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@damianesteves
Slorst in the sorce
pompeii
Una bandera con una culebrota bien sabrosa. No me pisotees bro. • Millions of unique designs by independent artists. Find your thing.
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A remarkable Jacobean re-emergence after 200 years of yellowing varnish Courtesy Philip Mould
PAINT RESTORATION OF MESMERIZING
I saw this on Twitter. He’s using acetone, but a cellulose ether has been added to make it into a gel (probably Klucel—this entire gel mixture is sometimes just called Klucel by restorers, but Klucel is specifically the stuff that makes the gel).
Normally, acetone is too volatile for restoration, but when it’s a gel, it becomes very stable and a) stays on top of the porous surface of the painting, and b) won’t evaporate. So it can eat up the varnish.
It looks scary, but acetone has no effect on oils, and jelly acetone is even less interactive with the surface of the paint or canvas.
Will someone PLEASE clean the mona lisa
For those who are wondering, they cleaned a copy of the Mona Lisa made by one of Da Vinchi’s students, and here’s a side by side comparison:
CLEAN THE FUCKING MONA LISA.
A couple problems with cleaning the Mona Lisa:
The Mona Lisa is a glazed painting.
A Direct Painting is one in which the artist mixes a large amount of paint of the correct value and shade the first time, and applies it to the painting. A Glazed Painting is a painting in which an underpainting is painted, generally in shades of gray or brown, and a allowed to dry, before layers of very thin glaze - a mixture of a tiny bit of pigment and a lot of oil - is applied to the surface. Some artists, such as Leonardo, choose to work this way because it provides an incredible sense of light and illumination (look at how the real Mona Lisa seems to glow).
The Mona Lisa is an incredible work of glazed painting, but that makes it fragile, so fragile that many conservators don’t want to work on it because it’s extremely difficult and a conservation effort go wrong for many many reasons. One of the reasons it could go wrong is that the glazes and the varnish layers are actually a very similar chemical composition, and a conservator could accidentally strip off layers of glaze while removing the varnish.
In fact, in 1809 during its first restoration when they stripped off the varnish, they also stripped off some of the top paint layers, which has caused the painting to look more washed out than Leonardo painted it.
The Mona Lisa also has a frankly ridiculous amount of glaze layers on it, as Leonardo considered it incomplete up until he died, He actually took it with him when he left Italy (fleeing charges of homosexuality), meaning it never even got to the family who had commissioned it, and instead constantly altered it, trying to get it just a touch more perfect every time. That makes it really fragile, with countless layers of very thin paint, many of which have cracked, warped, flaked, or discolored. It’s not just the top layer, its layers and layers of glazing throughout the painting that have slowly discolored or been damaged over time.
Speaking of damage, look at the cracking. That’s called craquelure; it happens with many painting’s (even ones that aren’t painted with this technique) because the paint shrinks as it dries, or the surface it’s painted on warps. Notice that the other painting has very little of it, even though it’s almost the same age.
The reason the Mona Lisa has so much craquelure is because Leonardo was highly experimental, almost to the point of it being his biggest flaw. There were established painting techniques, and then there were Leonardo’s painting techniques. The established painting techniques were created in order to insure longevity and quality, but Leonardo didn’t stick to any of them. This has made his work a ticking time bomb of deterioration.
Don’t believe me, check it out:
This is how most people think The Last Supper looks
But this is actually a copy done by Andrea Solari in 1520.
The actual Last Supper looks like this:
The Last Supper has been painstakingly and teadiously restored, with conservators sometimes working on sections as small as 4 cm a day. To get to it you’ve got to walk through a series of airlocks (AIRLOCKS!?!?!) and they only allow 15 people at a time because the moisture from your breath and your skin particles will damage it. Despite all of the precautions and restoration, it still looks like that.
This is because Leonardo painted the last supper using highly experimental methods. He didn’t use the traditional wet-into-wet method that fresco painters used, and insead painted onto the dry plaster on the wall, meaning the paint did not chemically adhere. Before he even died the painting had already begun to flake. It’s a miracle it’s still there at all.
They’ve done what restoration they can on The Last Supper because the painting will absolutely disappear if they don’t. The Mona Lisa, which is delicate, but much more stable, doesn’t need the same kind of attention. And, like many of his works, is just too delicate to touch, and the risk of doing irreparable damage to it is far too high. The Mona Lisa is insured for something like 800 million dollars, and that’s a lot of money to be ruined by one wrong brush stroke. (fun fact: the most expensive painting ever sold was also a Leonardo, the Salvator Mundi, and it went for 450 million dollars.)
