here. I encourage you to seek out more resources if you are interested.

Some Thanks

Thanks so much to @liu-anhuaming, @meichenxi, and my friend Tiffany for their help and advice during the process of creating this post! 非常感谢你们，你们是最棒的！

Given Names (Overall)

First let’s look at the most common characters for ALL the given names in the dataset. There were 1093 total unique characters across all the given names. I’m going to include more characters (almost rounding out the top 100) at the bottom of this post for those interested. There is also some information broken down by gender below.

Top Given Name Characters

宇 yǔ - room, universe / 87

子 zǐ - son, child, seed, egg, small thing, 1st earthly branch, midnight, 11th solar month, year of the Rat, fourth of five orders of nobility, ancient Chinese compass point / 82

佳 jiā - beautiful, fine, good / 68

雨 yǔ - rain / 63

嘉 jiā - excellent, auspicious, to praise, to commend / 59

文 wén - language, culture, writing, formal, literary, gentle / 58

欣 xīn - happy / 55

一 yī - one, 1, single, a (article), as soon as, entire, whole, all, throughout / 51

俊 jùn - smart, eminent, handsome, talented / 51

思 sī - to think, to consider / 49

杰 jié - hero, heroic, outstanding person, prominent, distinguished / 49

豪 háo - grand, heroic / 48

怡 yí - harmony, pleased / 45

天 tiān - day, sky, heaven / 44

泽 zé - pool, pond, (of metals etc) luster, favor or beneficence, damp, moist / 43

琪 qí - fine jade / 40

婷 tíng - graceful / 39

鑫 xīn - prosperity / 38

晓 xiǎo - dawn, daybreak, to know, to let sb know, to make explicit / 35

浩 hào - grand, vast (water) / 35

晨 chén - morning, dawn, daybreak / 34

恩 ēn - favor, grace, kindness / 33

博 bó - extensive, ample, rich, obtain, aim, to win, to get, plentiful / 32

慧 huì - intelligent / 32

明 míng - bright, clear, to understand, wise / 32

轩 xuān - pavilion with a view, high, tall / 32

辰 chén - 5th earthly branch, 3rd solar month, year of the Dragon, ancient Chinese compass point / 32

Top Given Name Characters (Female)

佳 jiā - beautiful, fine, good / 56

雨 yǔ - rain / 50

欣 xīn - happy / 49

怡 yí - harmony, pleased / 44

婷 tíng - graceful / 39

嘉 jiā - excellent, auspicious, to praise, to commend / 37

琪 qí - fine jade / 35

思 sī - to think, to consider / 33

慧 huì - intelligent / 31

梦 mèng - dream, to dream / 30

Top Given Name Characters (Male)

宇 yǔ - room, universe / 68

子 zǐ - son, child, seed, egg, small thing, 1st earthly branch, midnight, 11th solar month, year of the Rat, fourth of five orders of nobility, ancient Chinese compass point / 55

豪 háo - grand, heroic / 48

杰 jié - hero, heroic, outstanding person, prominent, distinguished / 47

俊 jùn - smart, eminent, handsome, talented / 45

泽 zé - pool, pond, (of metals etc) luster, favor or beneficence, damp, moist / 38

浩 hào - grand, vast (water) / 35

一 yī - one, 1, single, a (article), as soon as, entire, whole, all, throughout / 34

文 wén - language, culture, writing, formal, literary, gentle / 32

明 míng - bright, clear, to understand, wise / 27

Keep reading

[fashion-runways]

ALON LIVINE Couture 2026 if you want to support this blog consider donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways

[fontseeker]

Hello again! Do you mind helping me identify the fonts used here? Thanks in advance!

Darumadrop One (2019), which you can download from Google Fonts

Yamabiko B (やまびこ B, 2004?)

[anim-ttrpgs]

"accessibility" needs to stop meaning "low-engagement"

[anim-ttrpgs]

"we are making our TTRPG more accessible!"

"oh, did you make the font bigger and more legible?"

"no we're just doing the next edition in D&D5e"

"we're making our video game more accessible!"

"oh did you add an option to remap the controls?"

"no we just added an option to remove combat so the game is just a bunch of cutscenes"

[beyond-a-name]

"we made it accessible!"

"which part? what did you make accessible?"

"why, not playing the game at all of course! games are much better when they don't have any pesky game in them, especially for the disabled, who typically access the game parts even less."

