My partner found this adorable sketchbook, and I had to fix it. 

This kid... this kid is my gd hero. This video is MHA. 

Please watch this video if your sad.

(No kitties were hurt.)

How to: Character portraits from Hero Forge designs

Here’s a quick look at how to make an avatar or color character sheet portrait from a Hero Forge design. You could also use this process to

design enemies

generate NPC portraits

come up with general character illustrations

If you don’t want to use Hero Forge, any grayscale 3D rendering will work. I may do a more in-depth pictorial guide later.

Steps

Get the source image - Use Hero Forge’s built-in screenshot tool to get a grayscale image with no background. If the lighting is wrong, try flipping it horizontally in the “pose” menu; you can flip it back in photoshop. Just be careful not to save it flipped.

Set up the outline - Open it in photoshop. Create a duplicate layer with 4px stroke and 0% fill to outline the image. This will always be frontmost.

Prepare for flatting - Do 4px linework to separate the regions of color. Shadows and highlights don’t need to be isolated because they’ll come back in from the mode overlay in a later step. I use two copies of this; one will be final linework, and one will be the basis for flat color layers.

Do flat colors - Fill the outlined areas with flat color. Be sure to extend your selection by 2px, so that final linework will overlay it completely. Depending on the lighting of the mini, you may need to use different levels of saturation for the colors. This may take a while, as you work through colorways for your character.

Reintroduce 3D - Set up the original grayscale screenshot as an overlay of the color layer.

Add texture - Add masked texture overlay layers to areas that would be textural IRL, or those which seem flat. In this example, I used images of brass to overlay parts of the armor.

Add detail - Add any illustrative details, like eyes, hair coloration, freckles, and fur texture.

Add shadows - Set up a threshold of the screenshot for deep blacks, and color it sun-shadow blue. Play with the blending until it feels right.

Add highlights - In particular, specular highlights and subsurface reflections will need attention. Most simple shadows will be handled by #4. I approach this as if I were working with an eraser, or a white conte crayon/colored pencil.

Clean up colors - The overlays slightly distort them, and while they may or may not be accurate, they may not communicate well. Her face is still a little too red and doesn’t read as brown as I’d like. (Ruth Negga was the skin color reference model)

Clean up lines - Remove unnecessary lines from the flat and linework layers. Clean up lines that are too uniform or jagged. I don’t have a drawing tablet anymore, so I was pretty lazy about this.

I made this character for a new fourth edition (4e) Zeitgeist campaign. I really liked the mini design. I won’t receive it in the mail for a few weeks, but I wanted to use a similar image for my character sheet. I’m sure many of you are better illustrators than I, but the process is solid.

I don’t work for Hero Forge and they have not endorsed this post. Still, they offer great tools for free, so do them a solid and buy a mini or two.

Alexander McQueen, SS17

Generative Adversarial Networks and the training of Artists

It occurs to me that generative adversarial networks bear a strong resemblance to the actual process of artistic development; the artist is generative and the critic discriminative, even when the artist is a kindergartner and the critic her peers. Cycles of completion and self-criticism become invaluable training tools, so long as the artist herself develops a discriminating eye. 

GitHub deploy keys: permission denied

If you are new to setting up deploy keys for your services, there are a ton of tiny gotchas. Here are some things you can try:

Read the docs on this error

Use the git user and Host ssh config entry when connecting.

# repo: github.com/orgName/repo.git # in ~/.ssh/config Host git-project-one User git HostName github.com IdentityFile ~/.ssh/git_rsa # to test # uses the "Host" entry and not the hostname > ssh -vT git@git-project-one

If it’s not obvious from the above, you need to update your git remotes on the server:

# using the above example # (again, no url or hostname) > git remote remove origin > git remote add origin git@git-project-one:orgName/repo.git > git fetch origin //success!

“Got the morbs” should be a thing.

✧✧READ DEVIL’S CANDY✧✧ First Page | Latest Page 03/17/17 ✧CHAPTER 1 ✧CHAPTER 2 ✧CHAPTER 3 ✧CHAPTER 4 ✧CHAPTER 5 RSS | twitter | PATREON

oop-dee-doo

this is the best thing i have ever done

Flames, on the side of my mouse...

A Unicorn’s Gude to Productivity - by Amanda APPIARIUS - (NEON FUTURE PLAYLIST)

And I pray OH MY GLOB, do I pray

...this definitely should not have been the first thing that came to mind

miss representation (dir. jennifer siebel newsom)

Sometimes I just want to take a photoset and spill it all over Facebook.

Aiyana Jones’ murderer, Joseph Weekly doesn’t face charges. No Justice, No Peace.

Black Lives Matter.

breathing heaving breaths

A Unicorn’s Gude to Productivity - by Amanda APPIARIUS - (NEON FUTURE PLAYLIST)

A List of “Men’s Rights” Issues That Feminism Is Already Working On Feminists do not want you to lose custody of your children. The assumption that women are naturally better caregivers is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not like commercials in which bumbling dads mess up the laundry and competent wives have to bustle in and fix it. The assumption that women are naturally better housekeepers is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want you to have to make alimony payments. Alimony is set up to combat the fact that women have been historically expected to prioritize domestic duties over professional goals, thus minimizing their earning potential if their “traditional” marriages end. The assumption that wives should make babies instead of money is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want anyone to get raped in prison. Permissiveness and jokes about prison rape are part of rape culture, which is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want anyone to be falsely accused of rape. False rape accusations discredit rape victims, which reinforces rape culture, which is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want you to be lonely and we do not hate “nice guys.” The idea that certain people are inherently more valuable than other people because of superficial physical attributes is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want you to have to pay for dinner. We want the opportunity to achieve financial success on par with men in any field we choose (and are qualified for), and the fact that we currently don’t is part of patriarchy. The idea that men should coddle and provide for women, and/or purchase their affections in romantic contexts, is condescending and damaging and part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want you to be maimed or killed in industrial accidents, or toil in coal mines while we do cushy secretarial work and various yarn-themed activities. The fact that women have long been shut out of dangerous industrial jobs (by men, by the way) is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want you to commit suicide. Any pressures and expectations that lower the quality of life of any gender are part of patriarchy. The fact that depression is characterized as an effeminate weakness, making men less likely to seek treatment, is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want you to be viewed with suspicion when you take your child to the park (men frequently insist that this is a serious issue, so I will take them at their word). The assumption that men are insatiable sexual animals, combined with the idea that it’s unnatural for men to care for children, is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want you to be drafted and then die in a war while we stay home and iron stuff. The idea that women are too weak to fight or too delicate to function in a military setting is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not want women to escape prosecution on legitimate domestic violence charges, nor do we want men to be ridiculed for being raped or abused. The idea that women are naturally gentle and compliant and that victimhood is inherently feminine is part of patriarchy. Feminists hate patriarchy. We do not hate you. If you really care about those issues as passionately as you say you do, you should be thanking feminists, because feminism is a social movement actively dedicated to dismantling every single one of them. The fact that you blame feminists—your allies—for problems against which they have been struggling for decades suggests that supporting men isn’t nearly as important to you as resenting women. We care about your problems a lot. Could you try caring about ours?

Excerpt from If I Admit That Hating Men is a Thing, Will You Stop Turning it Into a Self-fulfilling Prophecy?, by Lindy West (via sigh-twombly)