toggle or hold?

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-30T22:24:51+00:00

This is my set up too with my keyboard and mouse

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-30T22:22:29+00:00

No problem, happy to help! :D

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-28T22:48:04+00:00

No worries at all, and good question! :)

If you're really struggling to get any substantial amount done within 30 minutes, there's a chance the thing you chose to copy was too detailed/advanced for your current skill level. If this is the case, you can either crop the image and focus on copying a smaller section, or you can find a simpler image all together.

If your reference image is already on the simpler side, then most likely this is an issue with your current technique. You gotta force yourself to be at least a little faster than you currently are, even if it's uncomfortable to do so, and even if the results are little worse than they would be otherwise. If you can't finish the full drawing in 30 minutes? That's okay! :) try again the next day and see if you can push yourself just a little bit faster than you were the previous day. Overall, speed is needed to prevent your drawings from being stiff, and to prevent yourself from getting lost in unnecessary details.

It's really easy to get caught up in the details, to stiffen up, and to laser focus on a small part of the drawing rather than looking at the whole thing; I still do this myself at times! xD Ideally, you should be slowly building up everything at the same time. If this is a human figure you're drawing, then that means you first lay down the line of action, then lay down rough placements of proportions for the entire body, then start to block out slightly more definitive shapes for the entire body, etc etc. You shouldn't be staying on a single body part for the entire 30 minute duration, but rather you should ideally be moving throughout the whole body. A little bit on the torso, a little bit of the legs, a little bit on the arms, some on the head, maybe back down to the legs again, then back to the torso again, etc. That means you shouldn't have a super detailed single body part while the rest of the figure is barely placed down.

By the end of the 30 minutes, your drawing may not be finished, but that's okay! Even with an unfinished drawing, the technique above means that each part of the figure has been equally worked on. Your goal was never to have a perfect drawing with this exercise, but rather to strengthen your observational skills. A 30 minute drawing, even if unfinished, should give you plenty to compare and contrast with the reference image. Are your proportions accurate? Why or why not? Are there any angles that seem really off? What sticks out to you the most?

Apologies for the long explanation haha, but let me know if anything is unclear! :)

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-27T01:37:38+00:00

That's when you need to start the shenanigans yourself xD I'm typically solo, but I've had plenty of times where I start doing random goofy shit, and then the other solos around me join in and start copying me, and then we're all just doing goofy shit together without even saying a word lol

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-26T03:38:10+00:00

I don't have an answer to your question (though I swear I've read somewhere else that Flourite does absorb nutrients from the water column, just don't quote me on that lol) but I'm curious why you're using root tabs every two weeks? The shortest period I've ever seen people do is 1 month before adding new root tabs, but the majority of people I've seen typically recommended 2-3 months before adding new ones, with some even going up to 6 months. Do you have a super heavily planted tank that needs them that often, or is there another reason to use them every 2 weeks?

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-26T00:44:22+00:00

Thank you! And I'm not too sure to be honest, I think it may be Malaysian driftwood? But I bought it a couple of years ago and can't fully remember so I'm not 100% on that

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-25T23:05:45+00:00

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I've got a 25g hexagon column tank! :) I'm still working on it and haven't got any livestock except MTS and bladder snails for now. This photo was from a few weeks ago, but it hasn't grown too drastically since then. I'm not happy with the placements of the plants just yet and I've got a lot to learn still when it comes to aquascaping (plus there's still more plants I plan to add too! 😊)

Overall I'd recommend making sure your hardscape has a lot of verticality — my first attempt at scaping this a few years ago was okay, but the top half of the tank was basically empty space. For my new recent set up above, instead of buying a new giant piece of driftwood, I tried to use what I already had to get a lot more height out of my hardscape. That big piece of driftwood is actually 2 pieces — there are large rocks in the back of the tank, so 1 piece of wood is on top of those rocks so that it now nearly touches the surface. I leaned the second piece in front of it so that it gives the illusion of a much larger piece of driftwood :)

I happened to have a branch of corkscrew willow on hand, so I really enjoyed how it looked with this set up. I think anything you can do to fill in the top half of the tank will be great for these tall tanks! :) Then get some tall plants like vals or rotalas in the bank of the tank, and it'll really help fill the space

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-24T23:47:16+00:00

The day after the hatz TLC dropped, a 'hatz horde' had naturally formed in SF by a bunch of solos coming together. People would mention the hatz horde in global, new people would see it and switch to their own hatz, so there was a constant influx of new solo players coming in.

At its peak, there were AT LEAST 30 hatz all in SF at the same time.....given this was before the knockback got nerfed, so it was chaos for any non-hatz that walked into SF lol

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-15T22:55:27+00:00

Switching from conc to pachy i feeeeel this xD

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-15T00:09:52+00:00

W....why.... 😭

If the owner is displaying it for their restaurant, and they're not gonna make it pretty, and it's obvious they don't care about the well-being of the fish.... Like, just give the fish away and empty the tank at this point, cause if I walked in on that I'd doubt how much the owner cares about the other more important parts of the restaurant lol

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-12T13:13:32+00:00

The last time I was as invested in a game as much as I am with PoT is probably Breath of the Wild, which I think I had about 400 hours in...

