Falconsong Studios

I am a graduate of Texas A&M University with an undergraduate degree in Environmental Design and masters degree in Visualization. By day I'm a game developer (Technical Environment Artist) and by night I'm an Art Tinker. I dabble in everything from computer graphics, digital art, sculpture, stained glass to jewelry making. Sadly there are not enough hours in the day nor years in a lifespan to do all the things I want to do but damn if I can't try! I take commissions on a rare basis and also sell my work on Etsy and at conventions. Feel free to message me or email me at [email protected].

[ahedderick]

This is the most beautiful scientific diagram I've ever seen.

Also a great example of why pink is a tint of red, but also a completely different color. Erbium? Neodymium? So beautiful.

[falconsongstudios]

*Crawls out of my hole of internet silence* Ohh this is an awesome graphic! I also know a bit about this so let me elaborate on some fun shit here! Being a stained glass artist this is absolutely my jam! Neodymium is a fun (and infuriating) one to work with. It will change color based on lighting, which makes it really lovely but absolutely a pain in the tail to photograph because of this. Like, say, if you're trying to photograph a Twilight Sparkle stained glass you made. Ahem... Anyhow, it will appear drastically different under sunlight vs under fluorescent light vs incandescent. The wikipedia article for Neodymium has a great graphic showing this:

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium Not sure why but the above graphic omitted silver (Ag). When you use silver in glass you get... gold. Quite literally! It'll make rich yellows and earth tones. Sometimes you'll get whats called "metaling" from it, which is this reflective silver/gold look in places until you put it up to the light and it's all warm yellows. Here's some examples from my favorite glassmaker, Fremont Stained Glass, showing the milky silverish metaling streaks in addition to the normal silver ambers which turns all ambers in sunlight:

Source: Fremont's sales page- https://fremontantiqueglass.com/products/full-sheet-s3-287 And a video of it in action: https://www.instagram.com/fremont_antique_glass/reel/C-dbOp6yIWO/?hl=en If you use silver as a stain you basically mix a powder suspension of silver nitrate particles in water to get a "paint" and when painted on glass, fired, then wiped off, it leaves an amber yellow stain on the glass, like so:

Source: Sasha Ward- https://www.sashaward.co.uk/blog/2023/5/10/silverstain And lastly, there's the UV glasses: Uranium, Cadmium, selenium and Manganese. They're a whole lot of fun! They fluoresce under blacklight (or sometimes in bright sunlight). This makes them a favorite of glass collectors and easy to find since you just take a pocket blacklight with you when you go antique collecting. Uranium glows yellows and greens and yes it is very slightly radioactive (but safe):

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass Here's a video of it in action, courtesy again of Fremont Antique Glass: https://www.instagram.com/fremont_antique_glass/reel/C3k4tgIRi3t/?hl=en Cadmium glass (made with cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide) and selenium fluoresces as oranges, reds and yellows:

Source: https://www.thebutterflybabe.com/about-uv-glass And Manganese, Green:

Source: https://www.thebutterflybabe.com/about-uv-glass

While writing this up, I discovered my beloved (hated [said fondly]) Neodymium glass is apparently also a UV glass! Now I have to go pull out some of my sheets of Neodymium and put a blacklight on them to see what happens! Neodymium:

Source: https://www.thebutterflybabe.com/about-uv-glass

There's even more at the links in the sources. The Butterfly Babe page shows a lot more than I'm familiar with and it's absolutely fascinating. Have fun falling down a rabbit hole with those! It's a joy. Before I go, I'd like to give a shout out to Fremont Antique Glass, whom I referenced several places above. Please do give them a follow! Traditional mouth blown sheet glass (Antique glass) is only made by a small handful of people (Three masters left in the world at last I heard) and is a heritage craft. It's an amazing craft and Fremont is the only one here in the US that makes this and they deserve all the love and follows, so please check them out! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fremont_antique_glass/ Website: https://fremontantiqueglass.com/ Thank you for letting me gush about one of my favorite topics and enjoy the beautiful glass!

[falconsongstudios]

Happy Pride!

[staff]

Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner. 

We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.

To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option. 

For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc. 

Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.

