#absolute beginner level | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

flamingbluepanda · 1 year

Text

How to Camp for Beginners

Hello! Tis I, your local boy scout/girl scout/avid gay camper, here to give some top notch Advice™️ about camping! The season is nearly upon us and the woods are a callin' so let's get out there and be safe kiddos!

Before you Go!

Make sure you find a campsite you like and that fits your comfort level! There's ZERO shame in picking a place with cabins, public restrooms, showers, heated pools, hot tubs- whatever your looking for!

Once you pick your campsite, make sure you know the area around it- especially if camping somewhere your unfamiliar with! Example questions to make sure you know: Where's the local hospital? Where's the closest grocery store? Gas station? Are there rangers at your campsite and how do you get in contact with them? Does your campsite provide anything at all as a courtesy?

Also make sure you know the wilderness around you and prep accordingly -- if your camping in a site with bears during their non hibernating months, make sure you bring bear safe trash recepitecals if your campsite doesny provide them

Bring people with you. People you know and trust. Seriously, the buddy system saves lives. Do NOT camp alone unless you are an EXPERT and know the area EXCRUCIATINGLY well. This is also not the place to go with your new romantic partner/friend/friend or partners family -- some people are very good at pretending to be safe and getting you alone in the woods is when they stop pretending.

Pack layers. Make sure you bring at least one set of sweatpants and hoodie, bonus points if their insulated. It gets very cold at night in most wilderness locations, even in the summer.!

Bring at least one set of waterproof clothes, including rain boots and a waterproof coat.

Pack however many sets of underwear and socks you think you need to bring, then pack more. Bring an overwhelming number of socks

Bring good sneakers that are broken in but not worn out

Flashlight with extra batteries and a portable battery cube, fully charged

Make sure you have sunscreen and bugspray, your skin will thank yoi

While packing food, make sure you bring things that will last the trip in an insulated bag or cooler. Don't buy your ice until your close to your camp. Some campsites will even offer bags of ice at the ranger station!

Bring PLENTY of water. My brother always packs ten nalgenes full of water, others bring a big pack of water bottles. Stay hydrated!

If you're bringing a furry friend, make sure they are fully up to date on their rabies and Lyme shots

Pack In!

Make sure you have a full tank of gas when you arrive at your campsite

I personally like to leave my phone in my car while I camp. Bring books/art supplies/journals or whatever you do for fun -- if that's your phone and you have service, great!

Having said that, if you ARE having a technology free camping trip, pick one person in your group with the best phone and declare them the emergency phone person

Best doesn't mean newest -- your friend who hates capitalism and has a Nokia that can survive nuclear fallout should be picked over your friend with the brand new super fragile iphone

Make sure the emergency phone remains fully charged and comes with you when you leave the campsite. Most emergency calls will work without cell service, but a dead phone can't make calls

Make sure you get the rangers number! Rangers are your friends, they want you to have a safe trip and are there for all your questions!

Also make sure to respect the rules of whatever campsite you're at -- if you're on boy scout property for example, you absolutely CANNOT bring alcohol. If you're having a fun adult camping trip, make sure you know the weed laws in that state before your puff and pass.

While setting up your campsite, try to find somewhere dry, that's not located near the bottom of a hill or next to a river.

Try to find places that don't have a ton of loose rocks or dirt, but where the ground is soft enough to nail in stakes for tents/canopies

Most campsites will have an assigned area with a fire pit, but if yours doesn't, make sure you collect enough rocks to build a fire circle before roasting any s'mores!

If your campsite doesn't let you bring cars past a certain point, make sure you know the fastest and safest route to the parking lot

I cannot stress how important it is to make sure you know the emergency numbers -- if theres a medical emergency, you may not be able to get someone to the car. Rangers will have ATVs and paramedics will have the skills to get people out of situations

Make sure your first aid kit is well packed with plenty of bandaids antiseptic and gauze- triangle bandages are also a versitle tool that can help with sprains splints and holding bandages in place. Preferably bring someone who knows at least basic first aid or CPR -- if you can't find a friend with that knowledge, make sure to be extra nice to the rangers

Bring an extra large bottle of your preferred over the counter painkillers -- dehydration and too much time in the sun can cause headaches! Also nifty for twisted ankles or sore backs from sleeping on the ground.

If you forgot your tent stakes, that's okay, put a spare cooler/bag/something heavy in the center of your tent to weigh it down in case of high winds.

If you forgot your rain canopy, a ripped trashbag will work in a pinch, but be warned: it's gonna get hot as HELL in that tent

During your Trip

Sunscreen and bugspray every day- even cloudy days have high UV rays, melanoma kills

Whether cooking on portable grill or campfire make sure your meat is fully cooked.

Chopping your produce and meat and cooking them in two separate packets of tin foil makes delicious meals, plus it's easy to check how done it is

Speaking of fires, make sure you have fireproof gloves and tongs if cooking over a campfire

Zip tents if rain is predicted but believe me, tents are like fucking hot boxes, so try to get as much air movement as you can.

If your campsite doesn't have latrines/portapotties/bathrooms (and you didn't bring one) be a good friend and make sure your camp's designated potty site is down wind of your camp. Also, human droppings can attract animals, so make sure it's a good distance away

(seriously though consider bringing a porta potty they make ones for campers)

CHECK FOR TICKS!!!! CHECK FOR TICKS EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU CAN!!!

Ticks like warm, dark places, so make sure you check behind your knees, under your arms, the back of your neck, in your socks and your privates! Ladies- that includes under the boobies. Wearing long pants, high socks, or long sleeves can be a simple and efficient tick deterrent, especially in marshy areas or tall grass. Don't forget to check your pets if they came with you!

If you find a tick, get some tweezers, grasp as close to the skin as you can, and slowly but firmly pull down on the tick- remember, you want the head out. You can also use a credit card or any other dull edge to help push downward.

Wet feet cause blisters, so always wear socks and change them often. If you get a blister, DONT POP IT, cover it with a bandaid or surround it with moleskin

Hydrate hydrate hydrate hydrate, drunk water every fifteen minutes even if your not thirsty

Remember to respect the nature around you- don't go pulling leaves off trees or disturbing animal dens, stay away from pretty much any animal- yes, even deer, bucks can and will gore you If frightened enough, deer can tramble you and even the cutest little Birdy can carry rabies and other diseases.

Poison Ivy has three leaves, poison oak looks like a strangling vine, and poison sumac has berries. Make sure you know what grows in your camping area.

If you brought a pet, don't let them eat any plants!

Make sure to use the buddy system especially if someone starts feeling ill- a lot of really dangerous illnesses start out looking a lot like colds and flu

Make sure to have a bucket of water next to your campfire, and every night make sure to completely douse your fire before turning it. Splash water on instead of dumping and make sure every ember is out- remember, only you can prevent wildfires

If you brought a gas powered generator for your campsite, make sure it's as far away as possible from the fire pit. Also, they're quite loud, so maybe don't put it near your tent. Put it on the outskirts of the campsite and don't leave it running when you're not there

Pack out!