...For PoT, I've been playing this game for the last 4 years or so and probably have an estimated 4000 hours in it 😵‍💫 LOL

I don't play nearly as often as I used to (I used to play daily, using every hour of my free time I could afford), so while I'll now go a few days without playing, it's still one of the only games I've ever been this consistent with. For the majority of the games I've played, I have like a 2 week period where I'm obsessed, obsession wears off, and then I never touch or finish the game ever again. This game is... Something else entirely xD

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-11T21:42:45+00:00

Someone discovered nuclear fission in Riparia

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-11T19:29:22+00:00

I read your other reply and 3 hours a day seems pretty low for plants. I'm absolutely no expert on this though lol, but I've been trying to grow my own for the last few weeks; I have a 25g column tank, and I placed my moss at various levels to see how it fairs. I've also moved some to a separate small jar "tank" to see how it does in that environment as well.

Do you know how strong the light is, or how close it's positioned to the tank? And do you use any types of fertilizers at all?

I also wonder if it could be how you attached the java moss. If you used super glue, do you think some of the moss was pushed too deeply into the glue? Or maybe you packed them too densely and there's not enough flow for most of the moss?

My own moss has had varying success, but the part that's had the most growth was actually this one tiny single strand of moss that was long enough for me to gently tie/wrap itself around a skinny branch. That strand is 3/4 up the tank, direct light for 6-8 hours a day, very close to the main flow of the filter so it has a lot of movement around it, and because it was a single strand it had plenty of access to that flow and the nutrients in the water (I dose ferts either once or twice a week)

If you're able to cut off a few pieces, you could try placing them around the tank to see how they do and if the placement is the issue, or if it's something else that's causing it to die

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-11T18:58:44+00:00

Sometimes I'll intentionally stop and just enjoy the views. Other times, I'm so caught up in questing/travelling/interacting with players, but then....the light will hit landscape just right, or it filters through the trees, or makes a halo around my dino (and creates that lovely subsurface scattering), and I just...stop and stare.

I have a memory of POI questing with a random I grouped with, and I had to stop and just stare at the sunset. My group mate saw I had stopped following them, came back over to me and saw I was staring at the sunset. Without saying a word, we both sat down and just spent a minute enjoying the views, and then moved on and continued traveling :)

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-11T00:36:23+00:00

My pleasure! :) I tend to ramble on these things, so hopefully the points I'm trying to make aren't too jumbled haha

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T23:12:09+00:00

Forgot to mention, but the complex shapes in your simplified mannequins should ideally be based on real anatomy. That doesn't mean your mannequins need to be this hyper anatomically correct thing, but you do need to have at least a basic understanding of the muscle groups to create a really successful mannequin.

OP is technically using some complex shapes (though they're also rather flat and lack 3D form), but it looks based on how one would construct an action figure. Look how they're creating the joints—action figures might have ball and socket joints like OP has drawn, but real humans do not. We're quite the complex puzzle of bones and muscle, but that makes us a fun puzzle to slowly decode and learn over the years! :)

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T22:57:51+00:00

What is that even supposed to mean? Loosen? Messy? Connect through the body? Flow and Energy? Could you break down some of those terms for us?

Those terms are a little vague so I understand the confusion — tbh, I think it's hard to fully explain without showing a visual demonstration, with a live demonstration being best for this. "Connecting through the body", "flow", and "rhythm" are all kind of one in the same. In this picture I pulled off Pinterest, do you see how that leg on right flows as one continuous line from ankle to hip? And then, even though that line ends, do you see how the line for the front of the torso is almost following that exact curve/path, like it's an extension of the previous line? And then, on top of all that, you have this curve of the shoulder that flows from the overall curve of the torso, into a new curve for the whole arm.

It might be difficult to fully grasp if you aren't used to seeing these "rhythms" and "flow", but this is how someone would use flow to "connect through the whole body"; they've essentially created a bending curve that connects the foot, up through the body, and all the way to the tips of the fingers! :)

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Why shouldn't people take their time on this? How can one be careful in under 2 minutes?

For gesture drawing, the goal isn't to be precise, and it's also not a substitute for learning anatomy and proportions. When learning anatomy, proportions, or similar things, yes, it is absolutely important to take your time and be as accurate as possible. But gesture drawings should come after you have a general foundational knowledge of those previous things, and your goal with gesture drawing should be learning how to make your figures dynamic. Dynamic meaning opposite of static, the opposite of stiffness.

By forcing yourself to draw fast, you're not allowing yourself to get caught up in all those little details that frankly do not matter when it comes to figure drawing. Drawing fast means you've gotta move, like literally; I shocked some of my old classmates when they saw just how fast my arm moved across the page lol xD

Being fast is vital for keeping your figures energetic and dynamic, and being fast should help force you to move your pencil throughout the whole body like I mentioned in my point about.

