Gliz Caldo

Not to sound mean, but I loathe it when someone says something along the lines of: "Use XYZ program! NOT ABC programs!"

... especially when programs in question are free and reputable open source software.

It begs the question of why some programs are acceptable while others are not. Only conclusion I can come up with is personal preference, which isn't wrong to have personal preference. What's wrong is when someone pushes their personal preferences onto other people.

Saw it recently when Adobe decided to pull more nonsense to make customers upset. Folks were praising programs like Krita, yet condemning programs like GIMP.

No, I am not kidding. People hate, hate, HATE GIMP for some reason! I've used GIMP for my own photography projects for photo manipulation, digital painting and enhancing visual effects. Only downside to GIMP is that it doesn't communicate with tablets well and a mouse is all that's needed for it. This obviously won't work for some, but it does get Photoshop jobs done. How do I know? I used it college when Photoshop was mandatory and at the time I worked as a tutor work study job that paid me $80 every two weeks. I used that money to get to and from home during breaks and cannot afford Photoshop. Yeah, I wasn't financially well off and pirating wasn't something I was going to attempt in case a virus would brick my one and only laptop.

I got a little off track there, but I did list 1 negative of GIMP, while others who speak adamantly against it make these vague criticisms that again, sound like personal preference. I've observed time and time again others suggesting against GIMP, basically saying it is just not good. Sounds to me that someone heard another person say it, so they're repeating it and didn't bother downloading and trying out the program.

Again, GIMP is free. The only cost it will have is space on the disk. ...and I guess reputation since so many people hate it for no reason.

When I asked around why someone wouldn't use GIMP along with their preferred programs, all I got were excuses on the basis of personal preference. Months later I would see the same people complain that Krita couldn't make a convincing lens flare effect. Mind you, GIMP can make all kinds of lighting effects that come prepackaged with the software. Such as lens flare effects, bump mapping, glowing effects and light sources.

So, what about me? Do I choose GIMP over Krita.

Well, I use both.

GASP! Whaaaa?!?! Both?!

Yeah, I use multiple art programs because I'm not basic and brand loyal. If the software is free, why not download and use it? Even just to give it a try. It can be uninstalled later.

If anything people who say only go for 1 program and nothing else are shutting others down from expanding upon their skills.

If I never tried making art in other programs, I'd still be making pixel art with MS Paint.

Whenever you listen to a song and get a vivid imaginary music video that accompanies it, are you ever wondering if other folks do the same? I sure do!

And I want to know what these imaginary music videos look like for others!

For sake of simplicity, I call these head music videos.
Y'know how people make head canons? This is like that but with specific songs and a narrative that's imagined all the way though for each individual song.

I love music and it gives me so much inspiration for my own original creations and helps conceptualize scenes and arcs in stories. The difficult part is trying to convey and organize those imaginary music videos so that others can see what I am trying to imagine.

So I came up with a method!

I made a table that displays 3 columns: time, lyrics and what happens in the head music video. This table is made in LibreOffice and is easy to follow if the song is played at the same time. Difficult part is to match timing and lyrics to what happens. Especially when a specific sound is made in the song that would sync perfectly with an action.

Something like:

Time | Lyrics | What Happens

0:00 - 0:30 | Lyric | Describe what occurs

0:31 - 1:00 | Lyric | Describe what occurs

... yeah I don't know how to make tables on Cohost.

While this is one way to share the imaginary music videos, I feel it is a good rough draft of storyboarding from an inspiring song.

For instance, the song Sins of the Father by Donna Burke works so well for a scene I have in a mind of a conflict between two characters. With the table method, I was able to describe what I was imagining while listening to the song. As long the time stamps and relevant lyrics lines up with what's going on in imagination, I think its safe to say that others will have a good idea of what's going on.

Its a simple method and I doubt it requires a tutorial, but felt worth sharing this.

Not enough folks talk about their head music videos and I want to see them!

I saw on TikTok someone suggests to leave a low opacity layer of visual noise that computers will pick up on. I do something similar already with regular noise, but with Blender I decided to make a filter that's similar to what the video was suggesting.

1st one is my usual methods: noise and an obnoxious watermark in the center-ish to deter art theft. Human art theft is easy to protect against, because I have the cleanest version available on my computer that no one has access to. However, when it comes to AI scalping my work I need to fight against the results that an AI bro would want from the generated image. I noticed how oddly smooth and sterile that some generated images have, so to fight this I decided to add noise to all of my uploaded work to assist wrecking those results.

2nd image takes inspiration from the video I saw on TikTok, where they suggested to use a low-opacity layer of specific noise patterns that ought to affect the machine from replicating details in the image. I recall how early MS DOS games have used this magenta pink and baby blue to make their graphics, so I made a filter similar to that. I am unsure of how effective it is against machines scalping off the image, but I think it gives me a different approach to protect my work.

On one hand, the noise adds to my horror-centric vibes. While the other is far more effective at muddling details. So much so I feel confident leaving my watermark far from the center because there's no way someone can easily edit the filter out for a clean upload.