[slowedmountains]

by the way also, since staff's instructions aren't especially clear it's here in your blog settings (on browser select your blog and then blog settings on the right)

The screen looks like this:

then scroll aaaall the way to the bottom:

This does not apply universally across your account, you need to do this for each of your Tumblr Blogs individually.

[falconsongstudios]

Cowards. Make it opt in, not opt out. Further, this is absolute bullshit because this does not take into account reblogs and the like. I can't remove of block my content once it's rebloged and it'll still get scraped. This shit is unethical.

[falconsongstudios]

New Workspace!

For those curious about my radio silence, I have pictures I want to share! I recently moved from California to Washington! It took a while because we stayed in a temp housing situation for 6 months while we looked for a house, then had to do the whole move-in thing. But the big news? I have a place to do artwork now! My previous place I only had a small table I'd move in and out into our postage stamp of a backyard whenever I had to do glass-work or resin-work. For sculpture I had my work desk inside, which was in a corner of the living room. It was… a little hard to make things when you have no space. When we moved, I really wanted some places to work and I got my wish! I now have a proper art room to do my non-dirty/dangerous work in and a large space in the garage for multiple workbenches! The garage workspace is the previous owners bench and really rickety, but that works for me for now, because I like a bench I can beat on a little and not worry about drilling into or getting filthy at need. Now to try and catch up on posting pictures of stuff I've been working on. It's been a while!

[falconsongstudios]

I'm Alive!!

I'm still alive! Sorry for the... VERY... long radio silence. We moved from California to Washington a while back and bought a house. We spent 6 months in a temporary place while we house hunted and had our stuff in storage so I couldn't do any art! But the good news is, we've been spending time getting our house put together, doing needed reno and I now have my own room to do art in and a workspace in the garage! Here's a peek at what I'm working on. I'll try and post more later. I'll be vending at Geek Girl Con in Seattle, WA, which is what most of these are for. Come by the vendors room and say hi if you're in the area! I'm looking forward to getting back into art now that I have a place to do art!

Posted using PostyBirb

[xellette]

Tumblr is 200% better then Twitter

[xellette]

It stacks

[byelacey]

more!!!

[xellette]

Twitter can’t get a dollar out of me but Tumblr’s winning just by being funny

[xellette]

It maxes out at 24 [12x], this is dumb and I love it

[falconsongstudios]

I couldn’t resist... (Also wanted to throw some support to my fav social media, especially since this is legit hilarious.)

[eskiworks]

Hire me to make stuff for you!

Prices - https://trello.com/b/2Pns5dar/eskiworks-digital-art-menu

Sign up Sheet - https://forms.gle/exjMcwPgrGBJPbo57

Feel free to ask questions if you have any. Reblogs much appreciated!

[korybing]

I’ve been working on this off and on since September 2021! I see a lot of cross-stitch versions of video game sprites and I thought “I wonder how it would look to stitch a walk-cycle together” and the answer is: IT WORKS!

I picked Sam & Max’s walk cycle from Hit the Road because I figured if I was going to be staring at a cross stitch for a million years it might as well be characters I wanna look at over and over and over again.

[staff]

Testing: Shorten long posts in your dash

Hello.

We are testing out an optional setting to shorten long posts on the dashboard. We’re initially rolling this feature out to a smaller number of you on web and iOS starting today, March 28, with an Android release to follow soon. We realize this is a significant change to how you interact with your dash. So this will be an optional feature you can easily turn off anytime by visiting your dashboard settings and toggling “Shorten long posts” off.

What does this mean?

Long posts can crowd your dashboard. Some of you find them so annoying that you filter out the tag #long post. This means you could be missing out on posts you might love that also happen to be tagged as #long post. This setting shortens posts to offer a content preview instead—with the option to unfurl the full post by clicking “Expand” on web, or opening the post in a new screen by tapping “View Post” on iOS and Android. Here is a preview of how your dashboard will now appear on web before expanding the full post.

Why are we doing this?

Some of you have told us that long posts can feel like they take over your feed or make it harder to skip uninteresting posts. This feature will allow you to scroll through content more smoothly while also encouraging meaningful interactions—promoting the art, culture, and content you love, curate, and create.

Any questions? Then please drop us a line on @wip or Support, and keep an eye out for more changes on the aptly-named @changes.

[falconsongstudios]

@staff Thank you for this! It’s not something I want to use, I like the longer posts because I tend to doom scroll through them when they’re shortened and I miss seeing things that are legit interesting but covered up by the expand so I accidentally scroll past. However, I’m very appreciative of you making things more usable for people and this definitely sounds like it’ll be an excellent feature for other users who don’t like the longer posts! I hope you continue to make things like this optional where you can toggle it off or opt into or out of it. It feels like lately you’ve been really trying to cater toward the user base and giving people what they want and will find useful instead of throwing things at the wall and see if they stick and I’m thankful! I just wanted you to know that it’s appreciated greatly! Please keep it up!

[armeleia]

Just about three weeks after the fucking minor hand surgery and I am mostly able to use my hand normally... though there is still pain sometimes. I just did some casting and closing the pressure pot lid screws made it hurt again. >_< Beforehand they told me that it was like 3-5 days recovery, but I wasn't even allowed to take the dressing off for 5 days.

At this point I think I'm more frustrated than anything.

[falconsongstudios]

@armeleia​ I feel your pain, but I have some advice! I have hand issues myself (hypermobile joints, possibly EDS) and have a pressure pot with wing pot lid screws which makes my hands hurt and causes me some major issues. I found that I can use one of those gallon paint bucket lid openers to get leverage on the screws/wingnuts to tighten or loosen them and save my hands some of the stress of that debilitating task. Hook the tool around one side of one of the wings and anchor the other side of the tool on the middle nut part of the wingnut. This’ll give you leverage to pull on the tool to tighten the nut or break the nut loose without straining your hands. You can use it in two different directions, whichever works best for the situation/your hands:

I tighten the bolts by hand 90% of the way, till it starts taking some force from my hands to tighten, and then I switch to the tool for the last 10% to do the hard work. Saves my joints and the tendons in my hands and wrist a lot of pain! Just be aware that since the lid screws have that angle on them where it goes down the screw it makes the tool slightly unstable if you don’t pay close enough attention to it and you can slip and graze your knuckles. This technique is also good to use even if you don’t have hand issues since it helps lessen the stress on your hands and therefore -developing- hand issues later, too. Best of luck on recovery!

[sosuperawesome]

Sea Stained Glass on Etsy

[falconsongstudios]

First Cast

First cast and man, did it come out better than I expected! It gets such nice swirls in it, the detail is great and an unexpected benefit is the wings are thin enough that if I don’t make the color slightly see through it gets this gorgeous overlap of the feathers! I’m so happy I took the time to make those feathers overlap well; I hadn’t thought it mattered too much but I’m a stickler for details and it worked out well on this one. Can’t wait to make more!

[parliamentrook]

my mom tried to recycle a bunch of glass jars and bottles without consulting me and I’m feeling VERY betrayed

[falconsongstudios]

you not consult @parliamentrook​? You not consult them before recycling neat bottles? oh! oh! jail for mother! jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!

[falconsongstudios]

Mold!

Catching up on some posts here. Molding for the tits is complete! It has been for a bit but life ate me a bit- we just recently shipped our game at work and other things completely ate me for a while! I tried some different things on this mold. I made it super complex to see if it prolongs the use of the mold (from not having to stress it as much to remove things) and to see if it saves my hands some torment during de-moulding. It's the most complex mold I've done so far but it seems to work well and my hands are grateful!

[strangebiology]

Leaving Thanks in Nature

Sometimes on my bone videos (Tiktok.com/@rollbones) witches say I need to leave stuff/sacrifices/gifts out in nature to thank the spirits for taking bones. They are polite enough so no shade, and I appreciate the thought and engagement! Honestly I love feedback. But let me answer that: no. 

I only take about 1% of the bones I find, I mostly bone hunt for exploration and to make videos. 

Leaving stuff out in nature is not actually good for nature. 

Do whatever religion you want but be careful not to act as though everyone else follows it too.

Everyone harms nature all the time, including right now as I type on my computer full of exploitative materials, using electricity, so, I’m not gonna overly criticize witches who leave stuff in nature as part of their ritual. But please do not act as though it a moral imperative to violate leave no trace.

