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References - Blog Posts
hot artists don't gatekeep
I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard
Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.
Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.
Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.
Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.
SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.
SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.
Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.
Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.
Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.
Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.
Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.
Christopher Gray, 21, a Drexel University junior and CEO/Founder of Scholly, has found a way to make finding those scholarships easier.
Gray himself has been very successful in finding scholarship funds. He is known as the “Million-Dollar Scholar” after being awarded $1.3 million in scholarships.
Over the past three years, Gray has also helped other families manually scour through databases, and figured, “Hey, I need something that can help. There has to be a faster way.”
Gray developed the answer in the form of Scholly, an app that uses eight specific parameters, like state, GPA, or race, to instantly filter through a deep directory of scholarships available for the prospective student.
“It’s extremely simple,” says Gray and that ultimately was the goal.
“The fact that it’s on the mobile (phone) really hits the audience,” says Soham Bhonsle, 21, a Scholly user and Drexel University senior. “It serves the need of its time. We want it on the go.”
Nicholas Pirollo, chief technological officer for Scholly, also offers that apps optimize searches compared to standard websites because they are more tailored to specific needs.
A recent study, conducted by Sallie Mae, shows that 39% of families used scholarship funds to pay for college during the 2012-2013 academic year and Scholly connects users with relevant scholarships in about five minutes. Scholly’s database is updated monthly to remove scholarships that are no longer available, add scholarships, and refresh deadlines.
There is money out there to go to school. Scholly has more than 10,000 downloads of the $0.99 app found in the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Scholly’s costs are intentionally positioned at an affordable price to serve more people that need it and boast a potential big payoff.
“Pay 99 cents and you may get $5,000 or $6,000 in scholarships.”
Scholly helps put the power of funding your education in your hands.
LISTEN UP MOTHER FUCKERS
SEE THIS WEBSITE?
ITS CALLED WOLFRAM ALPHA
THIS IS THE BEST GODDAMN WEBSITE FOR ACADEMIC SHIT. FUCK GOOGLE.
THIS MOTHERFUCKER WILL LET YOU SEARCH “HOSPITAL BEDS IN CHAD VS. IRAN”
AND IT GIVES YOU A STRAIGHT GODDAMN ANSWER
MAYBE YOU’RE NOT INTERESTED IN DOCTORNESS OF THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES COOL SHIT
HAVING TROUBLE WITH MATH?
HOLY SHIT
OR MAYBE YOU WANNA DICK AROUND
WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT
Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?
Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.
Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.
Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?
Let’s say you wanted to glue fabric to wood, but what do you use? What about glass to paper? This to That lets you choose two things you want to glue and lists what types of glue is best. (Because people have a need to glue things to other things!)
Hey there, Mr. Copperbadge! A) I love your fanfic and your blog. B) While that is completely true, I am also buttering you up to ask a favor: I have seen several posts of yours where you discuss interviewing for jobs and resume/cover letter writing. Is there any chance you could post the links to those items again? I tried to search the blog myself but my vision is horrible and I had to give up. Thanks bunches; I am sure you get asked for this all the time.
A JOB HUNTING MASTER POST. What a splendid idea!
Here are some handy links what I have gathered:
Sam’s Guide To Organizing Your Job Hunt
Always Apply Regardless Of Requirements
Lie A Little If You Have To
The Confidence Gap Exists
How To Talk (Or Not) About Mental Illness On An Interview
Salary Requirements Are A Trap
How I draw skin Part 2: DON”T DRAW NATIVE PEOPLE WITH RED SKIN!!!! A tutorial
For the first tutorial on how I draw skin, see the post here.
But seriously, I’ve seen too many drawings of Native characters with literal red/pink skin to count so just in case some of you are having troubles with drawing Native people, I’ve provided a guide for you. Please take my swatches if it helps!! and no more red skinned people, please
Disclaimer: this tutorial is mainly about the artistic depictions of Indigenous Peoples in North America, where the slur and redskin caricature originated, but it would still be racist to draw other non-North/Central/South American Indigenous groups like this so…..don’t.
Edit: please stop telling me about how Native people can be pale, I’m a whitepassing & pale Native myself and nowhere do I say people shouldn’t draw Natives pale at all. The “too light” section is about whitewashing Pocahontas specifically. Don’t whitewash brown characters, but don’t draw Natives red either.
Random mansion generator
The Procgen Mansion Generator produces large three-dee dwellings to toy with your imagination, offering various architectural styles and other options. Each mansion even comes with floorplans:
https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/random-mansion-generator.html
A quick history of Vietnamese women’s fashion (part 2: 16th-18th century North Vietnam)
Before we dive in, please note that Hanoi (and by extension North Vietnam) at that time was called Tonkin (東京).
During 16th century, the fashion of North Vietnamese women was similar to that of South Vietnamese women as recorded in Boxer Codex (see Part 1). Below is the relief of the Mạc dynasty’s Dowager Empress Vũ Thị Ngọc Toàn, dated 1562, a National Treasure at Trà Phương pagoda in Hải Phòng province. In the relief, she is wearing an yếm undergarment, with thường skirt and đối khâm coat.
(Image source)
Moving on to the 17th century, in Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts, we can find the statue of Ducchess Nguyen The My dated 1632 depicting noble North Vietnamese women’s fashion. She wore her hair long, with yếm undergarment and đối khâm coat, but in between the layers she also wore a giao lĩnh cross collar robe. Her clothes are richly trimmed with gold decorations.