LEAVE NO TRACE!!! make sure you clean up ALL your litter, all of it, every single one. Check and triple check your entire camp site.

Make sure everyones tent poles and stakes end up with the correct tent- you'd be surprised how brand specific stuff like that is.

Especially don't leave any food items -- there's likely going to be another person filling that campsite soon, they don't need moldy food attracting critters!

If there's a sign out sheet, don't forget to sign out at the ranger station! If they had to evacuate the campsite for whatever reason, they'll need to know you're gone!

Do a final tick/other bug check- you don't need to be bringing bugs home with you! Also check that there are no critters are in your supplies -- this sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised where snakes and mice can end up.

Give your pets an extra good bath when you get home. You don't know what could've gotten stuck in their fur!

Tick/spider bites tend to look like bullseyes. If you develop bullseye shaped rashes after you get home, seek medical attention.

Most of all, have fun and be safe!!!

#camping #advice #adulting

4K notes · View notes

dokushoclub · 7 months

Text

#my book reviews #reading in japanese #learning japanese #study japanese #japanese books #やさしい日本語 #japanese reading resources #japanese graded readers #Genki #genki graded readers #japanese book review #japanese book recommendation #jlpt n5 #absolute beginner level

9 notes · View notes

spanielfromspace · 2 years

Text

third ride back was the first show on the school circuit, and i won my o/f class & got reserve champ in my division?? which in fairness is the one with tiny baby jumps, but until two weeks ago i hadn’t used these muscles in 10 years so this was wildly unexpected

#i feel kinda guilty about being in the lowest division and beating actual beginners #but their level qualification policies are all based on show results anyway and i never really had those #this is actually my first champion of any kind & my first ever first!#back when i rode for real it was mostly helping with other people’s babies #so i’d very very occasionally get to take them to shows #but yeah like max twice a year (more often None) & v green horses #best i’d ever done was 3rd #ANYWAY i’m absolutely not the only one comfortable jumping much higher than this in this div so it’s chill #also this is a horse blog now oops #Bowie (horse)#Tazz #my face #ALSO tagging reminds me - the one i jumped on was named Bowie so immediately blessed <3 #return of the horse girl arc

6 notes · View notes

victarin · 10 months

Text

i fucking love people here you guys see this dinnerplate-faced daycare animatronic and go "what if they were detectives" and you make all this amazing astounding art and writing and concepts and designs like yeah . sure . im going to be normal abt this and im not going to think about the incredible levels of creativity involved im not gointg to think about how much i love seeing beginner artists using the dca as a way to learn new skills in art and character design Im not going to think about how much joy is in all those AUs and how much artists and writers put aspects of whatever they enjoy in those stupid ass clowns to make these incredible inspired stories and artworks absolutely Brimming with love for what they created &how much i love seeing people in the community huddling around those AUs and hyping them up and making More Art from those yeah im normal. whatever

#im a vanilla dca fan but dear lord some of you draw me in like a rat to cheese #fnaf dca #talking #i think early early on in the fandom i saw a post complaining about this #about some dca content being so far from the original concept that it just doesnt make sense #not to be cheesy on main but i think the love that people have for this character is insane and i think that if you make #incredible ass monster sea monster mermaid WHATEVER designs #and at the heart of it all its because of how mch you love the dca #then thats fucking fantastic #this is probably worded really fucking badly maybe i'll try again another time #its 3 am man im going to sleep

2K notes · View notes

mountain-maiden · 2 months

Text

Working Hard (Hardly Working)

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

WC: 4k

Summary: Joel helps you out at the gym and you thank him in the locker room ;)

Content: 18+ MDNI, slightly unhealthy relationship with food (blink and you’ll miss it), oral f!receiving, Joel Miller is a munch, unprotected piv, cream pie, reader is able to lift weights & incline walk, Joel is able to lift reader.

a/n: I wrote this instead of going to the gym :/ If you hate it please don't tell me 😘

You push open the doors to the gym, the familiar smell of metal and sweat invading your lungs as you step inside. You don’t necessarily enjoy working out, but you do enjoy sweet treats, and that makes working out a necessity. So, a few weeks ago, you begrudgingly got yourself a membership the gym closest to where you live, which happened to be Rock Hard Fitness. Unsurprisingly, it was an extremely male dominated environment.

After swiping your key card, you drop your stuff in the locker room and head to the dreaded cardio floor. You mildly dislike working out, but you absolutely hate cardio, and unfortunately for you, the weight floor is packed full of gym bros and meatheads who are not pleased to share their space with beginners who aren’t “on their level.” Despite the unwelcoming atmosphere, you can’t stand another day of incline walking; today you're going to lift weights or die trying.

From the cardio deck, you watch the people lifting, taking stock of the machines being used least and trying to pick out any attractive guys you can distract yourself with during your warmup. You really don’t enjoy the typical gym bro look, which means your efforts are most often for naught, but today someone different catches your eye. He’s definitely older than the average guy in the gym, broad shoulders, meaty thighs—you're basically drooling while watching him. Is it wrong to objectify people in the gym? Absolutely. Does that stop you from thirsting over the mystery gym dilf? Absolutely not.

After deeming yourself officially warmed up, you leave the safety of the cardio deck, jumping straight into the shark tank. Immediately, the booming bass of the speakers is leaking through your headphones, no longer allowing you to enjoy Kesha and Britney in peace. Great. You just take the headphones off, leaving them in your locker with the rest of your stuff before spying the gym equivalent of a unicorn: a squat rack, completely open.

You make a beeline for the rack and immediately set your sweatshirt and water bottle on the ground beside it, staking your claim. Not having to fight for a place to lift takes away half the battle of the weight deck; you breathe a sigh of relief as you survey the rest of the floor.

Now your only problem is that it’s been months since you last lifted, and you have absolutely no idea what weight to start with. You know you've lost strength, but surely you’re still able to lift your warm-up weight, right? The weights are added, and you line yourself up, taking a couple of breaths to steady yourself before standing up, moving the bar from the rack to your shoulders. Immediately, the weight is not what you remembered it being—much heavier, in fact—but you’re not about to immediately rerack and take weight off; that would be humiliating.

So, you steady yourself and dip down, enjoying the familiar strain of your muscles. After the first rep, you’re feeling alright, you can definitely handle this weight, you’ll just do less repetitions. You continue, reveling in the burn of your legs as you struggle to push yourself back up as you complete the first set. You’ve done the 6 reps you decided on, but you’re feeling good and you’re pretty confident you can do another so you go back down, determined to complete a seventh and immediately you can tell it’s a mistake.

You get stuck halfway back up, no matter how hard you strain, the weight won’t budge. You’ve never had to bail before, always having a spotter, you realize you don’t even know how to safely drop the weight. This is it, you’re going to humiliate yourself your first day in this gym and you’ll never be able to show your face again. Your legs are shaking, you’re panting with the effort to hold yourself up when your saving grace arrives.