If you’re leaving man-made items, they’re trash. If you’re leaving natural items, they could be or contain invasive seeds, bugs, etc. If you’re leaving food, you’re artificially habituating wildlife to human food. No matter what you leave, you took from somewhere else, and are you gonna go thank the tree that grew the apple you’re leaving? The oil field that produced the plastic symbol you’re giving as a gift? Are you gonna be stuck in a loop of forever leaving gifts for the part of nature that you took something from to make another gift? 

Anyway if that is part of your ritual do what you want, but if you want to do something less harmful to the nature you hope to honor might I recommend leaving intangible gifts instead. 

[falconsongstudios]

While I’m no witch and can’t speak for that group, I am pagan and I would argue that a better ritual would be to leave nature BETTER than it was instead of leave a sacrifice/gift/whatnot. Your ritual should include taking a trash bag with you in your pocket and removing the manmade trash that you find. This is your “gift”, you “sacrifice” your time and effort to remove what your fellow man has thoughtlessly left. This is a great gift to nature if you take something from nature. (And even if you don’t!)

[strangebiology]

Yes! Excellent addition.

This is a bit off topic but I think one thing people differ on philosophically regards showing love in a way that benefits the lover rather than the lovee. 

Once I met someone who would hunt with dogs, which is a controversial practice. Long story short there are definitely hunters who abuse, starve, and kill their hunting dogs if they get any tiny injury that costs more than $20 to fix. I asked one hunter, “how do you take care of so many dogs?” 

He completely blew off the issues of welfare and said “but we love them!” Does he show his love by figuring out their needs and wants and doing what benefits them? Maybe, but he only talked about how his son hugged and cuddled a dog. “Who could say we abuse them if we’re lovin’ on them?” And how his friend’s mantle is completely covered with urns from all the dogs who have died in his care. “Who could say we abuse them if we’re sentimental about their remains?”

Love your dog? Fine, whatever. Love nature? Fine, whatever. Those feelings are nice for you but they are not moral actions and are actually equally ethical to hating those things. If you want to do something good, consider the person, animal, or environment you are loving on, and what would actually benefit them. 

[falconsongstudios]

As a lesbian who’s parents disowned her for being gay and insist they love her very much, your post inadvertently hits home like a Mac Truck.

[strangebiology]

Leaving Thanks in Nature

Sometimes on my bone videos (Tiktok.com/@rollbones) witches say I need to leave stuff/sacrifices/gifts out in nature to thank the spirits for taking bones. They are polite enough so no shade, and I appreciate the thought and engagement! Honestly I love feedback. But let me answer that: no. 

I only take about 1% of the bones I find, I mostly bone hunt for exploration and to make videos. 

Leaving stuff out in nature is not actually good for nature. 

Do whatever religion you want but be careful not to act as though everyone else follows it too.

Everyone harms nature all the time, including right now as I type on my computer full of exploitative materials, using electricity, so, I’m not gonna overly criticize witches who leave stuff in nature as part of their ritual. But please do not act as though it a moral imperative to violate leave no trace.

If you’re leaving man-made items, they’re trash. If you’re leaving natural items, they could be or contain invasive seeds, bugs, etc. If you’re leaving food, you’re artificially habituating wildlife to human food. No matter what you leave, you took from somewhere else, and are you gonna go thank the tree that grew the apple you’re leaving? The oil field that produced the plastic symbol you’re giving as a gift? Are you gonna be stuck in a loop of forever leaving gifts for the part of nature that you took something from to make another gift? 

Anyway if that is part of your ritual do what you want, but if you want to do something less harmful to the nature you hope to honor might I recommend leaving intangible gifts instead. 

[falconsongstudios]

While I’m no witch and can’t speak for that group, I am pagan and I would argue that a better ritual would be to leave nature BETTER than it was instead of leave a sacrifice/gift/whatnot. Your ritual should include taking a trash bag with you in your pocket and removing the manmade trash that you find. This is your “gift”, you “sacrifice” your time and effort to remove what your fellow man has thoughtlessly left. This is a great gift to nature if you take something from nature. (And even if you don’t!)

[falconsongstudios]

Look into my eye ssssocketsss!

Muahaha Soulless eyed bird!

I drilled out the eyes, which were Sculpey and matte textured, and replaced them with ball bearings so that the final cast comes out nice and shiny eyed!

...Yes I busted the beak again. I'm going to write a post about that.

Now to do the final touches (including repairing the beak) and then it's molding time!