AA Tips: A Guide to Grids

One of the most important things about planning for a table at an Artist Alley is to figure out how you’re going to display your stuff! In general, you want to make sure you display your stuff vertically so that your wares can be seen even in crowded convention halls. There are a number of different ways to do this, including using PVC pipes or photography stands, but one of the most common ways is to use wire storage cubes, also known as grid cubes or grids.

The more I hang out in AA online communities, the more I see questions about how to use these cubes – where to get them, how you hang artwork off of them, and more, so I thought a mini-guide would help clear things up! :)

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Forgetting the sea — detail from 'Cold Shore'

why so serious?

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What the fuck

This is absolutely fascinating. I've now been looking at Alex Colville's paintings and trying to work out what it is about them that makes them look like CGI and how/why he did that in a world where CGI didn't exist yet. Here's what I've got so far:

- Total lack of atmospheric perspective (things don't fade into the distance)

- Very realistic shading but no or only very faint shadows cast by ambient light.

- Limited interaction between objects and environment (shadows, ripples etc)

- Flat textures and consistent lighting used for backgrounds that would usually show a lot of variation in lighting, colour and texture

- Bodies apparently modelled piece by piece rather than drawn from life, and in a very stiff way so that the bodies show the pose but don't communicate the body language that would usually go with it. They look like dolls.

- Odd composition that cuts off parts that would usually be considered important (like the person's head in the snowy driving scene)

- Very precise drawing of structures and perspective combined with all the simplistic elements I've already listed. In other words, details in the "wrong" places.

What's fascinating about this is that in early or bad CGI, these things come from the fact that the machine is modelling very precisely the shapes and perspectives and colours, but missing out on some parts that are difficult to render (shadows, atmospheric perspective) and being completely unable to pose bodies in such a way as to convey emotion or body language.

But Colville wasn't a computer, so he did these same things *on purpose*. For some reason he was *aiming* for that precise-but-all-wrong look. I mean, mission accomplished! The question in my mind is, did he do this because he was trying to make the pictures unsettling and alienating, or because in some way, this was how he actually saw the world?

omf i never thought i'd find posts about alex colville on tumblr, but! he's a local artist where i'm from & i work at a library/archives and have processed a lot of documents related to his art. just wanted to give my two cents!

my impression is that colville did see the world as an unsettling place and a lot of his work was fueled by this general ~malaise?? but in a lot of cases, he was trying to express particular fears or traumas. for instance, this painting (horse and train) was apparently inspired by a really tragic experience his wife had:

iirc she was in a horrible automobile crash, as the car she was in collided with a train. i find it genuinely horrifying to look at, knowing the context, but a lot of colville's work is like that? idk he just seems to capture the feeling you get in nightmares where everything is treacle-ish and slow and inevitable.

These wonderful people have a single braincell to share but unfortunately none of them are using it

who added a hard hat to the pfp

OSHA compliant

in honor of finally finishing the terror I would like to share my favorite r/relationship_advice post of all time

I’ve suggested arctic themed role play but she says ‘don’t worry about it’

@officialtrashbin one thing came to mind 😂

My favorite Kingdom Hearts fact is that one of the biggest plot-holes that Nomura has never been able to meaningfully retcon or write his way out, a plot-hole so big that it fundamentally breaks the very rules the series is written on…

Is the existence of Steamboat Willie

Let me explain for the uninitiated:

In Kingdom Hearts 2, there’s a small detour in the story involving Maleficent trying to invade Disney Castle, the home of King Mickey. She can’t step foot in the castle due to an artefact of pure light that wards off darkness locked in the basement.

Pete, who is working for Maleficent, opens a door into the past (Before Disney Castle, this land was known as Timeless River) and decides to remove the artifact from it’s place in time so it won’t be there to stop them from getting in.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy chase Pete into the past thanks to another magic door provided by Merlin, and through some shenanigans involving old cartoons and teaming up with Pete’s past-self, they lock the door the villains are using, and return the artefact to it’s proper place so it can exist in the present.

You with me so far? Pretty straightforward-ish time-travel plot right?

Here’s where it goes off the rails.

Time travel would go on to become a staple of Kingdom Hearts going forward and would come with a very strict set of rules over how it operates:

1. You can only travel to a point in time where a version of yourself exists

2. You basically give up your body to do so, and travel as a disembodied soul unless you have a vessel to inhabit

3. You can’t alter the past in a meaningful way, what’s going to happen will happen

4. You lose your memories of said trip once you return, but your actions could leave a lingering instinct on your other self that could influence their decisions

“Wait” you may be thinking “Why should anyone go through all those hoops? Wasn’t time travel super simple that first time?”

And you’d be totally right, because the existence of Timeless River completely renders all of these rules and restrictions meaningless. 

Nomura has never been able to meaningfully explain this super simple, easy way of time travel and the more convoluted method co-existing other than a cheap-throwaway line from one of the villains saying that Merlin “broke the rules” 

The hilarious part about this line is that it implies that PETE of all characters is actually more powerful than the actual villain of the series, because Pete opened a door into Timeless River through sheer willpower and nostalgia for “the good old days”

But the all-knowing chess-master of a villain who had an evil plan several decades in the making with countless moving parts and contingencies to account for had to use the roundabout, more complicated method of time travel where a lot could go wrong.

Pete though? Dude just casually broke all the rules of time travel because he felt like it. He’s just built different.

TL;DR: Steamboat Willie breaks Kingdom Hearts lore in half, Pete is more powerful than Master Xehanort, and I fucking love this beautiful trainwreck of a series you guys it means so much to me

I love Kingdom hearts so much.

@moonlitlillypop​ You may be on to something here

Girls don’t want boys girls want the Bob Basset Dragon Wings

Got me almost pissing my pants everytime🧍‍♀️

Tony Hawk’s Twitter is a gold mine honestly

We Stan this San Diego Man

this

C o m e d yy

Some recent gems:

And of course there’s

#where is race war tony hawk tweet thats my fav (via @laughingfish​)

I gotchu, bro:

i’m wheezgJmf stoP

Honestly every time this thread just makes me laugh. And new additions…excellent.

Happy N7Day my dears! 💙❤️

WHEN WAS SOMEONE GONNA TELL ME THAT TUMBLR IS RUNNING ADS ON REDDIT RIGHT NOW???

WE ARE UNDER FUCKING ATTACK

and if you turn to ur left you’ll see the emos

is that my chemical romance?

OH MY GOD not every group of emos is my chemical romance stfu tumblr

but it actually is my chemical romance

this is the funniest fuckibg thing I’ve ever seen

I’ve…. seen this everywhere except on Tumblr itself. It’s the blessed post.

I reblog this everytime it comes on my dash and I’m unashamed

date of origin: january 22, 2014.

I hate x reader fanfiction. I would not act like that