Saving Some Tips

Only Reblogging | Collection of Tips, Tutorials & Advices regarding Drawing & Writing | Saving Stuff for Future Reference | "You'll find your flame"

[one-half-guide]

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening, whoever is reading this!!

Basically this is a blog where I save some nice tips, advices & tutorials I find across this website, not much compromise except properly tag every post so it's somewhat easier to find =D

Tags I will be using:

For Writing: #writing tips ~ #writing advices ~ #writing ~ #writing romance tips ~ #writing friendships tips ~ #writing relationships tips ~ #writing emotions tips ~ #writing trauma tips ~ #writing cultures tips ~ #writing societies tips

For Drawing: #drawing tips ~ #drawing advices ~ #drawing tutorial ~ #art tips ~ #art advices ~ #anatomy tips ~ #anatomy advices ~ #anatomy tutorial ~ #artstyles ~ #coloring tips ~ #coloring advices ~ #coloring tutorial

For Character/Characterization: #character tips ~ #character establishment tips ~ #characterization tips ~ #character analysis ~ #characterization advices ~ #personality tips

For Worldbuilding: #worldbuilding tips ~ #worldbuilding advices ~ #magic system tips ~ #magic system advices ~ #power system tips ~ #fantasy world tips ~ #sci-fi world tips ~ #realistic world tips ~ #past decades tips ~ #culture advices ~ #culture tips

[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.

[special-lucky-chosen-one]

I fucking hate it here

[some-sort-of-ecologist]

For those of you with android devices, you can use the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) standalone app control program to get rid of all the bloatware, data mining, and AI crap - no coding needed!

[d-e-w-p]

save

[clatterbane]

There are also Android-based alternatives like GrapheneOS and LineageOS, which are pretty easy to install. These are unfortunately available for a more limited range of devices (Graphene is ironically Pixel only, while Lineage supports more), but it's very worth checking out whether one of them might work for your phone.

GrapheneOS: the private and secure mobile OS

GrapheneOS is a security and privacy focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility.

LineageOS Android Distribution

Typing this from Graphene now, in fact. But, both of those take the Android Open Source Project, without all the bloatware--and largely de-Google the whole thing. They give you much more control over privacy and what the apps you choose to install can do and access on your phone.

I know Graphene sandboxes everything, including the optionally installed Google Play Services which a lot of apps unfortunately require to run. (Lineage uses an alternative to Play Services instead.) So, you can install what would normally be unacceptably intrusive apps and just lock them away from pulling any funny shit with your data, or phoning home. Including the couple of Google things I do still keep around.

I also prefer running much more transparent, privacy-respecting open source apps where possible. Besides the transparency, I'd rather avoid the shitty tech corps entirely where I can. There are pretty good alternatives available for a lot of the usual suspects.

AlternativeTo lets you find apps and software for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Android Tablets, Web Apps, Online, Windows Tab

An alternative app store:

F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy

[clatterbane]

Also just going to leave this here.

ReVanced

Continuing the legacy of Vanced.

GitHub - ReVanced/revanced-manager: 💊 Application to use ReVanced on Android

💊 Application to use ReVanced on Android . Contribute to ReVanced/revanced-manager development by creating an account on GitHub.

This lets you pretty easily patch some of the worst offender corporate apps to make them behave better.

[freak-phone]

I get asked a lot for tips with coloring black people, so i put together a little tutorial! (and bumps my kofi if you found this helpful)

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

*takes the hand of a period drama writer gently* A queen consort is not a queen regnant. A dowager queen is not a queen regnant either.

There is very little intrinsic institutional power in queenship. The power a consort, dowager, or queen mother has depends mostly on how much the reigning sovereign (usually a man) is willing to grant her. Needing a queen to serve as regent is exceptionally rare, and the regent is more often a male relative.

I know this is a bit of a bummer. I'm sorry.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

For clarity:

Queen regnant: woman who rules in her own right, not on behalf of someone else.

Regent: Someone who temporarily assumes the powers of the monarch on account of the monarch being too young or too incapacitated to govern.

Queen consort: Woman who is married to the monarch.

Dowager queen: Woman who was married to the monarch. The monarch is dead, and she is owed support as his widow.

Queen mother: Woman who is the mother of the monarch. Usually the dowager queen, though there are exceptions if there isn't a straight line of succession.