Furthermore, there are probably only 20 or so authenticated Leonardo paintings in the whole world. If you look through the list, most of them aren’t even fully done by him, are disputed, or aren’t even finished. It’s simply too difficult and too risky to restore the Mona Lisa, one of Leonardo’s only finished and mostly intact works, when there’s hardly any more of his paintings to fall back on.
Now the painting you see in the video above is 200 years old, not 600 years old, and I assure you, the conservators decided the risk to restore it was minimal (after extensive research, paint testing, x-raying, gamma radiation, etc.) and that the work they were doing was worth the risk based on the painting’s value.
Conservators make the decision all the time about how much they can do for a painting, because really, they have the ability to completely strip a painting of all varnish and glazes and just repaint the whole thing (which happens to a lot of badly damaged paintings, especially when there’s no way to save them - one of the very small museums in my area recently deaccessioned a Monet because it was barely original, and no one wants to look at a Monet that’s only 20% Monet’s work) - but doing that to the Mona Lisa, removing the artist’s hand from the most famous piece of artwork in history? Hell No.
(also, I’m not a conservator but I’ll be applying to a conservation grad program sometime next year, so sorry if any of my info is at all inaccurate)
I found this really interesting, thanks for sharing.
Venom vs. Capcom digital painting, 2021
Fat Night’s Live for Each Other has been my go-to album whenever I hop in the car for the past 2 months or so. In that sense I suppose it’s not really my new jam, but it is still my current jam!
If you don’t like this band, something is probably wrong with your internal music system and you should get it checked asap.
…a tool that brings attention and understanding to how color contrast can affect different people with visual impairments.
I don’t envy anyone that animate waves - I’ll tell you that much. Regardless, surf is up and body shaming is down
Pixel Art Shmup Ships
Gradius
R-Type
Axelay
Radiant Silvergun
Raiden
Starfox
Twinbee
Darius
Xevious
Hellfire
Ikaruga
Thunderforce
Pixel Artist: vierbit Source: twitter.com/vierbit
Very cool
7 Pixel Art Floor Plans from Classic 80’s Films
Ad agency NeoMam that gaves us the wonderful pixel landscapes of Great Britain is back with a new set of illustrations. This time the artist Aluisio Cervelle Santos a.k.a. @zsalad recreated floor plans from iconic 80s movies and you can read more about the references over on Angie’s List (yes, it’s another one of those marketing content articles, but somebody gets paid to draw cool isometric fan art for it so I’m not complaining).
The Worrowing Wilderness Hut, located in the hinterland of Jervis Bay, Australia
Tom Robertson / @worrowing
I want to go to there
The Casa do Penedo at an elevation of 2,600ft, in northern Portugal’s Fafe Mountains
Built in the 1970s as a holiday home with 4 granite boulders supporting it at each corner.
A mini #Mini meetup with @mcredfuge #F60 #F54
There was a time, back in the 1990s, when a PDA, or Personal Digital Assistant, was the height of mobile computing sophistication. These little hand-held touch-screen devices had no Internet connec…
*slow clap*
Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds is a roguelike
I recently had one of those in-the-shower epiphanies and noticed that many of the game mechanics that make Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds such an innovative shooter are also found in roguelikes! PUBG is an online, multiplayer, competitive roguelike.
So how is it a roguelike? Well, the first element is has permadeath. Like most roguelikes, there is no respawning in PUBG. Once you die, you’re out of the game. Go back to the lobby or watch for a bit if you like. The second roguelike mechanic is the randomization / procedural generation of the map. Even though the map is fixed in its layout, the location of weapons, items, vehicles, and equipment changes in every game. While the player spawn location isn’t random, there is strategy to choosing where you want to parachute down onto. The center point of the map is unknown to the player as they drop, so it is effective in dispersing players around the map even though it’s not necessarily random. Now, just these two factors don’t necessarily make a game a roguelike, but they influence the game in much deeper ways that differentiate it from other shooters.
Changing the win state through permadeath
In traditional multiplayer shooters (Overwatch, CS:GO, Call of Duty, and pals), the players are split into two teams, which creates a binary game outcome: win or lose. In the best case scenario of a game with excellent skill-based matchmaking, you will end up a 50% win/lose rate. Half the time, you will be trying your damnedest and still end up with a loss (“I can only carry so hard” you think to yourself as you take comfort in a good kill/death ratio). After slogging through an entire match, ending up as a loser is not very rewarding, a feeling made worse when bad matchmaking results in one-sided matches.