You hear the low drawl of a southern accent and suddenly the weight has been halved, allowing you to stand up and rerack the weight. You turn around to thank your savior and are struck speechless when you find yourself face to face with mystery gym dilf.

“You alright there?” He asks, eyebrows scrunched with concern.

“Yeah, uh, yes, thank you, “ you answer breathlessly.

“S’really no trouble, can’t believe nobody helped you sooner,” He huffs, clearly offended on your behalf. Your face heats as you realize this means he saw how long you were stuck for.

“Well, everyone’s wrapped up in themselves, I guess that’s half the point of coming here,” you shrug, unbothered by your fellow gym goer’s lack of concern for your wellbeing.

“Gym bros,” you sigh in unison, and immediately burst into laughter.

“Can’t stand gym folk, but I stopped workin’ construction and now I actually gotta workout,” He explains, as if he needs to prove he isn’t one of the aforementioned gym bros.

“Me too,” you sigh, and burst into laughter at the skeptical look he gives you.

“No, I’m a barista, I just make myself too many drinks to not be working out,” you laugh and watch as his expression shifts to one of amusement.

“You’ve got jokes,” he chuckles, “I was wonderin’ what someone as pretty as you was doin’ workin’ construction.”

Your face heats at his compliment, “What? Your construction crew isn’t full of beautiful women?”

“Trust me darlin’, if you were on my crew I wouldn’t ‘a switched to management.” He leans up against the rack, watching you closely for your reaction to his bold comment.

“If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were coming on to me,” you smirk, watching the tips of his ears go pink despite him initiating the flirting.

“Is that okay?” He asks, boldness suddenly replaced with a self conscious demeanor, “I wasn’t aimin’ to make ya uncomfortable.”

“That is more than okay,” you try to remember his name and realize he never gave it.

“Joel,” He sticks his hand out and you hold back a small laugh at the formality.

You give him your name and when he repeats it, testing the word in his mouth, you don’t think it’s ever sounded better.

“Well, I was just wrappin’ up,” He scratches the back of his head, as if he is unsure how to proceed now that you’ve actually introduced eachother.

“If it’s not too much trouble, would you mind spotting me?” You ask, searching his face for any sign of displeasure, “I mean, I think we both know I could use one.”

He laughs at that. “Not any trouble at all, darlin’.”

Your breath hitches at the nickname. You’d never been one for petnames but the way it sounds coming from his mouth, his low southern drawl, the slight gravel of his voice, it has you fighting the urge to squeeze your thighs together. You look up after realizing you’d been silent just a little to long and spot the amused glint in his eyes.

“Alright, 2nd times the charm I guess,” you say before positioning yourself beneath the bar again, this time with the security of Joel’s warmth behind your back.

You lift the bar off the rack and hinge down, enjoying the familiar burn of pushing back up, it’s on about your third rep that you begin to struggle, taking slightly longer to straighten out. It’s at this point when Joel steps a little closer, not touching the bar but readying himself to step in.

“Atta girl,” Joel encourages as you push yourself up, the praise sending a jolt of heat to your core.

You need to lock in, you can’t get distracted because an attractive older man is giving you the praise your father never did. But, when you complete your next rep and he murmurs more encouragement, you swear he has to be fucking with you. There is no way he isn’t aware of the effect his words are having on you.

You do your second to last rep and he leans forward slightly, “Such a good girl.”

You damn near drop the weight, and when you complete the set and rerack the bar, you whip around and are met with Joel’s smirking face. He definitely knew what he was doing, and your look of annoyance seemed to only further his amusement.

“Somethin’ wrong?” His eyes widen as he feigns innocence. Fine, two can play that game.

“My form feels a little off, can you tell me if it looks alright?” Before he gets a chance to respond you’re already dropped down in a body weight squat, just close enough that your ass brushes the front of his shorts. You know if he didn’t want this he’d take a step back, but to your surprise he stays right where he is and you can feel the bulge in his shorts growing with each rep.

“Form looks alright to me, darlin’,” Joel rolls his eyes at your antics, “You grind on any man who spots you?”

“Just the ones I like,” you throw back before turning around, watching the spark of amusement in his eyes give way to darkening pupils.

“You want a hand with that?” You gesture to the growing outline of his cock against the confines of his shorts, “or a mouth?”

“I wouldn’t object,” Joel smirks, taking your hand and practically dragging you to the locker room.

You find an empty changing stall and you are immediately tearing at Joel’s clothes trying to remove the layers keeping you from the broad shoulders and thick thighs you knew he was hiding. Eventually you remember the reason you came in here and drop to your knees, pawing at his boxers.

“Fuck darlin’, ya gotta let me taste you,” Joel lifts you from your knees and sets you on the bench with the ease of someone moving a misbehaved kitten. He drops to his knees and that’s when you register what he means.

You freeze, shock apparent in your features because Joel stops pulling down your shorts to look at you, “Are you comfortable with this?” He asks, searching your features for an answer, “If you want to be done just say the word darlin’, no hard feelings.”

“No! Trust me I am more than comfortable with this,” you jump to reassure, “I’ve just never met a guy that actually wants to give me head.”

He scoffs before continuing his efforts to get your tight gym shorts off, “Idiots.”

You almost laugh at how immediately he’d resumed his work once he’d been given the go ahead. He groans when he sees the wet spot on your panties, a plain cotton thong, and before you have time to feel embarrassed he’s ripped them down your legs and is devouring you with a vigour you’ve never experienced.

Joel eats pussy like he’s starved, lapping at your slick like its the best thing he’s ever tasted, and if you asked him, he’d say it was. You thread your fingers through his hair and he groans when you pull.

“Tell me what you like,” He murmurs, parting with your pussy for the few precious seconds it takes to get the words out.

“What?” Your face scrunches with confusion and pleasure as his lips create suction against your clit.

“When I do something you like, tell me. When I do something you don’t like, tell me.” He directs before returning to his mouth to your pussy, swiping small circles around your clit with his tongue.

“Fuck, Joel,” you moan with complete disregard for the extremely thin door separating you from a heavily populated public space.

He switches from languid movements against your clit to lapping along your slit, never fully breeching the entrance, teasing you realize.

“Don’t tease,” you manage to get out, a tug of his hair accompanying your directive as you attempt to signal his efforts should return to your clit.

“Is there something you want?” He looks up, a smug smile painting his face. Of course he was on his knees and you were still going to be the one begging.

“What you were doing before,” you really don’t want to explicitly state what you want.

“You can grind on me in a public gym but you can’t tell me how you want your pussy eaten?” Joel chuckles, blatantly amused at your sudden prudeness.

“Stop being an asshole, you know what I want,” you know getting annoyed with the only man who’s been eager to give you head for wanting you to tell him how to do it best is completely unreasonable, but you also know he is purposefully being difficult.

“Here, I’ll even tell you what to say,” a mischevious glint appears in his eyes, “‘Joel, please lick my clit’, that’s all you gotta say darlin’”.