[dogwise]

PRACTICE URGE SURFING

[dogwise]

[mikkeneko]

PSA to fan creators who don't have a lot of regular contact with children: They are almost always bigger than you think. A 1-year-old baby may already be walking. A toddler is likely already hip-high. A 10-year-old may already be taller than at least one of their parents. A 14/15 year old may already have reached their adult height.

[amarguerite]

Via @watertightvines

[wildjuniperjones]

Here's the link. It was actually not immediately easy to find, so I thought this might help.

[longsightmyth]

Honestly my best advice for writing characters is to know two basic things about them.

What do they want?

What are they willing to do to get it?

Within that framework things can get complicated (are they willing to break the law? Are they only willing to break SOME laws? Is it because they see the laws they’re willing to break as unjust laws or is it just because they don’t care about what the law they’re breaking applies to? Is it because they don’t acknowledge the authority of the people making the laws? Is it because they think they themselves are above the law?) but these are the two basic things to establish.

Also keep in mind that inaction is a choice, so if a character chooses to do nothing, that should also be fit into the framework of what they’re willing to do.

(This is why I am surprised when people say that politics are hard to write. Politics are just people wanting things and working to get them)

[longsightmyth]

Also, if your answer to “what will they do to get it” is “anything” you are most likely not being honest, which can be an interesting narrative device if it’s a character thinking it but is not the book for me if the narrative itself is telling me that and moreover, barring some truly specific circumstances, makes me wonder why the character doesn’t just already have what they want.

[kunaigirl]

Me: "Damn people are REALLY BAD at knowing when to tag their eyestrain art/images...either that or they just don't care about photosenitive epileptic people like me. I feel really sad now." Person: "But Allison, what if they just don't know or understand what qualifies as eyestrain and what doesn't?" Me: "You know what? That could be a factor...While it is always better to be safe rather than sorry (so YES people should always tag eyestrain even if they're unsure if it "counts" or not) maybe you've got a point?"

Anyways! HERE'S YOUR HANDY GUIDE TO WHAT CAN COUNT AS EYESTRAIN! I'm pulling this straight from the Artfight rules page about what needs to be labeled and filtered as eyestrain because it's VERY helpful and VERY accurate! I also know not everybody has an AF account and might not always have access to this handy guide, and this is an important resource; That's why I'm sharing it here! (under the cut)

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

Full eyestrain AF page link

"But Allison! How were you able to screenshot that example if you're so sensitive to eyestrain?"

I dimmed the HELL out of my computer screen and looked away while taking the screenshot and did the same when putting it into this post, that's how lol. BUT YEAH ANYWAYS!!! Once again:

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

[rightdownright]

by the way this is medical. this could save somebody from a migraine all the way to a seizure. this has always been serious. treat this seriously.

[misselaney]

Natural Black Hair Tutorial! Usually Black hair is excluded in the hair tutorials which I have seen so I have gone through it in depth because it’s really not enough to tell someone simply, “Black hair is really curly, draw it really curly.” 

The next part of Black Hair In Depth will feature styles and ideas for designing characters and I will release it around February. If you would like to see certain styles, please shoot me a message!

[smallrevolutionary]

YES! BOOSTINGGGG FOR MY FOLKS WHO WANNA/NEED TO KNOW HOW

[sabertoothwalrus]

I've gotten asked several times over the years about how to make drawings look more three-dimensional instead of flat, and it really is just to think of everything as simple shapes! Everything is shapes, with varying levels of layering and overlapping each other.

the biggest thing is to OBSERVE and PRACTICE!!! Find a mug, a tube of chapstick, your computer mouse, etc and just draw it over and over at every possible angle. the more you develop this skill, the more complicated shapes you'll be able to draw!

[fuzzypuppybuddie]

It's everywhere

[fuzzypuppybuddie]

There's also it's more 'diverse' fandom twin

[amagicalmoonlight]

[ID 1: drawing of four non-descript characters smiling lined up, three of them have pale skin while one has brown skin and a more mischievous expression, the characters has text pointed to them reading “that one character that gets the melanin because they’re angry/agressive” End ID]

[ID 2: drawing of four non-descript characters lined up, three of them have varied brown skin and expressions while one has pale skin and a more calm smile, the characters has text pointed to them reading “that one character that gets less of the melanin because they’re passive/calm/fancier” End ID]

[douglysium]

This and "that one character that gets darker skin because they are masculine"

(Also, a side not to consider is that there are good / pleasing designs that aren't super reliant on super high contrast. Don't get me wrong. Contrast is great and I love it but I think sometimes design gets a bit more complicated then "you always need to use the most high contrast thing possible. Obviously, don't make all your characters a single color blob but making a character I walking polkadate rainbow in the name of "contrast" wouldn't inherently be good either).

