RatCreature's Journal

Tumblr, endlessly frustrating...

2013-01-16T10:57:39Z

So very often I want to find out the context of what led to an amusing image, and on Tumblr there is no way to ask, and often no proper source, just the image being posted, and then when you google image search the picture you only get a bunch of tumblrs as results.

Like just now, on my dashboard comes this post in which someone posted a vintage or pseudo-vintage safe sex poster, which people seem to find amusing for its gay subtext or something, that was of course created by manipulating the original J.C. Leyendecker advertising artwork (which of course wasn't for safe sex) which has a woman between the two soldiers, flirting with them, and by removing that woman they seem to flirt with each other. (Though some think the guys look more at each other in the original too, and it's often speculated that Leyendecker may have been homosexual etc. etc. but it remains that the original is not *that* obviously gay.)

However looking at the pic on Tumblr I have no idea whether someone actually created a (physical) poster at some point, or just manipped it to look like a poster or anything. On second thought, since the watermark URL leads to a photomanip contest site, a real poster seems unlikely. So I guess at some point this image was on that contest site, but I still have no idea who the creator was, because google image search gives no results from the contest site in the watermark.

And I'm actually not sure whether everybody who finds this amusing on Tumblr even realizes the underlying vintage artwork has been manipulated from its original state. It's incredibly frustrating, and you can't even comment there to ask or have a conversation.

ETA: But a search for "safe sex" on the contest site gave the manip in question, so after a bit over half an hour of websearching I now know that the credit for that manip goes to someone called Snowcrash and won the third place in a "vintage ad" contest on that site. Obviously this lack of proper sourcing on Tumblr does not help its timesink aspect at all.

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2011 art roundup

2011-12-30T23:30:44Z

Compared to 2010 there was a slight uptick in productiveness. This year I made six pieces of art, 36 drawbles/doodles, and seven icons, though depressingly there were three months entirely without art. In comparison 2010 it was four pieces of art, 28 doodles/drawbles, one icon, and also three months without art; 2009 five pieces of art, 20 doodles/drawbles, three icons and six months without art. Maybe at some point I'll have a year where I can do one of those memes where you need to put in one preview picture for every month.

January
I posted the 2010 Yuletart Merlin art, Fealty, to my journal (linked in this roundup because it wasn't yet in last year's)
Aragorn ratcreature icon
eight drawbles (DC, Merlin, SGA, SPN, original)

February
Nothing. :(

March
Nothing. :(
(Though I did make a baby quilt for my second niece that month.)

April
a Duncan ratcreature icon

May
another Duncan ratcreature icon

June
two Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto ratcreature icons
a sketch for snowynight's prompt Colleen Wing & Kendo

July
a Methos ratcreature icon
a Neal ratcreature icon
X-Men/Calvin & Hobbes fanfic illustration

August
XMFC art meme
three drawbles (ATLA, Iron Man, X-Men)
two more X-Men/Calvin & Hobbes fanfic illustrations
Gnome & Horklumps HP fanart

September
three X-Men/Sesame Street doodles: "Magneto and Super Grover explain the letter M", "Erik visits Oscar's trash can" and "Hank and Kermit sing a duet"

October
Highlander/X-Men fanfic illustration
an Elmo birthday card for my niece
eight drawbles: seven here and one (Edward Scissorhands, Harry Potter, Muppets, SGA, Star Trek, Terminator, original)
four Halloween drawbles (SGA, X-Men, original)

November
Nothing :(

December
six drawbles: two here and four (Merlin, SG-1, SGA, original)
a Cookie Monster Christmas card
my yet to be revealed Secret Mutant artwork

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2010 art roundup

2010-12-30T20:01:27Z

I thought 2009 was a low point in productiveness, but this year wasn't any better. Back in 2009 I made five pieces of art, 20 doodles/drawbles, and three icons, and in 2010 it was four pieces of art, 28 doodles/drawbles and one icon. Though I also created fanart_recs, so that led to me reccing fanart at least.

January
Nothing. :(
though I posted the 2009 Yuletart SGA art, Offworld Team Camping to my journal (linked in this roundup because it wasn't yet in last year's)

February
creature doodle: a valentine's card of a sort

March
Nothing. :(

April
an Easter doodle: Infiltration

May
a Sherlock Holmes doodle that I did in response to a request in artondemand
Trek Reverse Bang fanart

June
Nothing. :(

July
a Kirk/Spock mindmeld ratcreature icon

August
eleven drawbles: ten here, and a straggler here

September
eleven drawbles for the character roulette meme

October
a comment doodle I did for Te (DCU crack)

November
Graphorn (HP fanart)

December
Dresden Files doodle
Santa Claus with dragon
Dragon bookmark doodle
and the not yet revealed yuletart art.

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art meme, art 2003-2009

2010-02-17T16:22:01Z

I gacked this from glockgal, but the original empty template comes from Kamaniki at dA. The time span for chronicling art in this meme fit me well, because I started posting fanart in 2003, so I took it as a sign that I ought to be a memesheep.