[anim-ttrpgs]

To further elaborate (very long)

it is a very popular trend right now to add, like, features that skip the engagement with an interactive work of art, such as skipping combat or making combat impossible to lose in a combat-focused video game, or in the scene of TTRPGs making your TTRPG completely dumbed down or just hastily and mindlessly making it a D&D5e hack "because people already know how to play D&D5e and I want it to be accessible" instead of expecting people to actually read and learn and engage with a set of specific rules, and call all of that "accessibility" instead of adding "accessibility" features that would actually help disabled people access the "meat" of whatever the interactive art is.

If it's a combat-focused video game, some examples would be helping them engage with the full depth of the combat by allowing the controls to be fully remapped to something easier for their hands(or lack of hands), or the option to disable flashing lights or reduce the intensity muzzle flashes on the guns or something.

I think I have come up with a good example to illustrate this point. Let's say there is an FPS where you shoot aliens. Pretend it's, like, Halo but not specifically Halo.

And let’s say there’s a group of disabled gamers who are excited for this video game.

Missing Finger Guy, Deaf Guy, Colorblind Guy, and Poor Eyesight Guy.

Missing Finger Guy is missing at least one finger that corresponds to the Dodge button, he can’t reliably press it especially on short notice when aliens are coming at his character. So, he can’t really play the game because dodging is required to beat the levels. The game devs provide an “acccessibility” easy mode that turns off combat or makes the enemies do so little damage that he never needs to use the Dodge button. So, Missing Finger Guy can play the game now, right? Wrong. Dodging enemies *is* the game, and he still never gets to play with the Dodge button, or engage with any of the other elements of the game that are watered down by making enemy attacks not matter. To make the fun gameplay of dodging enemies accessible to this player, the answer is to allow remapping the Dodge action to a button that he can reach.

Deaf Guy

The game expects the player to rely on audio cues to know when enemies are sneaking up behind them or when a grenade lands at their feet or when an enemy is about to do a specific attack. Obviously the deaf player can’t hear these and can’t play the game because he’ll just die all the time to attacks which are literally impossible for him to predict. Again, this could be “fixed” by a mode that makes it so it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t hear a grenade land at his character’s feet by removing the consequence of death for failing to notice the grenade, or you could add the option to turn on subtitles for both story dialogue and sound effects like “[grenade beep]” and “[screatchure scream].” One of these allows the deaf gamer to play on roughly the same playing field as other players and react to threats the same way that hearing people can do that he can engage with the meat of the game, and the other doesn’t.

Colorblind Guy

The video game features enemies that are identifiable by their red and blue armor. Red aliens throw red grenades that you can catch and throw back, and blue aliens throw blue grenades that explode by proximity and you just have to fully avoid. Obviously, a colorblind player cannot reliably tell these apart, and would either have to try to throw back grenades at random and hope for the best, or just avoid all grenades to be safe. You could “fix” this by removing the consequence of death for getting exploded by a grenade, or you could fix it by adding a togglable colorblindness mode that switches the color distinction to something visible or adds some other distinctive feature besides color to one of those grenade types. One of these allows the colorblind player to engage with the intended gameplay of the game by taking informed risks by trying to throw back certain grenades, and one of them doesn’t, making it just not matter what decision he makes.

Poor Eyesight Guy

You get the formula by now. The *actually* accessible feature would be allowing him to adjust the text to be more readable instead of making it not matter if he can read the directions that tell him how to get through the minefield safety by removing the consequences for stepping on a mine.

A mode that simply removes consequences for failing to engage with and react appropriately to the threats the game presents is, at best, appealing only to people who don’t actually *like* the gameplay in the first place, while still shutting out the people who *want* to engage with the full depth of the gameplay but can’t because of some disability that prevents them from doing so as intended.

Because the gameplay isnt just seeing the cutscenes and getting a “level cleared” achievement, it is dodging the enemies, throwing back the grenades, listening for the screatchure screams, etc..

If there is an enemy who is super tough from the front and will kill you if you can’t get around behind him, you don’t make the game more “accessible” by making him so weak from the front that it doesn’t matter where you shoot him, or making his attacks so weak that you can shrug them off long enough to whittle him down from the front, youve actually removed this enemy from the game by making him just like the common enemies that can be shot from the front. You have actually made the element of the gameplay provided by this enemy inaccessible by doing this, because the quick thinking and tactical usage of the game’s features required to get behind him *is* the gameplay.