Also, it's weird that this is happening (although less frequently (even to now) but I loathe those fucking jokes where a character "can say the n-word" or "dresses up as a black character" because they have a tan now. IDK how to explain it perfectly other than the fact that they aren't even Black makes a lot of these jokes weird enough.

[douglysium]

Just because I don't want to be solely negative here's a long stream of advice from Twitter about drawing Darker skin and stuff

Here are some bonus tips if you find people say you keep making your skin look ashy unintentionally

Here's some basic tips for hair

That's all for now. One day I will make a complete and articulated article containing all the basic advice found here and a video too but until then thanks for reading.

[fangirlinginleatherboots]

just so yall know

art block is your brain telling you to do studies.

draw a still life. practice some poses. sketch some naked people. do a color study. try out a different technique on a basic shape.

art block doesnt stop you from drawing, it stops you from making your drawings look the way you want them to. and thats because you need to push your skills to the next level so you can preform at that standard

think of it as level grinding for your next work.

[gallusrostromegalus]

As a scientific illustrator- this is 100% true and going to review your basics will fix it every goddamn time.  Not only does it keep your skills sharp, when you’re not emotionally invested in the final product of a piece, you relax and your brain makes more/better art juice for you.  So, when you get back to that big/important piece?  You’ll know what to do and how to do it.

Nothing in nature blooms all year round.  Rest, and take care of yourself.

[strawbebbynya]

i want someone to put this into writer’s blocks now

[404computerhamstersnotfound]

Writer’s block means you need to relearn the whole alphabet. idiot.

[redwingedwhump]

For writers block- same thing. Do Studies.

Write a description of an object. write the weather today. Write a made up characterization of a random photo of an actor from the internet as to the character they are in that picture. Write a little story about your pet’s day. Write about spilling soup and make it super dramatic and tragic. Write about someone’s day being ruined and make it funny. Write a meetcute coffeeshop AU of two OCs you’d never put together- maybe from different stories. Write them breaking up.

Write a bunch of short stuff meant for no audience ever and super duper self indulgent.

[blackaquokat]

@sweetiepie08

[accidental-spice]

@kanerallels

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

I found out relatively recently that it really helps if I write short fiction surrounding the novels I write. Like oh? I’m stuck for a bit? Ooh there was that section I wanted to explore but doesn’t fit in the plot really. There was that what-if that could never happen in the actual story but would be fun to explore. It keeps me in the characters’ headspace (tho that’s not always what I’m needing) but not right where they are exactly.

[winterinhimring]

Yes! I have gotten past writers’ block multiple times by writing drabble collections. Making something coherent happen in just 100 words is a very different challenge from writing a long story and it also lets me get past plot points that I don’t want to explore in-depth.

I am also going to have to start drawing studies now…

[luna-azzurra]

Things to consider when writing about Romance!!!

⊹ Why do these two people actually like each other. "They're both hot" is not enough. What specifically draws them together? Shared trauma? They make each other laugh? They challenge each other? Similar worldviews or completely opposite ones that balance out? Give them actual chemistry based on personality not just physical attraction!!

⊹ What's stopping them from getting together immediately. External obstacles like war, forbidden love, wrong timing? Internal ones like fear of vulnerability, past trauma, thinking they're not good enough? Both?

⊹ How does the romance affect the main plot. Does it help or hinder the protagonist's goals? Create complications? Give them something to fight for? Romance subplots that are completely separate from the main story feel tacked on!!

⊹ What's the pacing. Do they fall for each other slowly over time or is it fast and intense? Slow burn is great but you need moments of progress. Instant attraction is fine but the actual relationship should still develop.

⊹ How do they communicate. Do they actually talk about their feelings or just pine silently for 200 pages? Can they have difficult conversations? Do they understand each other or constantly misread situations?

⊹ What do they disagree about. Couples who agree on everything are boring. What are their fundamental differences? How do they handle conflict? Do they fight fair or is it toxic? Can they compromise or does someone always give in?

⊹ How do other characters react to the relationship. Supportive friends? People who think it's a terrible idea? Jealous exes?

⊹ What does each person bring to the relationship. Is it balanced or does one person do all the emotional labor? Do they make each other better or worse? What do they each need vs what do they want?

⊹ What are their love languages. Physical touch? Words of affirmation? Acts of service? Quality time? Gifts?

