VERIFIED GOFUNDME ME LIST #13

"I can't not hate you for that, a little"

I finally finished that wip of the 501st barracks from a week ago, and im pretty happy with it! 

I also went from the chaos of doing everything on one layer to that chaos of 17 layers of effects. 

Doodling in between studying for the final state exam tomorrow. Wish me luck!

me voting in every poll I see:

My boys 🧡

The way I want to make this a sticker is no joke 😂 I give you Obi-wan and Cody in a Mandalorian au. I also live in the headcanon that when married Mandalorian trade vambraces 😌 you may not try to change my mind.

My commissions are currently open for June so if you're interested please hit me up.

some comic strip inspired rexsoka that I did ✨

Has been super fun to use so far, this is a very informative post about it.

Some thoughts on Cara

So some of you may have heard about Cara, the new platform that a lot of artists are trying out. It's been around for a while, but there's been a recent huge surge of new users, myself among them. Thought I'd type up a lil thing on my initial thoughts.

First, what is Cara?

From their About Cara page:

Cara is a social media and portfolio platform for artists. With the widespread use of generative AI, we decided to build a place that filters out generative AI images so that people who want to find authentic creatives and artwork can do so easily. Many platforms currently accept AI art when it’s not ethical, while others have promised “no AI forever” policies without consideration for the scenario where adoption of such technologies may happen at the workplace in the coming years. The future of creative industries requires nuanced understanding and support to help artists and companies connect and work together. We want to bridge the gap and build a platform that we would enjoy using as creatives ourselves. Our stance on AI: ・We do not agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical form, and we won’t host AI-generated portfolios unless the rampant ethical and data privacy issues around datasets are resolved via regulation. ・In the event that legislation is passed to clearly protect artists, we believe that AI-generated content should always be clearly labeled, because the public should always be able to search for human-made art and media easily.

Should note that Cara is independently funded, and is made by a core group of artists and engineers and is even collaborating with the Glaze project. It's very much a platform by artists, for artists!

Should also mention that in being a platform for artists, it's more a gallery first, with social media functionalities on the side. The info below will hopefully explain how that works.

Next, my actual initial thoughts using it, and things that set it apart from other platforms I've used:

1) When you post, you can choose to check the portfolio option, or to NOT check it. This is fantastic because it means I can have just my art organized in my gallery, but I can still post random stuff like photos of my cats and it won't clutter things. You can also just ramble/text post and it won't affect the gallery view!

2) You can adjust your crop preview for your images. Such a simple thing, yet so darn nice.

3) When you check that "Add to portfolio," you get a bunch of additional optional fields: Title, Field/Medium, Project Type, Category Tags, and Software Used. It's nice that you can put all this info into organized fields that don't take up text space.

4) Speaking of text, 5000 character limit is niiiiice. If you want to talk, you can.

5) Two separate feeds, a "For You" algorithmic one, and "Following." The "Following" actually appears to be full chronological timeline of just folks you follow (like Tumblr). Amazing.

6) Now usually, "For You" being set to home/default kinda pisses me off because generally I like curating my own experience, but not here, for this handy reason: if you tap the gear symbol, you can ADJUST your algorithm feed!

So you can choose what you see still!!! AMAZING. And, again, you still have your Following timeline too.

7) To repeat the stuff at the top of this post, its creation and intent as a place by artists, for artists. Hopefully you can also see from the points above that it's been designed with artists in mind.

8) No GenAI images!!!! There's a pop up that says it's not allowed, and apparently there's some sort of detector thing too. Not sure how reliable the latter is, but so far, it's just been a breath of fresh air, being able to scroll and see human art art and art!

To be clear, Cara's not perfect and is currently pretty laggy, and you can get errors while posting (so far, I've had more success on desktop than the mobile app), but that's understandable, given the small team. They'll need time to scale. For me though, it's a fair tradeoff for a platform that actually cares about artists.

Currently it also doesn't allow NSFW, not sure if that'll change given app store rules.

As mentioned above, they're independently funded, which means the team is currently paying for Cara itself. They have a kofi set up for folks who want to chip in, but it's optional. Here's the link to the tweet from one of the founders:

And a reminder that no matter that the platform itself isn't selling our data to GenAI, it can still be scraped by third parties. Protect your work with Glaze and Nightshade!

Anyway, I'm still figuring stuff out and have only been on Cara a few days, but I feel hopeful, and I think they're off to a good start.

I hope this post has been informative!

Lastly, here's my own Cara if you want to come say hi! Not sure at all if I'll be active on there, but if you're an artist like me who is keeping an eye out for hopefully nice communities, check it out!

cara.app

YukiPri (@yukipri) | Cara - Artist Social & Portfolio Platform

Illustrator. I just want a place to post my art in peace🥲

Incorrect Clone Wars Quote #3

Obi-wan: Your captain must be driving Cody off the wall with the crazy antics.

Anakin: Maybe Your commander is boring Rex out of his mind with all the procedure and regulations talk.

Obi-wan: With how different they are, i wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get along.

Anakin: I bet they can't stand each other.

-Meanwhile-

Cody and Rex piloting the same ship:

🎵AND I WILL WALK FIVE HUNDRED KLICKS🎵

🎵AND I WILL WALK FIVE HUNDRED MORE 🎵

🎵JUST TO BE THE ONE WHO WALKED A THOUSAND 🎵

🎵 KLICKS TO FALL DOWN AT YOUR DOOR~ 🎵

everyone else shut up this is the best descriptor of hunter we’re ever gonna get 

Commander Fox, 1G, fistfight with god?

you ok there bro

If Fox is smiling the vibes are ominous I do not make the rules. Thanks for playing, Nom!