PUBG turns this on its head by using the roguelike permadeath mechanic which exchanges the traditional binary game outcome for a full spectrum of rankings that comes in the form of a 100-player battle royale. When a player (or squad) dies, they are eliminated from the game and shown where they placed on the ranking. Now, instead of playing an entire match to win or lose, PUBG games have more in common with a run in a roguelike where you play to see how far you can get.
One of the more interesting and player-friendly parts of this mechanic is that your ranking is directly proportional to how long you played the match. If you get a very low ranking, that means you died at the start of the match, so your time investment for failure is minimal, leading to low frustration. Conversely, a better ranking means you’ve invested more time and play into that match, making it feel even more rewarding when you do succeed. Winning a game is no longer something that’s expected to happen 50% of the time; it’s now a rare event that is savored. It is the treat at the end of a series of successful encounters and close calls, with each rank between first and last place providing the corresponding amount of reward for skill and time investment.
Character progression versus player progression
A common mechanic in modern online shooters popularized by the Call of Duty series is how character progression persists across matches. Playing games earns experience points which unlock better gear and perks over time, making characters more lethal and have better survivability. This a progression system that empowers veteran players and handicaps new players, artificially widening the skill gap between them. Even if the gear being unlocked is properly balanced, there is still a clear advantage in being able choose gear that best favors a given map or playstyle. The lack of persistent character progression in PUBG means that veteran players’ advantage is limited to their actual skill and experience with the game. PUBG’s roguelike character progression is restricted to what gear you can find throughout the course of a match, resetting you back to the default unarmed and unarmored state at the beginning of the next match.
Because of the non-persistent character progression, success in PUBG is driven by player progression. Procedurally generating weapons and equipment in each match promotes success through mastery of the game’s mechanics and experience with the variety of gear available. A player will improve over time not because they are granted access to better equipment, but because they are experienced enough to know when and how to use the equipment they find. Additionally, this system is self-reinforcing. Because of the randomization, players aren’t allowed to stagnate with a few favorite weapons. Instead they are forced to use weapons they are unfamiliar with, learning how to succeed with them in the process.
Older shooters without the modern progression systems also utilized player skill progression over unlock systems by having static weapon spawns as part of the level design (like the Halo series). This created a distinct, predictable advantage for experienced players that memorized powerful weapon spawns and added elements of resource control strategy to the games. Thus, another twist that emerges from PUBG’s map and equipment randomization is that it creates surprise, drama, and excitement: Finding some great gear and capitalizing on it could lead you to a great run in a match. Similarly, not finding any good gear and succeeding anyway feels wonderful (”I can’t believe I took out four people with just a frying pan”). PUBG’s systems require and reward situational awareness and skillful improvisation. The latter of which is the catalyst for many of the great moments and stories that emerge, and a hallmark of roguelike gameplay.
Shenzhen I/O is fun and authentic.
This game is very much an electronics/computer engineering simulator, and I’m fascinated by it. Let’s get started with a quick breakdown from Wikipedia:
Shenzhen I/O is a puzzle video game set in the near future in which players assume the role of an electronics engineer who has emigrated to Shenzhen, China to work for fictional technology company Shenzhen Longteng Electronics. The player is tasked with creating products for clients, which involves constructing circuits and then writing code to run them. The programming language used in the game is similar to assembly language and the circuit elements resemble simplified versions of real-world electronics.
And a video:
Now that you have the gist of it, here’s some of the things that make this game so interesting, fun, and honestly educational from the engineering point of view.
This game is immersive: The user interface is your actually your in-game engineering workstation It’s complete with corporate email client (which delivers the game’s narrative) and CAD software where the actual puzzles take place.
You solve design problems by choosing parts from your inventory- microcontrollers, RAM, ROM, logic gates, etc, then wiring them up and programming your microcontrollers. You test your solutions by running simulations and can even debug with break points. The game has its own fully-featured assembly language used to program the microcontrollers.
The game’s tutorial and reference information is delivered in a PDF which contains the assembly language’s details, datasheets on parts, and explanations on I/O and bus communication. It even brings instructions for printing it out and setting up a binder with all your documents and notes. This brings the game into the real world and provides so much immersion.
Each “level” in the game is a design task, and you’re scored based on the production cost of your parts, power consumption of your design, and how many lines of code it took to solve the problem. Mapping engineering constraints to the game’s scoring system is genius.
I feel like this game should be required material for electronics/computer engineering students. It would make for a great introduction to the field and is probably a good indicator of whether or not you’ll enjoy it. The game distills engineering work down to its most engaging, rewarding, and fun aspect: creative problem-solving.
Lastly, here’s some siiiick shots of the resulting binder I prepared for the game: