Cosmic Funnies
styofa doing anything
No title available
No title available
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
@theartofmadeline
One Nice Bug Per Day
🪼
AnasAbdin
todays bird
Kiana Khansmith
if i look back, i am lost
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
tannertan36
occasionally subtle
Peter Solarz
Love Begins
Misplaced Lens Cap
tumblr dot com
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
seen from United States
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@doomy-fr
Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd vs Jaehee
Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd
Jaehee
@foolishprince’s Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd
@eiaflightrising's Jaehee
Please. Please look at him he's so sad and sopping wet. He needs your love and attention or he is going to pass away
i'm surprised at the amount of song fandergs submitted, and also there was no actual pokemon (just the people)
Alisaie vs Lockwood
Alisae
Lockwood
Doomy-FR’s Alisaie
@geodebright-fr’s Lockwood
Okay now I can add propaganda.
Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV? With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn, the award-winning Stormblood AND the PEAK expansion Shadowbringer up to level 80 for free with no restrictions on playtime! Where you, yes you can meet one of the best characters of all time, one Alisaie Leveilluer?
Okay jokes about the FFXIV copy pasta aside, she and her twin brother are some of my most beloved characters. I ultimately submitted her because in general the Fandom loves her more but I have a softer spot for her brother.
Which here he is aren't they cool and matching.
Alisaie is fantastically written character and honestly I'd recommend the game on the twins alone. They give me parental aggression. They will give you parental aggression. Protect them at all costs.
Alisaie vs Lockwood
Alisae
Lockwood
Doomy-FR’s Alisaie
@geodebright-fr’s Lockwood
Could be better: side-by-side
how it is on site vs mock-ups for colored-in icons.
and Also! Mock-up the big dragon tooltip-- I attempted to make it smaller/more condensed. It could theoretically be better than this but I tried
Personally: if you've got icons for your ui use them. Use them. Use them and make sure that if it's necessary, the icons themselves say what they are for screenreaders.
Did go ahead and make a Pawborough account since I was curious. Very fun making kitties at least! I wanted to see the hubub and what all was being criticized first hand since I've only passively been watching the game's development. See how long I can stick around since I usually do fall off pet sims nowadays. I only still sporadically play FR and Neopets at this point, lol. Anways my founders, naturally, are based on some of my most imporant personal OCs, lol. I have dragons of them too.
Pawborough Open Beta Review: Literally What Is Going On And What Are They Thinking
This is going to be strongly worded thoughts on PawBorough's Pelts system (the equivalent of custom skins/accents here on Flight Rising).
So I joined the Pawborough open beta test (servers opened about an hour ago), the cat-themed petsite that ran an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2022. It is one of the latest in the many, many petsites that have tried in recent years to offer an alternative to the Flight Rising-esque petsite demographic (think Dappervolk, Lorwolf, etc).
It's been interesting so far: forums use markdown which means that you if you want to show images you have to upload images directly to the Pawborough server. Which, just why? That cannot be scalable, but I don't know if they're thinking about scale or if that's just temporary? (For the sake of their own budget I hope it's jank left over from alpha.)
Anyway, you're not here for that, you're here to hear my take on the Custom Pelt system. I'm an artist, of course I want to see their take on custom content. My thoughts? It's sort of like if the worst bits of Lioden's custom decor, Flight Rising's sometimes arbitrary queue, and Furvilla's paintie systems were rolled into one giant heap of 'no, seriously, were you thinking about scalability here?'
PART I - Style & Limitations Guide
I don't know if users can view the guides without an account, but in case you can't, I'll run through just some of the chief concerns I have quickly. Let's have this series of images in their Style Guide speak for themselves:
That's right! No pure cel shading! No shading that's too 'soft!' What's that? You're using highlights on your custom Pelt? Nope, that's not allowed. Don't even think about using texture or painterly shading in your custom design. You think I'm playing around?
Get ready to get real familiar with the airbrush tool, buddy. What's next, you need to make sure that the light sources in your drawing is completely consistent with the light sources on the cat? Oh, wait:
If you're adding fur texture or markings onto cat, it has to follow the fur lines on the bases. Let's check out a few other bangers from their style guide. Can you tell the critical rule-breaking difference between these two?
That's right, line weight and softness must match the cat’s lineart, and direct from the guide: "The brushes’ “stamp” may not have any strong aliasing, nor texturing." So it's default G-pen and airbrush only from here on out? Got it.
Oh, there's an exception though.
We try to avoid completely smooth, digital gradients when possible. We either use [Grainy Airbrush], or [Blotchy Smudge] to give a gradient a bit of texture. See the brush packs for reference.
You have to use an airbrush, but be careful! Your airbrush can't be too smooth or digital, whatever that means. Uhhh, got it. So texture brushes are permitted and even necessary here?
It's not over yet: You're not allowed to repose any of the cat's limbs or put human features on them: (helllooooo, Furvilla painties!)
You can't use any existing PawBorough content in your Pelt design. So if there's a Pawborough-distinct animal/food item that isn't an existing accessory item, are you allowed to draw an animal companion? Or no?
PART II - What Kind of Culture Are We Creating Here
Pelts are PawBorough’s primary source of income, and participation in Pelt creation and trading by users helps to upkeep and support the game!
If I wanted custom content to be my primary source of income, I would attempt to make it as easy and welcoming as possible for artists to participate in the custom system. That's not what they've chosen to do here with their immediate and challenging style and limitations guide. Now, in all fairness they've put this up top:
But why are you monitoring for all of these in the first place?
If you play Flight Rising and you're following this blog, you'll know I've been making custom skins on there for about 5 years now. Flight Rising has far less stringent style limitations than this, two skin moderators dealing with custom content queue, and it still takes a week or more sometimes to get the first round of approvals/rejections on a skin approved. Most people who try making skins just stop here because it's discouraging. I've played Lioden which has a similar style limitation on its custom items too, and that's even more discouraging.
I'm not just speaking on player culture. I hope PawBorough will have one superhuman moderator for the queue that has 24 hrs a day to breathe down the neck of the custom content queue, because imagine getting your pelt denied for having shading that's too soft, you go and fix that the best you can, and then when you resubmit again now your lines aren't matching the 'site style'.
Humans have to check all that and make their own judgements on it, by the way! These guidelines all have enough 'artistic' wiggle room that it's completely unsustainable for if they want PawBorough to get huge. Why even make your own moderator's jobs harder, make it harder on the people you're supposedly relying on to be your primary income source, make it harder and feel worse for new artists to get started? And why even specify things like a furmap and using a textured airbrush if you also want to say 'but it's totally okay!! we'll be understanding and reasonable!!'
What is the point here? To farm out your own site content to users and have them pay you for it?
Also, there's this pose discount thing that feels like it's taken straight from the Flight Rising blueprint playbook, except if you think about it for more than a few seconds, you'll realize this will lead to people burning out and never completing pelt designs because you need to complete and upload all their poses at once for the best discount and most 'efficient' use of the premium currency.
And, by the way? PawBorough does not enforce and will not care if other people start closely copying your custom designs. Cool and awesome, right?
PART III - Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day, it's their site and they can do what they want with it. If they don't want to have custom content that doesn't match their vision of the site style on their site, that's ok! But I just don't expect this Pelt system to work in a healthy or sustainable way for players OR staff the way it is now.
I hope I'm wrong, and the guidelines aren't going to shoot everyone in the foot as much as I fear. But for now, I'm giving PawBorough and its custom content system a hard, hard pass.
Hi. August went sleeping but he told me to add something else that was missed in this post :P
For those that don't know, I've been playing FR since its literal release and I've been drawing skins for it for over 10 years. Some of these years drawing skin coms on FR was the biggest part of my income. (Feel free to continue commissioning me, I will always love drawing those). Looking at Pawboroughs guides I can't shake off the feeling that they are trying to cynically monetize usermade content (which comes for free to them!) after seeing the massive success skins on FR have, by turning their fanartists into site artists without offering them any compensation for their work but "pet site clout". One of the screencaps August posted said that they intend the pelt system to be their main income source for the website anyway.
This sucks. First of all, I'm speaking more English than German in my daily life since I was a teen and I still have no idea what the first part of this screenshot means. Now imagine being an ESL speaker, maybe a teen, wanting to submit art to a petsite you like and having it denied because your English isn't fluent and you don't know what a preposition is lmao. Second, pelt names must be unique, so the first person to ever use a phrase will have claimed it. You drew angel wings and want to call it "Angel Wings"? User ABC already submitted Angel Wings 4 years ago, get ready for Lovely Angel Wings. Fuck, that's already taken too. Lovely Marvelous Beautiful Angel Wings.
Here's a little peak into some of my latest releases on FR. Guess how many have acceptable names for Pawborough. I'm guessing none.
Asking for AP STYLEBOOK TITLECASE is CRAZY. Are ESL artists using Google Translate to play your game going to know what an infinitive means??
This is what kills me, because the more I look at these 'guidelines' and requirements the more I realize they're asking for deliverables on the same level as professional projects. It's unfortunate because their Pelt system is actually pretty cool, but I've worked on actual published books with less stringent file requirements.
I am 90% certain now that the custom Pelt guidelines are their expectations and guidelines for their paid official artist's deliverables on site apparel and decor, edited to apply to users.
I slept on it and I don't think any of this is malicious. Given what I've seen of the site's infrastructure so far, I think PawBorough is just a) shortsighted b) from a team without any petsite dev experience. The structure this site has with the gameplay mechanics tacked on makes me think this is conceptually a Warrior cats OC RP hosting site that never should have become a monetized petsite.
Also, yeah, PawBorough knows that artists will make custom Pelts for their site anyway because it's the best way to make currency on the site and the naming system encourages namecamping.
Really puts a bad taste in my mouth, honestly. Even Lioden, which has a similarly stringent set of custom decor style guidelines, made their custom decor system for user customization first and foremost. I don't like that they're asking for deliverable-quality assets from users that users need to pay for the privilege of submitting and owning.
ALSO, THIS IS AN ASIDE, BUT 2-3 WEEK APPROVAL TIME.
Queue is bad enough on Flight Rising and the only requirement there is lines and shadows are visible, can you imagine drawing the same image for 4 different cat poses, waiting 2-3 weeks for approval, and then it comes back rejected with 'lol your lines are too thick try again'???
Fandragon Tournament
Rules:
This is a Flight Rising blog
You may only submit 1 dragon, and it has to be your own dragon
No attacking other contestants. Banter and jokes are fine, but genuine hatred isn't
No bribing others with irl currency, or fr items/currency
Voting is based on personal preference, not who's dragon is most accurate, you don't have to get the reference to vote for a dragon :]
Submit your dragon via asks or submissions
What counts as Fandragon?
for the sake of the tournament I'm going to put some ground rules for which dragons count as fandragons
DO: -Characters from movies, shows, games, comics, etc
-Dragons based on albums/specific songs
-Mascots, Weird Advertisements, Memes, etc
DON'T:
-Dragons based on irl people
-Dragonsonas
-Pet tributes
-Pride Flag dragons (I'll probably do a pride tournament in well... pride month)
-OCs
Submission Form under cut
Burn vs Violence vs Sophie
Burn
Violence
Sophie
@mangos-neat-dragons’s Burn
@kc-rising’s Violence
@doomy-fr’s Sophie
Thank you to everyone who's been voting for Violence! She loves and appreciates each one of you and is definitely not setting anyone's houses on fire as a threat <3
You should vote for her of your own free will. I say this as someone who most certainly is NOT being dangled over an active volcano!
Vote for Violence, only you can prevent arson!
She has such worthy opponents, Burn and Sophie are beautiful dragons who as far as I can tell are normal and well-adjusted
I can only imagine what must be going through their minds being paired with someone like Violence
I've been absolutely drowning at work so I didn't even see this round went up until now. Let alone my Sophie made it this far!
This is incredible art and if this is where Sophie finally loses it was for a worthy opponent.
Ramdel vs Sophie
Ramdel
Sophie
@finniigan-fr’s Ramdel
@doomy-fr’s Sophie
I usually don’t try things like bonding with familiars on my work internet because I’m not allowed to put adblock and fr pages took an annoying amount of time to load. But it’s working great now that it doesn’t have to load the ads lol I don’t know how much money fr is losing without running ads but I wish it would stay like this forever. They’d have to have premium memberships or something to make up for it but I dunno maybe they should do that. Get an exclusive familiar a month or something? One click gathering? Maybe like. A treasure allowance? It just auto keeps your dragons fed? I dunno. Could think of Things
Submit your dragon to fight!
Rules:
This is a Flight Rising blog
It must be your own dragon
Only submit 1 (one) dragon
I do ask you pick your favorite cause it's more fun that way >:]
In your submission put the image of your dragon, it's name, and a link to it's page
each poll will be 3 days, and I will do my best to reblog any propaganda submitted~
also if we have an uneven number of submissions I will put in the wildcard
the bracket will be in order of submission for simplicity
feel free to ask questions
This is Sophie! Was a bit if a toss up between her or my PFP dragon, but went with her ultimately, lol.
Kuro (Dungeon Meshi) vs. Galore (Flight Rising)
Kuro
Galore
hilarious
Mean to me 😭😭😭😭
Hey!! Spin this Wheel of Every Flight Rising Item that exists (at the moment of me making this post) (including Site-Made Skins, not including UMAs and the like).
How would you feel if you suddenly got your Result for free?
Yay! This is actually REALLY great to me, WOOOO!!!
Oh hey, this is pretty good!!
I guess this is better than most?
It’s alright
Eh, it’s fine
*Shrug* I mean, at least I got it for free?
Eh…
Eeeh…
Blugh…
I am real disappointed…
WOW! This is worthless!
“It’s less than worthless, my boy!”
Hey! Spin this Wheel of every single Food Item in Flight Rising (as of the moment I’m making this post)!
Would *YOU* eat this Food Item?
Gladly! I bet it’s delicious!
Yeah, sure!
It's probably alright!
Eh, why not?
…Maybe?
Ehhh….
Well, this isn’t THE WORST?
… I guess I could force myself to eat this
This is gross! But maybe if I had no choice….
This is far too disgusting for me to even think about eating it!
I cannot eat this Food because of ideological/spiritual/religious reasons
I cannot eat this food because it will be hazardous for my health
I haven't played Goatlings in AAAGGGGES, really I don't think I got very far a couple hours of gametime, but I just took a peak and dug around about the recent drama an the closure and good lord. Can't wait for my fiance to get home so I can tell her more 'cute pet game' drama. The first pet sim she ever touched was Flightrising on my behest a little over a year ago and she just. Never got any of this so telling her all this chaos is one of my favorite past times. We met via rp-art communities so she does get the whole 'how can there be this much interpersonal drama surrounding this on the surface wholesome thing' cause we lived through a lot of that but it's just so fascinating. I'm a big fan of studying these circumstances. I feel for everyone who had dedicated so much time into Goatlings tho! I saw a few instances of people saying they'd basically had all their 'pet site' worth in Goatlings via cross-site trading, and I think people loosing all that progress over a single person's ego is an utter shame and a huge loss, and really needs to be the main focus here. It's just a game but people dedicate so much of themselves to these things. I'd be pretty heart broken at this point if (and most likely when but not for a good long while) FlightRising goes down. I mainly only dabble with FR and Neopets at this point, most of my other accounts are stagnant/dead on other platforms. But it's a huge loss for the players. Hoping everyone can bounce back and be able to still enjoy the genre!
"If I get a good hatch its gonna be a good year"
"Wh-"
"OH MY GOSH??"