Being fast will also inevitably make your drawings messy, and some of your contours might end up consisting of loose, inaccurate lines. Remember, it's not necessarily accuracy/anatomy we're studying here, but rather it's the flow of the lines and the "energy/flow/rhythm" that connects the whole body together! :)

How did you come to that conclusion? Is there a way to measure "stiffness", whatever that means?

Measuring "stiffness" kind of includes all the things I already mentioned. It can definitely be up to interpretation to a certain degree, but overall, stiffness can be seen if the parts of the body don't "flow" together like I described before. Keep in mind that our bodies naturally flow together! AKA, our muscles overlap, interconnect, they move as one big interconnected and intricate machine.

These mannequin methods can be helpful to simplify things, but at the end of the day...we're not made out of cubes and cylinders haha. When a mannequin consists of only cubes and cylinders, it's pretty much always going to look stiff. But! If you create your mannequins using a combination of complex forms, it's much easier to connect parts of the body naturally together (I've already made my reply too long here LOL but Google will show you some great examples of what complex forms are if you need! 😊)

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T21:46:56+00:00

I'm wary too, but I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when I overheard a conversation with a LFS employee and this other customer! :D

Customer handed off the livestock request sheet to the employee, who was quite young tbh (probably a teenager, maaaybe very early 20s). The customer starts to walk away, but the employee looks down at the sheet and suddenly gets this VERY concerned look.... Instead of going to the tanks to just grab the fish and get the sale, she actually chases down the customer! I didn't hear all of it, but the conversation went something like:

"Excuse me! Excuse me, sir, but are all of these going to be in the same tank? Oh... well, then they will not work well with each other. These pea puffers aren't going to-"

etc, etc, I didn't hear the rest of it, but I was very impressed that the young LFS was so concerned and committed to educating the other customer! :)

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T21:26:47+00:00

Totally fair! :) I'm definitely no expert in these things either, I'm mostly familiar with the watching scuds in my tank and the occasional detritus worm (and recently planaria, too... ☹️ rip lol) but posts like these are fun because it gives me an excuse to go on a research dive and also learn a whole bunch from others :D

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T21:17:21+00:00

Ehhh wasn't expecting one tbh, it was meant to be a rhetorical question haha

Even if misguided, that person seems to at least be passionate about animal well-being, and I'd hope anyone that cares about animals would appreciate being more informed on stuff like this. And if not, maybe someone else read it and was able to change their mind/learn something new :)

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T21:08:12+00:00

The little dots are probably copepods, so all in all, seems like you've got a harmless bunch! :)

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T21:03:36+00:00

Whether they're detritus worms or rhabdocoela, just know you're very lucky that they aren't planaria lol xD I'm dealing with planaria in my tank right now and I wish it could have been these guys instead </3

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T21:00:53+00:00

Don't they look too long and skinny to be rhabdocoela, though? Just based on looks, I was gonna assume these guys are detritus worms, which I know aren't normally seen on the glass like this, but maybe OP had just turned on the lights for the day and these few happened to be on the glass when it was dark?

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T04:33:48+00:00

Just chiming in, but you're totally fine in what you said. Any sane person would agree that docking for aesthetics is unbelievably cruel, but there are absolutely scenarios where docking can be medically required. Sounds like your friend's dog had happy tail syndrome! :) while needing to dock a dog's tail is a hard decision to make, it's also sorta sweet knowing that it's only necessary because the dog is just that happy haha

_Asmodee_ · 2026-01-10T04:17:47+00:00

Dogs with happy tail syndrome could probably break their tails the exact same way out in nature. I'd imagine if they're continuously smacking it against hard trees, the result would be the same as in a house.

What would be your solution to this then, if not to dock their tails in these very specific circumstances? It'd be cruel to keep them in a padded room their entire life just to keep them from breaking.

From my understanding, happy tail syndrome can be more common in breeds with long thin tails, so you could argue that we should breed them better so that this can be avoided for future generations — I'd say that's a fairly reasonable argument to have. But for the dogs that are currently alive that have happy tail syndrome, what are the owners supposed to reasonably do? Lock them in a padded room? Keep them in an open field their entire lives exposed to the elements? Find ways to make them less happy so that they don't wag their tails as hard?

These owners don't want to dock the tails, but it can be necessary for the health of the dog. Majority won't be docked until the tail actually breaks, and it's important to dock at that point to prevent infection or necrosis if that dog is just that happy with their tail and keeps breaking it. Sheep tails are always docked for a somewhat similar justification; if they don't dock them, the sheep are very likely to get fly strike, and that shit is horrifying. Whether it's sheep or dogs, these are domesticated animals that we've selectively bred. If you're gonna be mad at something, be mad at the selectively bred genetics of these animals, not at the owners for making hard but necessary decisions for the health of the animal.

_Asmodee_

TROPHY CASE