( a huge image behind the cut, it might be considered NSFW by some strict standards due to kissing and groping going on in some art samples )

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2009 art roundup

2009-12-31T11:11:27Z

There wasn't a lot this year, not even if I count all drawbles and icons and such, i.e. I can't even do the meme thing with the squares of one preview picture for every month.

January
a Numb3rs Don and Charlie ratcreature icon

February
Nothing. :(

March
Diricawl (Harry Potter fanart)

April
a fail! ratcreature icon

May
Five drawbles: 1-3, 4, 5
Robin (DC fanart)
Nightwing (DC fanart)

June
an Uhura ratcreature icon
a weird comment doodle for Kass' story Zygote (SGA/Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* (but were afraid to ask) fusion fanart)
Star Trek Reboot art meme (Star Trek: Reboot fanart)

July
Nothing. :(

August
Nothing. :(

September
Nothing. :(

October
Nothing. :(

November
Nothing. :(
(I did work on my Yuletart assignment that month, though I only finished in December with an extension)

December
Twelve drawbles: 1-6, 7-10, 11-12
Santa!Cthulhu
and the not yet revealed yuletart art.

This is even less than 2008, and it's not like I was prolific then. I suck. :(

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drawble offer

2009-12-09T18:31:39Z

I'm in the mood to doodle and haven't offered drawbles in some time, so prompt me in a comment?

As usual, I'll do my best for any fandom I'm familiar with, or random stuff (monsters, steampunk machines, animals...) or I can just pick prompts from your interests. I don't draw porn though, and I'm not good at portrait likeness. Also keep in mind that these are quick doodles, so for a prompt that is a description of some epic scene you've always wanted to see realized in fanart the results aren't going to very satisfying for you (or much fun for me).

If you want to see the quality (or lack thereof) you can expect, look at the drawble tag. I don't make any promises for results or a timely delivery, but the past I've usually managed to draw something for everyone who prompted me for these non-demanding, open drawble offers. So this isn't limited to something like "the first X comments get a drawble" or anything like that, which is impractical with the crossposting in three places anyway. (However considering the broken state of the LJ comment notification right now, I'm more likely to notice your prompt quickly if you comment on DW or IJ. ETA: Except that IJ seems to be down completely just now. *argh*)

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art rec

2009-06-25T12:50:44Z

Today I came across the website of this really cool artist, Alex CF, who creates fake specimen display cases with horror and fantasy animals and such, in the style you might find in old museums or cabinets of curiosities. The website describes it as "cryptozoological scientific art". Sometimes it is whole sets, with documents, skeletons, preserved specimens, tools and all sorts of stuff and they come with short stories of a sort explaining the fictional background. I especially liked Cthulhu Specimen Box, The Lycanthropy research of Edward Harrell, Severed “Draco Alatus” Head and Infant stillborn Draco Alatus, Expedition to the Plateau - Lost World Exploration Case and Experiments in extra dimensions; The Cheshire cat, but really you should browse the whole site. (Obviously due to the nature of the art the displays are slightly gory.) I only wish the photos of the works were in a higher resolution, because you can't make out all the awesome detail and read the text in the documents on the site.

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May? already? meep.

2009-05-01T07:44:00Z

My drawing activity this year so far has been largely non-existent. This is depressing me in a somewhat self-reinforcing, vicious cycle. And not even the added pressure of public commitment helped any. (Yeah, I have not forgotten that poll, I just suck.)

However, I have yet to fail a drawble meme. So as I'm obviously not achieving what I want to wrt actual fanart, I'm lowering the target from "produce a drawing" to "produce a doodle". (Kind of like shifting definitions around to get better looking statistics.) And I have decided to offer sketches based on comment prompts. I'll do my best for any fandom I'm familiar with, or random stuff (monsters, steampunk machines, animals...) or I can just pick prompts from your interests. I don't draw porn though, and I'm not good at portrait likeness.

Considering that I now crosspost to three places, it isn't really workable to promise things like "the first X prompts will get a drawble", so just comment with something, and I'll try my best. (In the past I've usually managed to draw something for everyone who prompted me for these non-demanding, open drawble offers, but with the way my creativity and motivation seems to have shriveled and died recently, who knows.)

If you want to see the quality (or lack thereof) you can expect, look at the drawble tag.

Also, I currently have five Dreamwidth invites in case anyone should still want one. (My flist was rather flooded with offers, so I'm not sure whether there's even still demand for them.) Anyway, if you want an invite you can comment, and I'll give those I have to the first five people in order of the comment notifications I get. I'll edit this post if/when I got five requests.

BTW, of course you can ask for both an invite and a sketch or one or the other, the two are not connected, I just didn't want to make separate posts.

P.S.: Why is the Dreamwidth spell check broken? Does anyone else get a "Spell checker not set up properly." response when they click the spell check button?

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