Man, I Want To Talk About My Characters Now But Don’t Know Where To Start.

I wanted to do something with the sad face, so her bauxite fell out of her pocket. One of the kittens tried jumping onto my desk at Akagi, so I reposed her and when I was swapping hands I thought it was funny having the bowl tucked into her arm. She’s gonna win the Super Bowl.

This exactly

the ultimate creative struggle:

wanting to talk about your story/comic and get feedback

not wanting to spoil what happens in your story/comic

One of Graph's drawings from last year that I started to color up and never really finished.

The background of the first image is traced from a photo of Sapphire Beach in Saint Thomas, USVI. The weather was really humid that day and it was apparent in the photo, so I used colors from a nice day over at Megan's Bay because nobody likes gray beach photos do they? The islands in the back were barely visible in the original picture. I'm not even sure why Lass would be at Sapphire with that board other than maybe paddling around and looking at fish, Frenchman's Reef has much better waves and even those don't get very big. As for fish and coral, Secret Harbor (Apparently now named Paradise Harbor because mass tourist influx) used to have lots of coral and fish, but tourists, being the dipshits they are, killed a lot of it off.

The flat colors are done, but I intended to add shading and clean up the water, but that never happened and I haven't touched the files in months. The shading should also be less purple and more blue. It'd look a lot better on the clouds that way and the rest of the image too I'm sure. Gray shading just doesn't look that good.

Scammer Targeting Tumblr Artists

The title says it all really. So if nothing else, please share and reblog this post to raise awareness for those that might be caught out - both artists and followers. For a TL:DR, please look at the bottom of the post

What is happening?

Right now, there is at least one person actively impersonating multiple artists across tumblr in an effort to scam their followers into paying for fake ‘cheap commissions’. The scammer will clone a tumblr, usually using a slight change to the url/account name to look like the real deal. They will then message people directly through Tumblr with messages along the lines of “Hey, i’m doing cheap commissions right now. DM me to get one”. Naturally, this is ends up just being a way to take their money without giving anything back in return.

Who does this affect?

Everyone. Simple as that. As long as the scammer in question works unopposed, they are free to spread their influence and continue to scam more people. Even if you haven’t been targeted yet, it does not mean you are safe or immune. Several artists have already fallen victim to this scammer, and I encourage any artists that have to reblog this post with the details of their affected account(s) and the ones the scammer has set up.

How can we stop this?

Tumblr, like many other social media platforms, seems to care very little about ‘minor’ occurences like this one, and despite reaching out directly to them over a week ago through multiple avenues of contact - they have refused to comment on the situation, provide a recommended response for users, or take action on behalf of those already affected. Despite this, there are still tools at our disposal that we can use to make this scam more difficult, and to increase its visibility to those within Tumblr staff that are required by policy to take action. Tumblr has the following to say on the topic of impersonation: Confusion or Impersonation. Don’t do things that would cause confusion between you or your blog and a person or company, like registering a deliberately confusing URL. Don’t impersonate anyone. While you’re free to ridicule, parody, or marvel at the alien beauty of Benedict Cumberbatch, you can’t pretend to actually be Benedict Cumberbatch. They then provide a link to this online form that you can fill out if you suspect someone’s identity is being confused. Unfortunately, this can only be filled out if you are the victim of impersonation. In other words, only the artists can fill this out legitimately. So, what about the followers and users of tumblr whom aren’t being impersonated? Our most valuable tool in this online platform is the platform itself. It enables us to spread our word near-virally across all the many sub-communities on Tumblr with remarkable efficiency for a user-driven system. We can take advantage of that effect to increase awareness of the situation. Even if you - the one reading this right now - aren’t an artist or don’t know an artist, the act of reblogging this post or sharing it directly with friends improves it’s ‘ranking’ in popularity increasing its chances to be seen by more people. We don’t need everyone on Tumblr to see the post for it to be effective, just like we don’t need the entirety of the human population of the world to be immune to a disease for that disease to be rendered ineffective or eradicated. If enough people are aware, the likelihood of pulling off a successful scam increases dramatically reducing efficiency to a point that it no longer becomes profitable to continue.

Why should I care?

It disheartens me to say this, but of the many artists I contacted directly over the past week to warn about this issue many of them refused to listen or dodged the responsibility with lines like;

“I’m not being impersonated, so it doesn’t affect me”

“I’m just one person. I can’t make an impact”

“I need to take care of my community. Other people can look after theirs”

This is honestly disappointing that so many artists or art-rebloggers care so little as to intentionally wave the responsibility of keeping their followers and fellow artists safe from this, that they cannot spare 10 seconds of their time to share an informative post. I’m not here to bash artists, but it is time that everyone takes responsibility for their own communities, and of those around them. Artists: You have a responsibility to ensure that your followers and fans aren’t being abused by someone who may impersonate you. If they succeed, your reputation will be damaged, and your followers will resent you. Your followers are also almost guaranteed to be following other artists meaning your efforts can spread beyond your own circle of influence, so don’t be naive when you think you have little effect. Followers: You have just as much responsibility to be aware of those that might try to scam you or your fellow followers. Don’t just sit in silence when you see something wrong: Ignoring the issue only makes it more resilient to our efforts to stop it. You are the vocal majority if you just use your voices to be heard!

TL:DR

A scammer is impersonating artists and scamming money from their followers under the guise of ‘cheap commissions’. If we ignore the issue, it will get worse. Every single person that reads this can afford to spend just 10 seconds to reblog and share this post. Those 10 seconds can save others from being scammed for hundreds of dollars. Reblog & Share

Got Kinugasa the last night before work which lets me do like 4 quests I was stuck on. Tonight I saw someone get Zuikaku by doing 666/666/666/666 so I thought I'd try it for shits and giggles before going to bed. It worked.

I’m actually kind of excited that there’s a new Macross show coming. Are those VF-19s being used as the grunt ships now? Does that mean there’s going to be an enemy powerful enough for the ‘overpowered’ VF-19 to be viable?

This thing is really fun to play with, but it seems like no matter what I can’t get the footing quite right and the rounded sides of her boat shoes means she can’t stand unassisted in a wide stance

Some photos from Planet Comicon 2014. A couple of people from last year and my sister taking pictures with people and some stuff I got

The UN Spacy emblem has some misthreading asgfjhkjllk;

I grabbed a couple of Touhou fangames yesterday after cerastes was posting about Labyrinth of Touhou 2 and I found this one, Youyou Kengeki Musou, and holy shit is it fun. I just did a run through on Easy to see how it played and the first level is almost no platforming and as you go you get more and more platforming elements and the bosses keep a lot of their danmaku from the main games. Seeing Icicle Fall along the ground in 3D is really funny. Even on easy there were a few bosses I had to retry a few times. I'm gonna slap on the English Patch and play it again on a higher difficulty.