Your eyes widen at the crude language and he chuckles at your shocked expression, as if you weren’t already getting eaten out in the locker room of a public gym. You figure a few crass words couldn’t dig you into any deeper trouble.

You take a deep breathe and meet Joel’s eyes, irises taken over by the black abyss of his pupils. “Joel, please lick my clit.”

He supresses a shudder and you see his left hand reach down to palm his cock through his shorts before he smiles, “Your wish is my command, sweetheart.”

He dives in, and immediately his tongue is working over your clit, drawing figure eights and circles, never letting the pattern become predictable, never letting you get used to the stimulation.

You moan as his tongue works its magic, and his hands reach up and grasp your breasts, squeezing and massaging. Eventually, he slides a finger along your slit, and without warning, plunges it into you. You groan at the intrusion and buck against his mouth. He doesn’t stop licking, instead sliding his free hand down to try to relieve some pressure from his cock, palming himself desperately through his shorts to your whimpers and moans.

It isn't long before you feel the knot in your stomach start to build, and your breath starts to catch in your throat.

"Oh fuck, Joel I'm gonna cum," You warn him,

Joel groans into your pussy as he continues to lick and suck at your juices, speeding up his actions.

You're moaning and gasping, and suddenly your orgasm hits you. You buck against Joel's face and cry out. He moans at the feeling of you clenching around his fingers as he works you through your high, lapping more gently at your clit as you shudder through the waves of pleasure.

"Wow," you heave once you are able to catch you’re breath.

"Good?"

"Fucking great."

You lay there catching your breath, a satisfied smile still plastered on your face. You reach down and unzip Joel's shorts, pulling his cock free. It's hard and throbbing, almost painfully so, a testament to your performance and his excitement. You wrap your hand around it, marveling at the warmth and hardness of it.

“Darlin, we don’t have to,” Joel starts to protest before you shoot him a look that shuts him up.

“Joel Miller if you aren’t fucking me in the next 30 seconds I’ll have no choice but to report you for causing undue distress.”

He chuckles as you tug him forward by his shirt, “Yes ma’am.”

“I’m on the pill, and clean, so uh,” you know you really shouldn’t be making this offer.

“I’m clean too,” He replies, eyes fixed on your face.

“I’m okay not using a condom if you are,” you can feel your face heat at how terrible of an idea you know it is, and how bad you want it despite that knowledge.

“Fuck darlin’, I’m not gonna complain,” He groans, shivering as you begin to lightly stroke him.

Joel moves between your spread legs and your heart races as he lines himself up. You can feel the warmth of his cock against your entrance, slick with desire and Joel’s spit.

"Are you sure about this?" his voice is low and husky, and he laughs a little at your eager nod. Before you can make a snarky comment you’re gasping as he fills you, your walls stretching around him, accommodating his girth.

“Fuuuck,” you moan, concerned he might actually be splitting you in half. You’ve definitely never taken anyone this big before but you’d be damned if gave Joel the ego boost of knowing that.

“Takin’ it so well for me sweetheart,” he murmurs into your ear, holding still as you adjust to his size.

“Joel, move please,” you mean for it to be a demand but the breathy whine it comes out as has Joel chuckling as he brushes a strand of hair from your face.

He moves slowly at first, each thrust drawing a low moan from you. You paw at his shirt, suddenly deeming the extra layer an offense of the highest order. He chuckles and pulls the shirt off, giving you access to lick and suck across the expanse of his broad chest.

You kiss his chest, your lips leaving a wet trail to his nipple, which you roll between your teeth causing him to shudder. He picks up his pace, his hands wrapping around your waist, pulling you into him tighter. You wrap your legs around his hips, feeling his cock stretch you even more as he drives into you.

"Joel, fuck," you moan, your voice barely a whisper.

"You enjoyin’ yourself, sweetheart?" he asks between thrusts, his eyes locked on yours, a small smirk playing on his lips.

Before you can come up with a snarky response, he’s found a new angle that’s sending sparks through your body with every thrust. The only response you can manage is a strangled moan.

“Aw, are you a little cock dumb, darlin?” He asks with mock empathy, “Can’t even answer a yes or no question,” He scoffs, but the tender look in his eyes lets you know he’s not being serious.

Serious or not, you can’t understand how he still has the mental bandwidth to be teasing you.

He moves faster now, pounding into you, the sounds of your wetness filling the locker room. Your clit makes contact with coarse hairs above his cock, sending your hurtling towards your climax.

"Fuck, I’m close," you whisper, feeling the familiar growing tension in your core.

“Atta girl, are you gonna come for me sweetheart?” He coos, his gentle tone a complete contrast to his harsh thrusts.

“Joel, please,” you don’t even know what you’re begging for and before you can figure it out, you feel a wave of warmth crash over you as you orgasm, your body trembling as you buck and writhe underneath him.

“It’s okay, you’re okay sweet girl,” Joel holds you firm against the bench as you attempt to squirm away from the now overstimulating thrusts as he continues to fuck you.

Joel's pace quickens, his hips slapping against your skin with each deep thrust. With one hand on your hip, he uses the other to reach down and rub your clit, sending shockwaves of pleasure throughout your entire being. Your muscles clench around his cock as his own release nears.

"I’m gettin’ close," he growls, his voice thick with lust. "Where do you want it, sweetheart?”

You're breathless, sweat dripping down your skin as Joel thrusts into you, his words sending a fresh wave of arousal through you.

"Inside," you gasp, your eyes locked on his as he comes closer to the edge.

Joel adjusts his grip and with a few powerful thrusts, he slams deep inside of you, and you feel the explosion of his release like a firework going off, the sensation making your eyes roll back in pleasure.

"Oh fuck, Joel," you cry out, your own climax crashing over you again, making your limbs shake uncontrollably and your nails dig into his shoulders.

Eyes closed, he leans his forehead against yours as he continues to hold himself inside you, his cock twitching from his spent orgasm. When he pulls away you collapse into a boneless heap on the bench, and when he eyes your exhausted form you can tell his ego is growing every second you remain motionless.

You know you should get dressed before the cum begins to pool on the bench, or run down your legs, but you find yourself with a lack of motivation. You are quickly realizing your decision had not been a good one, as you now had to drive home with cum soaked panties. From Joel’s raised eyebrows he appeared to be having the same thought.

"You alright there?" Joel's voice carries a teasing lilt as he watches you flop around the bench.

You shoot him a playful glare, pulling your shorts back on. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever enjoyed cardio.”

"I think you have to be moving for it to be cardio, darlin’,” he chuckles, a smirk playing on his lips, “and all I saw you do was lay there and take it."

“I’ll have you know it’s a lot more tiring than it sounds,” you launch his shirt at his head in mock indignation.

He catches the balled-up t-shirt with a laugh, his eyes sparkling with amusement, “Whatever you say sweetheart.”

He pulls the shirt on before his expression shifts, his usual playful demeanor softening into something more earnest. As you pull your bra back on and glance back at him, you notice a hint of bashfulness in his eyes.