(Image source)
How about the common North Vietnamese (Tonkin, 東京) woman? The earliest illustration of them I can find is in the Japanese book “Vạn quốc nhân vật đồ thuyết” (Illustrations and explanations about characters from 10,000 countries, 1720). If you are asking yourself if this illustration could instead be about Tokyo (as its Chinese character is also 東京) woman, this could not be the case. In 1720, Tokyo was known as Edo (江戸). It was only in 1868 during the Meiji Restoration that Edo was renamed to Tokyo. Back to the illustration, we can see that during this time North Vietnamese common women wore a giao lĩnh cross collar robe outside, with two layers of thường skirts, with the outer layer shorter than the inner layer.
(Image source)
Illustration of North Vietnamese women in “Hải ngoại chư đảo đồ thuyết” (Illustrations of foreign islands) is also similar. This book is dated to the 18th century too, but I cannot find the exact year.
(Image source)
There is a wide-ranging variety of patterns possible on the giao lĩnh cross collar robe, as can be seen in the below tố nữ đồ (素女圖) also from the 18th century. These women wear their robes loosely so that the top part of yếm undergarment is shown like the statue of Duchess Nguyen The My and their robes is long enough to cover their thường skirts.
(Image source)
The same North Vietnamese women’s fashion style is also recorded in Qing dynasty’s imperial book Hoàng Thanh chức cống đồ (皇清職貢圖) created in mid-18th century, with the noble lady (left) wearing more layers than the common woman (right).
(Image source)
North Vietnamese noble ladies layered multiple giao lĩnh cross collar robe in early 19th century too. Painted in 1804, the below portrait of Lady Minh Nhẫn at the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts shows that they wore at least 3 layers.
(Image source)
The viên lĩnh round collar robe can also be found in North Vietnamese women’s fashion during this era, as can be seen in the extracts from 18th century paintings “Võ quan vinh quy đồ” and “Văn quan vinh quy đồ” (Celebrated return of the martial/civil mandarin) belonging to the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts. The robes can either be tucked inside or cover the thường skirt.
(Image source)
By early 19th century, Tonkin (North Vietnam) and Caupchy (South Vietnam) was unified under the rule of Nguyễn dynasty. The new dynasty implemented many changes, including naming the country “Viet Nam” and the former capital city Tonkin (東京) into “Hanoi”. As Nguyễn dynasty emperors are the descendants of the Nguyễn lords who used to rule Caupchy, they continue to enforce the clothings reform started by Lord Nguyễn Phúc Khoát in 1744. The emperors were persistent despite the push back from former Tonkin population. Their numerous decrees about Tonkin clothings reform are recorded in the book “Khâm định Đại Nam hội điển sự lệ” (Collected statutes of the Nguyễn dynasty, 欽定大南會典事例, 1843 – 1914). The women’s reluctance to change was humorously reflected in the following folk rhyme (apologies that my translation has no rhyme):
“In August, the emperor decreed
Banning bottomless pants, making us so fearful
If all of us stay at home, the market will be empty
But if we go, we must robe our husbands of their pants!
If you have pants, go and sell your produces at the market
If not, go to the village gate and watch out for the inspector.”
Tháng tám có chiếu vua ra
Cấm quần không đáy người ta hãi hùng
Không đi thì chợ không đông
Đi thì phải lột quần chồng sao đang!
Có quần ra quán bán hàng
Không quần ra đứng đầu làng trông quan.
(Source)
Although women in North Vietnam gradual accepted to wear the same áo ngũ thân five-panel robe as their sisters in the South, they had a distinct fashion that call back to their favourite giao lĩnh cross collar robe and đối khâm coat. I will explore more on that in Part 3 of this series.
1700's medical illustrators be like "hey boss can I put a rhinoceros behind this anotomically correct sketch of the human skeleton" and the boss be like "only for the books being published in these specific european countries" and then they high-five and go out for drinks
this was gonna be a tutorial and i guess it still is but if anything it’s just a really long and drawn out “essay” on drawing people with epicanthic folds. one of my biggest pet peeves is people drawing asian people exclusively with the same type of eye they’d give white people or anyone else who typically doesn’t have the fold! however i know that most people are taught with the standard white person eye (google image search for “eye” and it’ll all be pictures of white people’s eyes) so learning to draw epicanthic folds is a consciously learned thing.
therefore i bring you this, which attempts to break the mechanics of epicanthic folds down into something that’s a bit easier to digest and implement in your own art!
style can be argued i guess but it’s not that hard to stylize eyes with folds if you do proper observation and research. eyes with epicanthic folds are as diverse as eyes without so it’s not like you have to adhere to a strict model for them (although many people think that you have to) and all it takes to distinguish the two in stylized art (and even in semi/realism once you think about it) is a few lines! like i said this is a learned process but it’ll make your asian characters (and characters of other races even) a bit more interesting and believable.
HEY THIS IS IMPORTANT whats your favorite place to find drawing references?
HEY ARTISTS!
Do you design a lot of characters living in not-modern eras and you’re tired of combing through google for the perfect outfit references? Well I got good news for you kiddo, this website has you covered! Originally @modmad made a post about it, but her link stopped working and I managed to fix it, so here’s a new post. Basically, this is a costume rental website for plays and stage shows and what not, they have outfits for several different decades from medieval to the 1980s. LOOK AT THIS SELECTION:
OPEN ANY CATEGORY AND OH LORDY–
There’s a lot of really specific stuff in here, I design a lot of 1930s characters for my ask blog and with more chapters on the way for the game it belongs to I’m gonna be designing more, and this website is going to be an invaluable reference. I hope this can be useful to my other fellow artists as well! :)
Spent the last two days working on this little archery guide in art and writing. Considering the rise in popularity of archers in pop culture this hopefully comes in handy for a bunch of fandoms.
Fantastic hands references by the website Hong14cafe.
Hong14cafe: Facebook | Forum
Nick 😍🦊
TRASH TALKS: How I draw Nick Wilde (For @blueberrycarrots <3)
All right folks, trash finally did it.
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