The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

If you don't count the Time Travelling Starfish form I filled out (but didn't enter) when I beta'd it.

That... my HEART...

regains composure.

Anyways, I now must ask: do we have an X-Clacks-Overhead:GNU Terry Pratchett header on T-Board? Because I think that should be a Thing that we have...

The reason I know there are games on the consoles is that Jay mentioned playing Quake on them in TOS.

So they better have mice. Keyboard-only Quake... *shivers.* Now THAT'S a nightmare.

I like it better than algebra, and I kinda get it, and I'm finding the "start with basic shapes" technique more and more helpful, but... all the details will just take so much time, and I don't have it to spare, especially after losing some to the stress of the above mini-drama. Hence, giving the room a miss for now.

For the window seat, the angles of the sides of the seat to the walls are too shallow, I think. They should be deeper, and we should see much less of the top of the seat and the ceiling above it. Foreshortening again.

~Neshomeh

I don't know what to tell you about the scanner, unfortunately. It should just, y'know, do its job. Check your settings, I guess? Make sure you're scanning a photo/image, not a document or something? And closing the lid is important, I think?

As for coloring plus shading, that's gonna be a no. Adding color over graphite is just going to give you greyed-out colors, especially on lighter tones like skin.

When you get into colors, shadows often tend to actually be slightly blue or purple (though it depends on the color of the light source and blah blah, not really important right now). You can also tone down or deepen any color you're using by adding something from the other side of the color wheel. For instance, I used Tuscan red for the darkest shadows on Gall's leggings (dark green brightened with grass green, white highlights). I used the same combination to create the near-black portions of her cuirass and gauntlets, plus indigo where I wanted it darkest. On her skin, the darker shades are henna and a slightly greenish sandbar brown. Again, I used indigo for the very deepest shadows. Only a very little black to bring out the outlines that were muted.

Using opposite colors like this is a thing I've only just started doing (this was an early experiment in using blue shadows to make the light seem more yellow), but I have to say it works!

... And I realize it's all more or less Greek to you. But you did ask.

For reference, I'm using Prismacolor pencils; the names may or may not translate to other brands.

~Neshomeh

Why are your fellow humans, hmmm, requesting that small rodents be attached to their consoles? Hooom. This is illogical. Is it the influence of the Discworld seeping in, perhaps? Hmmm, perhaps we should check the integrity of the shielding in those sections of HQ...

Makes-Things sighed and shook his head. It would take too long to explain. While his department head continued to ponder the conundrum, he simply set about upgrading the systems.

---

Couldn't resist. But yeah, I'm sure they have more or less modern peripherals. ^_^

~Neshomeh

A PPC console has to have a screen to display the shocking/horrifying details of the latest mission assignment.

Also, you say that like I know anything about old computers. I really don't, other than, like, punch cards were a thing. ^_^;

~Neshomeh

[nearly clears of an arm]

[gets pelted with a pile of snowballs, undoing most of the work]

Hey, folks, a little - yow - help here?

- Tomash

I feel like I lost some of the emotion in her face with this redrawing, and also a lot of the curviness of it. Now she looks angry instead of exhausted.

Beyond that... colouring. This is the first time I've tried to colour+shade, so I'm interested in comments. I did it by literally colouring over the shading; is that the best way? (I also alternated between light and heavy colouring, to add highlights to what is otherwise a fairly lightly-shaded image.)

While I'm asking for advice... my home scanner absolutely refuses to pick up the skin-tone colour, and taking a photograph doesn't work; I had to borrow the scanner at work to get this picture. How do other people get scans that preserve the colour - or are you colouring digitally? (I used coloured pencils, which is probably fairly clear from the image.)

hS

Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Pile of Ash is a (chapter of a) new HP novel written - apparently and in some fashion - by predictive text algorithms trained on Rowling's writing. (There may be some human editing involved; I'm not sure.) And it is delightfully bonkers, but still exquisitely Rowling:

Chapter Thirteen: The Handsome One

The castle grounds snarled with a wave of magically magnified wind. The sky outside was a great black ceiling, which was full of blood. The only sounds drifting from Hagrid's hut were the disdainful shrieks of his own furniture. Magic: it was something that Harry Potter thought was very good.

Leathery sheets of rain lashed at Harry's ghost as he walked across the grounds towards the castle. Ron was standing there and doing a kind of frenzied tap dance. He saw Harry and immediately began to eat Hermione's family.

Ron's Ron shirt was just as bad as Ron himself.

"If you two can't clump happily, I'm going to get aggressive," confessed the reasonable Hermione.

"What about Ron magic?" offered Ron. To Harry, Ron was a loud, slow, and soft bird. Harry did not like to think about birds.

"Death Eaters are on top of the castle!" Ron bleated, quivering. Ron was going to be spiders. He just was. He wasn't proud of that, but it was going to be hard to not have spiders all over his body after all is said and done...

Later, we find out the password to the door to the roof (after Mr. Staircase the shabby ghost informs them that it's locked), and Hermione takes offence at Voldemort's shirt (entirely reasonably), before we finally reach the end of the chapter:

"I'm Harry Potter," Harry began yelling. "The dark arts better be worried, oh boy!"

It is glorious and beautiful to behold and you should read the whole thing immediately.

~

This, however, is simply depressing:

Neil Gaiman on Instagram, talking about the Good Omens TV show

I am sad again now. :(

hS

Snow-Giver status: 13/19 operational. But for temporarily immobilising Tomash, a worthy sacrifice.

[The 5 groundside SGs converge on Tomash, bombarding him to keep him off-balance and preventing him from recovering]

[The North Pole Air Force solar bomber swoops overhead and snatches up the Psy-ball; being weakened by Tomash's attack, it is relatively easy to capture. The plane banks in midair and heads back to the wreck of the Habukkuk with its captive.]

Yes, yes... bring it to me, my loyal ones!

hS