“Wha-”

“I-”

“You first,” you decide, staring expectantly at the man in front of you who almost appears to be blushing.

“I know this is kinda backwards,” he runs his fingers through his hair, “but, could I take ya to dinner sometime?”

You almost began to laugh at the realization his strange change in demeanor was just because he was scared to ask you out. The man could fuck you within an inch of your life in a public locker room, but asking you on a date was what made him nervous.

You quickly stifle your laugh when you see his face drop at your reaction, “Fuck Joel, of course I want to get dinner with you.”

His expression brightens instantly, a smile spreading across his face. “Really?” he asks, almost sounding incredulous.

“Yeah, really,” you confirm, feeling a warmth spreading in your chest at his genuine enthusiasm.

Joel reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, quickly unlocking it. “Could I get your number?” he asks, holding the phone out to you, “if you’re comfortable with that.”

“Definitely,” you say, taking the phone and typing in your digits before handing it back to him.

“Great,” he says, grinning as he saves your contact. “I’ll text you later then?”

“I’ll be waiting,” you reply, smiling back.

With that settled, the two of you gather your belongings and walk out of the locker room together. You are pretty sure nobody else was in there while you were fucking, but you can’t help but feel that everyone in the gym knows you just fucked this man you had met maybe 30 minutes ago. You look at Joel and he seems completely at ease so you try to channel his confidence as you walk through the gym and out the front doors. You step out into the fresh air and share one last smile with the man before you walk to your respective cars, both looking forward to getting to know each other outside of the confines of Rock Hard Fitness. Really, with a name like that, what other outcome could you have expected?

#joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller x you

513 notes · View notes

httpsserene · 7 months

Text

ᴛʜᴇ ᴠɪʀᴛᴜᴀʟ ʀᴀᴄɪɴɢ ʙᴏᴏᴛᴄᴀᴍᴘ ᴡ/ᴍᴠ33

📖ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ: you start showing interest in sim racing. max's only option is to turn you into the best virtual-racer there ever was--well besides himself, of course. 📖ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ: fluff. brain vomit. formatting (done on mobile💀). tiniest explicit reference. not edited. 📖ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 2k words 📖ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: max verstappen x fem!black!reader 📖ɢᴇɴʀᴇ: headcanons & smau 📖ꜱᴏᴜɴᴅᴛʀᴀᴄᴋ: word on the streets • key glock

ᴘʀᴇꜰᴀᴄᴇ: thought about this the whole time i was working. and then some man had the exact same voice as max and i genuinely almost dissolved into thin air because i felt like max was punishing me for thinking about this on the clock :) anyways, hope u enjoy the brainrot, loves !!!

wanna be on my taglist ? send me an ask !

and yes, i did make a masterlist !

*whispers* next f1 kinktober fic this weekend

you were probably unaware that sim racing was even a thing until you started dating max

like you’ve seen the funny little twitch clips of people playing driving simulators and being absolute menaces on the road, but you never knew actual virtual racing was a thing

anyways, whether or not you consider yourself a gamer in this scenario, you’ve always been pretty down to play videogames with max.

he absolutely annihilates you in FIFA, and no matter how much he tries to help you, you’re a lost cause

in return, you embarrass him in COD; he should’ve looked at your kd-ratio before he tried to play with you

but, sim racing 🧐

i mean, like, you never even fully considered that you could sim race at all, like not for leisure at least

max takes that shit seriously, he’s a part-time f1 driver full time simracing twitch streamer 😤

you are always around watching him practice on the sim, playing the f1 games, and even tuning in for his iracing competitions

at first, whenever max would stream you would probably be doing other things with your time

your hair, cleaning, self-care, cooking, etc.

eventually, you started migrating to sitting on the couch off-camera and watching him drive irl instead of having the stream on in the background

you were originally like, “oh it’s just because i wanna drool over his massive veiny hands” 🤤

but now it’s like “oh i wonder what each button he presses with his nicely proportioned fingers on the steering wheel does?”

and slowly it transforms from “wow my boyfriend is so cool” to “wait…this sim-racing thing is kinda cool”😵‍💫

now imagine you being like “lol wait a minute now” and being like i'm only interested in because my boyfriend loves it 🤥

in order to disprove this theory you start to ask max questions about virtual racing

not that you wouldn’t before, but they were fairly surface level; now you’re asking him about tactics, strategies, and track conditions etc.

and max is fucking thrilled 🫨🫨🫨 !!!

he eagerly answers all your questions (maxplaning 🥱), going way more into depth than you were expecting, but what did you think was going to happen

max is always happy to ramble about any small facet of virtual racing (doesn’t matter if it’s the sim, or iracing, or f1 2023) but

it makes him really pleased that you’re showing a genuine interest in it because most people don’t

you support him in anything he wants to do wholeheartedly, and listening and answering your well thought out questions has him falling head over heels for you again

so, he thinks nothing of it other than you being the best girlfriend he’s ever had and trying to learn more about what he loves

his previous girlfriends didn’t really care to understand how important vr racing was to him

they all just saw it as him playing a “game” and him wasting time when they could’ve been on dates or smth

anyways

everything is going fine and dandier, max continues to answer all of your vr racing questions, and you continue to watch him pilot the sim

until, he catches you watching a beginner’s guide on f1 2023 and get’s so jealous 😒

bro is all like “wtf, you’re watching some lame ass unranked gamer when i’m your professional driver boyfriend who does this for a living?? hell nah if you want to start playing i’ll teach you”

you’re just like, “nahhhh….i don’t want to waste your time trying to teach me, it’s not worth it. i’m not even a good driver irl, so—“

max shuts that down expeditiously

if his girlfriend wants to start vr racing, he only has one option

make you the best virtual racer there ever was (excluding him)

you’re wide-eyed like, “i just wanna go vroom vroom in circles for fun 😭”

max deathly serious, “that was never an option”

he enlists you in his virtual-racing training camp

if you are aware of the disney rapid training montage where the mc sings one song and suddenly they’re the best fighter ever, that’s how i imagined it

mulan, for example, i’ll make a man out of you

max reveals his inner george russell, he becomes a power point king

instead of date nights being cute pottery classes—they turn into him teaching you the parts of the car, the buttons on the wheel, f1 2023 settings breakdowns, reviewing iracing competitions etc.

eventually max finally allows you to play on the sim after he thinks you’ve got the theory down pretty good

you suck at first 🤗

but then you start clocking in some hours

after work, during your “lunch break”, using the sim while max is gone and playing during all the practice and media sessions

whenever max is gone, and you have any questions or ask for feedback on how to get better, you text him all about it, of course not expecting an immediate response back

max has told you before that he likes getting out of the car after a practice session and checking his phone to see all the missed messages from you with some wishing him luck and the others asking for his thoughts on your strategies

one day, he’s going for lunch with some of the other drivers and they start to make fun of him for how he’s stuck in his phone, heart-eyes and all as he rapidly texts you

they probably think that you’re sending him cute texts or photos like that one time they caught him looking at photos of you and learned he had a locked photo album of you on his phone ☠️

max remains unbothered under their teasing thinking, “they don’t know my gf can out pace them by .200 in f1 2023”

max even personally bothers christian into getting him another sim for you

christian is so tired of you two, max won’t leave him ALONE

i think max would text his team principal screenshots of your lap times and make jokes about it