⊹ How does their past affect this relationship. Previous heartbreak? First love? Trust issues from family stuff? Abandonment fears?

⊹ What's the power dynamic. Are they equals? Is one person in a position of authority? Does one have more experience? Unbalanced power dynamics need to be addressed not ignored!!

⊹ How physical is the relationship and when. First kiss timing? Is there sexual tension? Do they hold hands? Are they touch-starved and finally have someone? What's appropriate for your genre and audience??

⊹ What's at stake if the relationship fails. Just heartbreak or something bigger? Will it destroy the friend group? Ruin the mission? End an alliance?

⊹ Do they have lives outside each other. Friends, hobbies, goals that have nothing to do with the romance? Couples who only exist for each other are codependent and boring :(

⊹ What's the "oh" moment. When does each person realize they're in love? Is it dramatic or quiet? Same time or does one person know way before the other? Multiple realizations?

⊹ How do they support each other through the plot. Do they have each other's backs? Believe in each other? Or does the relationship become a weakness enemies exploit?

⊹ What happens after they get together. If they become official halfway through, how does the relationship continue to develop? New challenges? Deeper vulnerability? Don't end the romance arc the second they kiss (please!!)

[star-system-generator]

FAQ to date and answers I have managed to get out of the generator's creator (who is extremely offline, bemused by the attention, and deeply flattered if slightly concerned):

This is a freebie and is being written as a side project by a very busy physicist and apparently distributed as a side project by a very busy rocket scientist, this blog is gonna be sparse on the updates.

Yes it's coded in Matlab yes we know you hate Matlab.

At some point the creator (I'm gonna have to ask them what pseudonym they want because I can't keep calling them 'my beta' but again we didn't think this would happen) is intending to code this up as a .exe that users can run directly if they trust us or compile themselves and then run if they don't. This person is way more computer than I am and I'm more computer than much of Tumblr so yes this is a high bar to entry.

Yes the intention is to publish the code when it's working properly, and I'm trying to convince them to set up a github page. It's going. Badly.

At the moment it's generating random star systems beautifully, though the smaller moons keep phasing in and out and you have to check the readme to find out what the numbers mean. Generating planets to spec is stickier just at present and will be a longer time coming.

Their intention is to send me a working copy of the random generator to post sometime on Friday, so realistically you won't see that before the weekend because I have a life too and y'all are killing my notes.

Yes EVENTUALLY you should be able to input any of the parameters the generator allows for and it will output a system that meets your requirements, but I anticipate spending a LOT of time deliberately breaking it before that's up and running.

To the person who offered debugging help, I love and appreciate you but this person learned to code fortran and assembly before anything else and makes new code languages for fun so I do not think you will be able to read their code (no shade, I can't either).

Yes it can do binary systems, I have the printout for one, but again it is currently sitting in a state of 'this is an unformatted Matlab output' and requires reference to the index/readme/glossary to puzzle out what the numbers mean.

[lilaxthegreat]

Have you considered checking with the devs who work on the World Orogen generator?

(Which for those who dont know is a planet generator that literally generates a planet with tectonic activity and a generalized idea on mountain ranges and even climates. So i can see potential in expanding further)

[star-system-generator]

@frowny-clowny you're looking for this.

To answer - no, this is the first I'd heard of this thing, I'll mention it to the physicist but I suspect actually making the two compatible will be out of scope because this was intended as a small one-off and absolutely not something that would get or need ongoing support.

We uh. Were expecting maybe 20 people to be maybe mildly interested in seeing it in a few months.

[bucketofdeltav]

So my beta reader for the Big Fics is an astrophysicist, right. Who is currently also writing a hard sci-fi novel about the exploration of Phobos (more power to them, I cannot with the physics required for that, best I can do is soft sci-fi/fantasy and that reminds me I should finish that story).

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

It's still in the debugging phase (last error fixed: every planet wants to have a population of exactly 5000 regardless of other factors, turned out to be a missing equals sign somewhere), but I'm psyched for this and trying to gauge interest for how high a priority 'make this an accessible web tool' needs to be.

[melyzard]

[elodieunderglass]

@bucketofdeltav says the URL is here: http://tumblr.com/star-system-generator

okay it has its own blog now (@star-system-generator) on Tumblr

Follow @star-system-generator and get more of the good stuff by joining Tumblr today. Dive in!

[miyuliart]

Trying to figure out how to draw armour. These are some of my notes I uploaded on patreon. A lot more to come since I really want to figure this one out.