at the cosmos and the wilderness

well now my comic definitely won’t be ready in time to sell at AM^2, because i was stressed out and sad all day today so i did zero work, tuesdays are always a wash because i have to go drive a long way that day, and i will probably be out of commission another day this week because of reasons so that’s two days to do 2.3 pages which just isn’t gonna happen. (i’m busy this weekend too)

oh well….

psssh what are you talking about. you have the perfect figure for dresses!

lol thanks :)  i guess i more mean it doesn’t fit my personality or something?? like i always want to wear a dress just for everyday wear or a normal outing but when i put it on i feel too dressed up?? then i get embarrassed about feeling dressed up so i just put on some pants…

yeesss. He is so beautiful! We need to think of a unique tag for these

hmm…. ‘pigeonmen’??

Ok, I feel like i don’t really nerd over anything much on my blog, but today i just gotta let everyone know about a favorite daily routine of mine for over a year and a half— watching/listening to Let’s Plays by Tipping Forties.

I’m bad at endorsing but yeah, these guys always make me laugh, totally cheer me up every time I’m feeling down because I find their commentary so hilarious… Mind their LPs are not informative, just playing through as they go (for most games at least one of the members has not played it before), often make fun and/or hate whatever game they’re playing, and they can be pretty vulgar (lots of cussing etc, getting drunk while playing in some cases); personally those are my favorite aspects but if that’s not up your alley there you go. 

• My Favorite LP: Tales of Symphonia
• First LP: Final Fantasy X
• Current LP: Final Fantasy X-2 (yup)

So… yeah, just wanted to advertise for them because I rewatched five of my favorite episodes of Tales of Symphonia today and I was crying laughing and it put me in a great mood, so I dunno maybe someone will see this and like it too v0v

haha wow i just realized i didn’t put the swirl pattern on leah’s headband there even though i totally meant to with a white gel pen…. maybe i’ll update it…

I agree :( I have been called insane for painting my nebulae from scratch, but come on! What make NASA so different that you don’t have to credit them? If you’re going to present it as your art it needs to be your art, IMO.

your nebulae are AWESOME… i’ve tried to do it and it’s really hard

This should be a no-brainer to people, really, but I guess a lot of them just ‘forget’. People make such a huge fuss about crediting reference images, yet not for these? Come on… Btw, you’re going to be an astronomer? :o So coool!

Well, I don’t think people are doing it maliciously, like trying to scam nasa by pretending it’s their own work or whatever.  As a response to both people’s comments here, I think it’s more a subconscious sense that these images kind of exist in a void since they’re captured by machines (nevermind processing pipelines and other software coded by humans, not to mention the telescope itself) that are managed by large, somewhat faceless organizations like NASA or ESA, at least on the funding scale (although the point of publishing them is to bring astronomy closer to the public).  Another famous image brought to mind that I saw used in someone’s art recently is this (imo) extremely beautiful image of particle tracks in a bubble chamber.  It’s pretty, somewhat inaccessible to non-specialists, and published by CERN, who manage a huge particle accelerator in Europe.  I’ve seen this photo since I was little, but didn’t know what it was until I started studying physics.  It’s been in my unconscious somewhere for years, but I didn’t even know it was published by CERN until I looked it up just now.  Like a lot of famous astronomy pictures, I think it’s just been ‘there’ in the public unconscious so long that they kind of just exist on their own now, which is kind of :\ to me because it was a lot of people’s hard work and science to get those images in the first place. 

As for the last comment, heh well I’m not sure if I want to BE an astronomer as a career, but I am enrolled in an astrophysics phd program (currently on a leave, though) so I’m getting the training at least.

also my plan is, if i get rich, i’m totally commissioning a stained glass window of that bubble chamber pic, just sayin…

hmmm.  this has kind of been a bee in my bonnet for a while.  

I see a lot of artists on the internet using photos of space/nebulae, usually taken by Hubble Space Telescope (because it’s produced the most publicly-known images), in their pictures as a texture or background or whatever.  There’s never any attribution or mention of the source of the picture.

First, I got upset seeing that all over the place because it costs a LOT of money and time and work to get those images and people are using them with no attribution like clipart.  Then I thought, well, those images were published with the intent of increasing public knowledge (and public interest in space so NSF/NASA can get more budget), and in the interest of open scientific discourse those images should be able to be widely available to the public.  Not to mention, a lot are copyright-free, but with the provision that the image be credited to NASA/ESA.  I guess I don’t really expect people to credit something if it’s copyright-free, but it’s just weird to me, like using a part of a super-old painting (hence, copyright-free) as part of your picture but not mentioning who originally did that part?  It seems kind of disrespectful imo, especially as an astronomer-in-training?  I dunno it’s probably super unclear to most people how much work goes into getting those pretty images.  I just wish more artists would be like “used an image of the eagle nebula in this one” or something.  A lot of these photos are iconic not only in the colors/composition, but because there’s scientifically interesting things in there too; i dunno, if you use space photos in your art, just take a second to think about or look up where it came from, they don’t appear out of thin air.

that’s it i guess, what a lame post -____-

Take heart! It’s easier for people to relate to subject matter they’re already familiar with, even if you didn’t put as much effort into it. Journey’s popular right now, so it’s inevitable. Don’t assume it’s something you’ve done wrong in other work!

aw thanks, yeah i figured it’s just because journey is still new but i guess i thought more people would be excited for SB: S&S EP release on PC but it looks like it’s mostly me v0v

ok i know i shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth but i’m still kind of disappointed my one-hour doodle inspired by journey is getting more notes than my months-long sweat and tears sword and sworcery picture -____-

ugh every time i try to do something big and polished it just never turns out right

ps my companion for the last half of the journey, i forgot their name already, we made songs together on the very very very last road ;_______________;