“if checo keeps dnf-ing, my gf can fill in”

christian gets you the goddamn sim 😒

y’all procrastinate on building and calibrating it, max more so because it means his chair would stop smelling like you 🥺

you get it set up, but you still play on his sim every once in a while after he told you that because you’re a simp

he goes to stream one day, planning on practicing with the redline team for an upcoming iracing event

and the man almost BREAKS HIS LEGS trying to sit down because you forgot to move the chair back after you were done using it 😭😭

in between his groan of pain he let’s it slip “ow fuck, my girlfriend forgot to move the seat back after she was done”

chat goes ducking crazy

yooo, what? ur gf sim races???

is she good???

max is like “hell fucking yeah my girlfriend is great sim racer, she could replace one of the boys at redline if she wanted too!”

(team redline sweats anxiously, mics now suspiciously silent)

max continues, “well she is not as great as me, but she’s good i guess”

stream chat “they are going to have babies that completely dominate f1” “if their babies are born in the netherlands we will be stuck in purgatory cursed with hearing the dutch anthem forever”

max continues with his practice but everyone is begging to see you play, even some of the redline guys are asking questions

they wanna know if they’re really at risk of you stealing their seat

max gives up and turns to you on the couch with a smile and says, “i will beg, schatje. do not put it past me, we all want to see you drive. some people are saying i’m lying so you have to prove them wrong🙇🏼”

you’re like “what 😅 no 😧i suck 🤭 at this 🤗” but you’re already getting up and walking over to boot up your sim

the urge to flex on people and embarrass them is something both you and max share

max opens f1 2023 and starts a party for just you two, and you both decide to do quali laps at zandovoort

you do your hot lap first, and max goes after you

max y’ know, probably thinks that he can take it relatively easier on you, there’s no reason to put 100% effort into something for fun, so he puts in 95% 😀 (competitive boy)

and you know that one nepenthez meme

that’s how this goes

max is like, already rambling to the stream “yeah that’s a comfortable p1, she still has a lot to learn before she can beat a world champ—P2??!!!! 😧😳”

you’re just in the background in your sim chair, turned facing the camera with an innocent little smirk smile on your face ☺️

you got pole by .050, and chat starts bullying max, the redline boys laughing hysterically in his headphones

max requests a rematch and promptly annihilates you :)

i like to imagine that eventually you start joining max’s stream and the two of yous start having little racing tournaments whenever you guys have the time

omg could you imagine the little championship ceremony where you put party hats on jimmy and sassy and have fake little tiny gold trophies for whoever wins 🥹

imagine one day ‼️ you actually start doing iracing events, and just working your way up to being one of the best 😌

ANYWAYS to wrap it up, best teacher max ever

virtual racing 🤝 strong relationships

twitter • today

instagram

maxverstappen1 • 32 mins ago

liked by yninstagram, danielricciardo3, and 7,324,122 ofhers

maxverstappen1 the only woman for me 🧎🏼

tagged yninstagram

view comments

yninstagram baby. baby—😭😭😭😭

➥ maxverstappen1 i love you

➥ yninstagram what the fuck has gotten into you 😳 i love you, maxy 🫶🏽

user the way ‼️ he cradles ‼️ her head 😭😭

danielricciardo3 this genuinely the sappiest thing max has ever said

➥ maxverstappen1 do not worry daniel you are the only man for me

➥ user my therapist will be hearing about this

user the fact that max personally handmade that meme 💀

user never thought i’d see the day that max uses the kneeling emoji

➥ maxverstappen1 i’m on my knees for her more often than you think

➥ user alRIGHT go ahead and clock out for me 😒

➥ redbullracingf1 do you remember the media training we had two days ago, max?

taglist: @lorarri | @saintslewis | @cherry2stems | @sweetpiccolo-blog

793 notes · View notes

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys · 4 months

Note

With Duolingo getting enshittified, do you know any similar alternatives for learning Welsh? I started last year but stopped after moving here because house move, spoons, etc. and all the news about it is really putting me off restarting on duo.

If vocab is what you want, there's an app called Influent that has a Welsh option. It's paid - I think it costs a fiver? So not much. But it's great for vocab, and gamified, so that's fun.

Actual courses:

learnwelsh.cymru is the official Welsh Government supported website to hook you up with any course. At any level, too, from absolute entry level beginner to "Used to speak it but haven't in a while so need to polish up". You can find in person courses, online courses, long ones, short ones, free ones, paid ones, ones designed for employment (including specific fields), Saturday workshops, residentials, digital resources... There's tonnes. Absolutely tonnes. And, if you want one of the paid new beginner ones, they're currently discounted to half price until the end of January with the code CYMRU24. Obviously, free ones are shorter and much more basic than paid, but they do exist.

Your local Menter Iaith will very likely have some options; go along and ask (you can do that in English, they'll be fine with it).

SaySomethingInWelsh is always always the best. It uses a completely different language learning method and it churns out fluent speakers like you wouldn't believe. This is because their course focuses on verbal and oral language acquisition skills rather than the written word. Now, they used to achieve this, in the online courses, by means of audio recordings, but they have finally built their own AI NO DON'T SWITCH OFF COME BACK they built it themselves. It hasn't replaced anyone, and won't. It just makes the audio recordings into something more interactive and therefore more effective. And currently if you sign up to it, you get it for a tenner a month (this will sometime soon be rising to £30 a month, but if you sign up while it's still a tenner they'll never put you up to the £30).

Or, they do an in-person intensive course, which is 100% effective and incredible but costs £2000 a day. Like, it will make you fluent in weeks, but that's way too steep for the likes of us peasants.

And, I expect others will probably add in the notes any others I've missed. So keep an eye there. Good luck!

#asks #wales!#closed for cleaning on mondays #linguistics

392 notes · View notes

kinnbig · 2 months

Text

✨ Simple Gif Colouring for Beginners ✨

I wrote up my basic gif colouring process for a friend recently, but a couple of people here mentioned they'd also find it helpful! so, as requested, this is a beginner-friendly walkthrough of the way I colour my gifs :) it's aimed at brand new gif makers with no prior experience with photoshop or photo editing.

when I first started gif making I found colouring and photoshop in general suuuper daunting, so I've tried to simplify everything here as much as possible. hopefully this will be relatively easy to follow and not too intimidating!

a couple of things to begin with:

I'm only talking about colouring here - this is not a full gif making tutorial. I've linked to some of my favourites of those here!