It’s much easier to explain this via video games but it goes for tabletop games as well. A TTRPG is more truly accessible for having big easy-to-read font and clear explanations so that players that want to engage with that game’s rules can do so even if they have reading difficulties, than if it just went “eh it doesn’t matter if you read the rules or not.”

[osterby]

Difficulty levels are not disability accomodations. OP explains that very well through their examples here.

I like difficulty levels, sometimes I don't enjoy a specific aspect of gameplay or I just want to blast through from cutscene to cutscene, and being able to toggle a zero-consequences baby mode is a nice option to have.

But most of the time I want to play the game, and to do that I need to remap half the controls. Let me remap them, don't treat me like I'm incapable of playing video games or like I don't deserve rewarding and engaging gameplay just because I can't move the mouse as precisely as the other guy.

[osterby]

It's like, you make a museum accesible by putting in ramps and elevators, not by telling wheelchair users that the art on the upper floors isn't all that great and they shouldn't want to see it in the first place.

[overfedvenison]

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, and most people who follow me are very much of this opinion. But like... So much accessibility talk is not actually about letting people engage with your game who otherwise couldn't due to a disability or physical limitation. Rather, it's an idea of accessibility in the way a CEO would want a movie to be more accessible to a wider audience. As in like, "This movie's audience is too niche and it's ideas are too lofty, make it more accessible." Both of these are "accessibility" in a sense, but those are two VERY different definitions of the word, you know what I'm saying? Ideally, I'd like art which is naturally inaccessible through it's themes and difficulty and ideas to nonetheless be something people who have physical limitations (Or... Well, technological limitations, economic limitations, whatever else) can experience

[anim-ttrpgs]

Yes, this is a term that is being co-opted to prioritize corporate profits by appealing to a "wider audience" which includes people who don't actually like the product, while leaving disabled people shut out and, in many cases, calling them ableist for saying "an invincibility mode is not an accessibility setting, instead give me tools that will let me play the game without an invincibility mode the way everyone else who likes the gameplay can."

[anim-ttrpgs]

People in the tags are already going "hello i am the strawman from your post! I bought a game without realizing there was combat in it and i don't like combat so invincibility mode was an accessibility setting to me because it let me avoid the game i don't like!"

[queerasaurus-rexx]

ACTUAL ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES IN GAMES:

Option to hold or toggle buttons for running

Quick Time Events on a toggle, or not involving quick, successive button presses (just one press)

Ability to change the colour, font and size of subtitles!

Ability to re-map buttons

ABILITY TO USE A NONSTANDARD CONTROLLER

Ability to change brightness, colour saturation, lighting intensity and filtering

ABILITY TO TURN OFF FLASHING LIGHTS OH MY FUCKING GOD

Volume control that lets you turn up the dialogue and atmospheric sound but turn the music down

Ability to turn off camera shake and blur

And you might ask 'well how is x an accessibility feature'

But consider:

People who have issues with their hands (muscle weakness, missing fingers, impaired reflexes)

Folks who are hard of hearing or have other hearing issues

Epileptics and other folks with light-sensitive seizures

[noveltytwist-deactivated2026052]

Sanyo MGR78 Spectra SC-5A Crown SZ-16 Street Beat 894

[tofupixel]

thinking about making another tut soon

lmk if theres anything you struggle with or want help with !!!

heres one i remembered from 2022 (!!!) and also how i use it in action

AND ALSO you can download and use the palette for free here :-3

[art-res]

 🛑 Stop Working for Exposure (Mathematically)

I'm an artist and medical student, and I use art to help me pay some bills.

I built a free, helpful tool because to help prevent other talented creatives from undercharging, as I really see this a lot online.

It's a calculator with a built in reality check

Input your survival costs and expenses

True billable hours

Get the rate you actually need to charge to hit a 20% (or whatever you choose) profit margin.

It generates the rate, a template negotiation email + final invoice.

Plan to keep this tool free, ad-free, and open to everyone.

🔗 Check your math: fairpaycalc.artres.xyz

If the "Thriving Rate" calculation empowers you to double your quote on your next job, please consider hitting the "Buy me a coffee"button. It keeps the server running and the code flowing <3

AL is creating web apps, art resources, and illustrations

I am an artist and medical student and creator of Art-Res, a blog where I write and curate art resources. Hopefully you find art that bring

[art-res]

Thank you for all who tried/spread awareness of the tool and also to people who tipped, truly touched by the support and it means the world! <3