I personally like to make bright, 'clean' looking gifs with vibrant but natural colours, so that is the style of colouring this tutorial is geared towards. most of gif colouring is subjective and about personal taste - the only thing that I'd say is possible to get wrong is skin tones, which I talk about a lot in this guide.

as I mostly gif Thai dramas, most of the advice is geared towards colouring for East Asian/South East Asian skin tones - but the techniques should be fairly universally applicable (and here are some tutorials that talk about gif colouring for other skin tones).

I'm not an expert! I'm not claiming this is the best or the only way to colour gifs - it's just how I do it.

this post is very image-heavy. if the images aren't loading (or the gifs are running slowly or cutting/looping weirdly), then try viewing the post in its own tab (rather than on the your dash or someone's blog) and refreshing the page.

okay, full walkthrough beneath the cut!

contents:

1. intro a. natural gif colouring goals b. very very basic colour theory 2. super simple colouring (the essentials) a. curves b. selective colour (and skin tone correction) c. hue/saturation d. saving and reusing colouring e. another simple colouring example 3. other adjustment layers a. brightness/contrast b. levels c. vibrance d. colour balance e. channel mixer 4. troubleshooting a. curves b. saturation 5. fin!

1. intro

the colouring part of gif making can be super overwhelming, especially if (like me when I first started!) you're completely new to photoshop and/or have no experience with colour theory or photo/video editing.

if you're opening photoshop and making gifs for the first time, I highly recommend getting used to making a few basic, uncoloured gifs to begin with. just to practice, rather than post anywhere (though you can always come back and colour them later if you want) - but it'll make the rest of the process much easier if you're already beginning to get used to working in timeline mode of photoshop. give yourself a bit of time to practice and get a feel for things like how many frames you tend to like in a gif, where you like to crop them for the best loop, what kind of aspect ratio you like etc* - so that you're not trying to navigate all of that for the first time on top of everything else!

* frames: for me between 60-90 frames is ideal, but 40-120 frames is the absolute min-max I'd personally use in a normal gifset loops: for the smoothest loops, try to avoid cutting someone off mid-movement or mid-word if possible. aspect ratio: for full-size (540px) gifs, I tend to go for either 8:5 (slightly 'skinnier' gifs), 7:5, or 5:4 (particularly big, thick gifs lmao)

✨ natural gif colouring goals

part of what can be so daunting about starting gif making is not knowing where to start or what you want to achieve. this is definitely something that gets easier with practice - the more gifs you make, the more you'll get a feel for what kind of look you like and the more instinctively you'll know how to get there. it also helps to see if any gif makers you like have made "before and after colouring" posts - these can help with getting a sense of the kinds of changes made through gif colouring. here's one I made!

in general, I like to make my gifs bright and 'clean' looking, with vibrant but natural colours. these are the things I'm usually hoping to achieve with colouring:

brighten dark scenes

remove muddy, yellowish lighting or filters

saturate colours

correct any skin lightening filters or overexposure

make lighting and colours as consistent as possible between gifs within a single gifset, especially gifsets featuring gifs from multiple scenes/episodes/videos

this guide is focusing on natural colouring, but of course there are many cool ways to make stylised/unnaturally coloured gifs. imo you'll need to master these basics first, but if you want to learn how to do things like change the background colour of gifs or use gradients or other cool effects, then @usergif's resource directory has loads of super helpful tutorials!

✨ very very basic colour theory

[disclaimer! I don't know shit about fuck. I do not study light or art. this is just an explanation that makes sense to me exclusively for the purposes of gif making.]

the primary colours for light/digital screens are red, blue, and green. having all three colours in equal measures neutralises them (represented by the white section in the middle of the diagram).

so to neutralise a colour within a gif, you need to add more of the colour(s) that are lacking.

in practice this usually means: the scene you want to gif is very yellow! yellow is made of red and green light, so to neutralise it you need to add more blue into your gif.

it can also mean the reverse: if you desaturate the yellow tones in a gif, it will look much more blue.

looking at the colour balance sliders on photoshop can make it easier to visualise:

so making a gif more red also means making it less cyan.

removing green from a gif means adding magenta.

taking yellow out of a gif will make it more blue.

tl;dr:

neutralise yellows by adding blue (and vice versa)

neutralise reds by adding cyan (and vice versa)

neutralise green by adding magenta (and vice versa)

2. super simple colouring (the essentials)

starting with a nice sharpened gif in photoshop in timeline mode. (these are the sharpening settings I use!)

some scenes are much harder to colour than others - it helps to start out practising with scenes that are bright/well-lit and that don't have harsh unnaturally coloured lights/filters on. scenes with a lot of brown/orange also tend to be harder.

I usually save a base copy of my gif before I start colouring just in case I end up hating it, or find out later that it doesn't quite fit right into a set and need to redo it etc.

so here is my base gif!

it's an okay gif, but it has a bit of a yellow tint to it that I want to reduce.

colouring is easiest to do in adjustment layers, which can be found under layer -> new adjustment layer - or for me they are here:

there are lots of different types of adjustment layers that do lots of different things - but for me the absolute essentials for colouring are curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation.

I also use brightness/contrast, levels, exposure, vibrance, colour balance, and channel mixer sometimes, depending on the gif - but I use curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation on every single gif.

✨ curves layer

the first thing I always do is a curves layer. when you first open one it will look like this:

first I usually click the ‘auto’ button, just to see what happens. sometimes it makes a big difference (it usually brightens the gif a lot) - but on this gif it didn’t do much.

if it had made the gif look nicer then I would have kept it and added a second curves layer on top to do the rest of these steps.

the next step is selecting the white and black points with the little eyedropper tools.

the bottom eyedropper lets you pick a white point for the gif. click somewhere super light on the gif to see what happens - for this gif, I clicked on the lampshade on the left. if it looks weird, I just undo it and try somewhere else - it usually takes a few goes to find something that looks good.

here's what that did to the gif:

then I pick the top eyedropper and use it to pick a black point by clicking somewhere really dark, again playing around until I find a black point that looks good.

here's what the gif looks like after picking the white and black points:

this can take some experimenting, but you can make super easy drastic changes to your gif just with this. in this case, the curves layer took out a lot of that yellowy tint.

and this is what the curves graph looks like now:

you can click and drag those lines to make further changes if you want - I usually leave them alone though. the colours of the lines indicate which colours have been changed in the gif - for example, you can see from that steep blue line on the graph that blue has been added to neutralise those yellows.

next I usually do another curves layer and just press the ‘auto’ button again to see what happens. usually it brightens the gif a bit more, which I like.

‼️if nothing is working: usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :( the troubleshooting section at the end goes over some options, including starting with a levels layer instead.

✨ selective colour (and skin tone correction)

skin tones are made up of a mixture of yellow and red.

removing yellow (or adding blue or red) to a gif will make the skin-tones too red - and removing red (or adding cyan or yellow) to a gif will make the skin-tones too yellow.

adding blue to this gif with the curves layer took out the yellowy tint, which I wanted - but it also took the yellows out of Kim's skin tone, which I don’t want. so I need to put yellow back into the skin tones specifically - without putting it back into the rest of the gif.

selective colour layers let you select an individual colour and adjust the levels of other colours within that colour. you can change how yellow the green shades are, or how much cyan is in the blues, for example.

I need to add yellow back into the red tones to correct the skin tones on this gif. this is the case for most gifs in my experience - the vast majority of the time, unless a scene is very heavily tinted in another colour, a curves layer will add blue/remove yellow.

in the 'colors' dropdown, select the 'reds' section and drag the 'yellow' slider higher - this will add more yellow into just the red shades within the gif.

the amount of yellow you need to add back into the reds depends on how much yellow was taken out of the gif initially - I just play around with the slider until it looks right. if you're not sure, it helps to have some neutrally-coloured (not white-washed!) reference photos of the people in your gif to compare to.

here's the result. Kim's skin is a lot less pink toned and much more natural looking:

✨ hue/saturation

this adjustment layer lets you adjust the hue and saturation of the gif as a whole, and also of each colour individually.

I don't use the hue or lightness sliders unless I'm trying to do something more complicated with the colouring.

clicking the dropdown menu that says 'master' lets you edit the saturation of each colour individually. this is useful if your gif is still super tinted in one colour.

I thought the yellows on this gif were still slightly too bright, so I switched to the yellow channel and desaturated them slightly. (remember if you do this then you need to go back to selective colour and add more yellow into the red skin tones to balance out the desaturation!)

then I increased the 'master' saturation of all the colours to +5:

I usually find the right amount of saturation is somewhere between +5 and +12, but it depends on the gif.

‼️if the gif feels undersaturated, but the saturation slider isn't helping/is making the colours worse, try a vibrance layer instead.

done!

✨ saving and reusing colouring

you can copy and paste adjustment layers between gifs to make your colouring even across each of your gifs for one scene - so if you're making a set of multiple gifs of the same scene, or you think you might want to gif the same scene again in the future, you can save it as a psd so you can reuse the colouring again later.

each gif's colouring will then still need tweaking - different cameras/angles/shots of the same scene can still start out with slightly different colouring.

I recommend uploading the gifs as a draft post on tumblr so you can see what they all look like next to each other and catch any inconsistencies.

✨ another one! (speedrun!)

HI KEN!

the white point for the curves layer was in the window behind them.

the curves layer removes the muddy yellow tint, but again it makes their skin tones (especially Ken's) very red toned, which is adjusted by the selective colour layer.

3. other adjustment layers

imo many many gifs can be coloured really nicely with just those three adjustment layers, but some need different adjustments.

✨ brightness/contrast

pretty self explanatory!

I personally usually avoid using the 'brightness' slider because I rarely like the effect - I only tend to use the 'contrast' one.

the 'auto' button is sometimes useful though, especially if you’re struggling with the curves layer.

✨ levels

levels alters the white and black points of the gif, like curves - but unlike curves it doesn't also alter other colours.

use the sliders beneath the graph to alter how dark/light the gif is. you can slide the black slider further to the right to make the blacks darker, and the white slider to the left to make the whites lighter.

levels is a good place to start if your curves layer isn't working.

(I'm going to hit the image limit for this post lol so here are some screenshots of a table I made to demonstrate this rather than actual gifs. sorry!)

on both sides, I dragged the sliders up to where the big jumps are on the graph - this is usually a good place to start!

✨ vibrance

vibrance... makes the colours more vibrant. it's more subtle than saturation.

it's really helpful for gifs that feel grey. sometimes adjusting saturation just makes the greys kind of weirdly tinted, but a vibrance layer can fix that.

vibrance is much more subtle!

✨ colour balance

colour balance affects the overall balance of colours within a gif.

it's good for scenes with heavy tints.

I tend to stick to the 'midtones' dropdown, but you can also alter the colour balance within the shadows and highlights if you want.

✨ channel mixer

I avoided channel mixer for such a long time because it scared me. but it's great for scenes that are very heavily tinted in one colour.

basically, it works with the levels of red, green, and blue within a gif. you select an output colour and then play around with the levels of the colour you selected within each other colour.

kind of the reverse of selective colour?

so in the 'blue' channel, the levels of blue are at 100%, and the levels of red and green are at 0% - but you can impact how much blue is in the reds and greens and blues.

this tutorial explains it well - but imo the best way to get to grips with channel mixer is just to play around with it a bit (sorry)

(when I made this guide for my friend, I also made a slightly more complicated gif colouring walk-through that included using channel mixer. there isn't space to include it within this post, but if anyone is interested I could always upload it as an 'intermediate' gif colouring tutorial - lmk!)

4. troubleshooting

‼️curves

usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :(

for example, with this base gif:

using many of the brightest points as a white point turn it wacky colours, like this:

yikes :(

some options for these cases:

try brightening the gif first with the 'auto' button on the curves layer or with a levels layer. having a brighter gif to start with can give you better options for picking a white point.

try finding an alternate, whiter/brighter white point. look for places the light reflects - on this gif, using the light on Porsche's cheekbone works well as the white point. it also helps to find places that would be white if the scene wasn't tinted - the lightest part of a white shirt is often a good place to start, for example.

skip the curves layer, and instead use a levels layer to alter your white/black points, and colour balance or channel mixer to balance the colours.

‼️over/undersaturation

if your gif (especially the skintones) is looking a little washed out or lifeless, it might be undersaturated. boost that saturation - or if that's not working, try a vibrance layer.

oversaturation is often easiest to spot in the mouths and ears of any people in a gif. if the mouths are looking unnaturally, vibrantly red, then you've gone too far with the saturation.

5. fin!

and done! I hope this was coherent helpful to somebody.

if there's anything that I've missed or that doesn't make sense pls feel free to shoot me an ask or a message and I'll do my best to help! I've also collated a bunch of additional reading/resources below.

happy gifmaking 🥰

✨ some links!

photoshop basics by @selenapastel

gifmaking for beginners by @hayaosmiyazaki

gifmaking guide for beginners by @saw-x

dreamy's gif tutorial by @scoupsy-remade (includes instructions on how to blur out burned-on subtitles or annoying video graphics)

beginner's guide to channel mixer by @aubrey-plaza

how to fix orange-washed characters by aubrey-plaza

colour correcting and fixing dark scenes by @kylos

does resampling matter? by usergif

how to put multiple gifs on one canvas by @fictionalheroine

watermarking using actions by @wonwooridul

resource directory by @usergif

#i got a couple of asks about this so i figured i'd type it up as a post #it's been sitting in my drafts for a while now though i'm so sorry omg.#i had to replace my laptop and it took me a while to get round to downloading photoshop on the new one #but i hope this is helpful!!#gif making #tutorial #photoshop tutorial #colouring tutorial #coloring tutorial #gif colouring #gif coloring #photoshop resources #gif tutorial #gif resources #userbunn #uservik #darcey.txt #darcey.gif #usergif

320 notes · View notes