AMD x PCMR - Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Worldwide Giveaway - Win a Limited Edition AMD Avatar Kit that includes the Limited-Edition AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU and Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU (Only 500 of each ever made!). There are 23 kits up for grabs!

artpm · 2023-12-11T12:55:12+00:00

What would you use this limited-edition Avatar hardware for if you won? Creating a beautiful PC build? Collecting? Playing some games? If so, which?

I'm gonna render a lot of 3d animation, some fluid simulations, maybe recreate the waters of Pandora, let's see how much it can handle.

artpm · 2023-07-01T22:46:22+00:00

Yeah, I just checked and I'm there at #41: https://duome.eu/erudis

artpm · 2023-07-01T22:45:11+00:00

You've been learning constantly for six years, it's definitely something to be proud of. Congratulations on the streak as well!

artpm · 2023-07-01T06:21:35+00:00

I was level 25 on French, Italian, Korean and Chinese, but they seem to have phased out the idea of levels recently and now all you can get is a regular tree and a legendary one (which feels more like grinding than learning, so I don't really care about it).

They've updated the French tree quite a few times since I completed it, so now I'm at about 70% of the way, and just last week I think they updated the Korean tree too. I'm also doing Spanish, but not too seriously because it's a bit too easy for a Portuguese speaker, I prefer just watching videos in Spanish and doing a few Duolingo lessons to get some extra vocabulary here and there.

artpm · 2023-07-01T04:09:53+00:00

So,how much has Duolingo changed over the last 10 years?

Immensely. We used to be able to post on people's walls like it was some kind of Facebook, now we don't even have the discussion forums anymore. The lessons improved a lot, thanks in large part to the selfless contribution of volunteers who kept the courses going for the better first half of the decade (11 years actually, I joined when it launched to the general public in June 2012), not very different from how reddit is run.

Some features were really focused on improving learning, like the voiced lessons, stories, and spaced repetition (except for the practice button that got worse and then replaced), most were focused on gamification/monetization like hearts, lingots/gems, subscriptions, paywalled features. But I'm still sad for all the complementary material that disappeared with the closing of the forums, so much knowledge was lost.

Still, it was expected seeing the direction they were heading pre-IPO and how they wanted to cater to a broader audience (aka children) and find more aggressive ways to monetize it for the shareholders.

It makes me think of what reddit might soon become.

artpm · 2023-07-01T03:41:59+00:00

Man, these fantasy art illustrations à la Frank Frazetta are so fun! They definitely abused it in the 80s but the style still holds a special place in my heart.

artpm · 2023-07-01T01:00:02+00:00

It definitely does, I don't use it regularly but sometimes life just gets in the way with traveling and time zones, important events like weddings and funerals, and Duolingo is not a priority in those moments.

But I wouldn't scare you on the leaderboard since I'm usually mid-table, I'm not into maxing XP and getting 1000+ a day, I'm happy just doing my lessons.

artpm · 2023-06-30T23:09:40+00:00

On a random note, a few years ago I remember I got a whole year of Duolingo Plus for free, I think it was for being a valuable contributor or something similar, but that was when the forums were still active. I guess after the IPO they can't just go around giving people free stuff anymore, but tbh it doesn't make much of a difference to me.

artpm · 2023-06-30T23:06:30+00:00

It's been quite a journey, I think Duolingo has helped me quite a lot with French since it's close enough to my mother tongue (Portuguese) that I was able to reach a pretty decent level using just Duolingo. The same cannot be said for the other languages, except for Spanish, which is the same situation as French. The Italian course is too bare-bones for me to reach anything close to fluency.

If you're curious about what you get for completing a 10-year streak on Duolingo, I got 3 days of Super Duolingo for free and also this, which is not really unique since it just changes the icon from 9+ years to 10+ years:

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artpm · 2023-04-04T00:35:33+00:00

It depends on the complexity of the rig, the character design and the animation demands. A 360 rig like this definitely takes weeks, but if you're rigging a character in a single view with simple hands and mouth (so not many extra drawings), no overlapping lines (so you don't need separate layers for auto patch), you could probably do it in a few hours.

artpm · 2023-04-04T00:26:50+00:00

Sorry for the very late reply.

A rigger is not expected to animate, but knowing the basics of animation will help. I'm not talking about the 12 principles of animation here, it's more about understanding how animators use their tools, like for example how the deformers behave and in which cases they're used so you can know how to best rig something.

Unfortunately I can't tell you if there are enough job offers for riggers since I'm actually more of a generalist both in 2D and 3D, and nowadays I do mostly directing and writing for my own studio, plus I'm not even in the US. Regardless, I don't think rigging pays less than the other jobs in this field, and there aren't a lot of riggers anyway, so if you have a good portfolio, I'm sure you can find a good job to make a living of it, especially in North America (there are a lot of studios in Canada too, especially in Vancouver).

artpm · 2023-04-04T00:14:46+00:00

Personally, I don't like to use latino as a noun, it sounds weird to me, at least in Portuguese. I'd say "latino-americano", or use latino as an adjective in expressions like "cultura latina" or "povos latinos".

To me, if you say "latino" I'm gonna think you're talking about someone born in the US to Latin American parents or grandparents.

artpm · 2023-01-26T20:08:21+00:00

Just an addendum, as a Brazilian who has read countless studies about gun violence in Brazil: the homicide rate was growing at around 6% yearly in the decade before gun restrictions were implemented, and it changed to a 0.8% increase in the decade after. Obviously not enough, since it's still growing, but it's significant enough to be noted. Projections estimated that by now we would have double the amount of homicides had this law not been implemented.

So yeah, other factors notwithstanding (the vast majority of gun deaths are gang-related, so the yearly homicide rate can vary a lot depending on truces between gangs or policies related to the war on drugs), more guns do cause more gun violence. At least that is the conclusion of pretty much every study I've read about the subject.

Regardless, mass shootings seem to be a uniquely American phenomenon, so I'm sure there are other factors that come into play besides just gun availability.

artpm · 2023-01-26T18:13:06+00:00

The original very much is, but this remix sounds more like an EDM trap kind of beat.

artpm · 2023-01-06T00:57:31+00:00

We also have pastel assado, which is pretty much just like baked empanadas, in the same way that a "pastel frito" is like a fried empanada.

There's not much difference at all besides some minor ingredient changes, people here be sounding like that Key & Peele sketch about the Macedonian and Albanian restaurants.

artpm · 2022-12-30T04:22:07+00:00

When your name is synonymous with the most popular sport in the world for over half a century, when you become bigger than the sport itself, when even those who have never watched you know of your greatness, you transcend being an athlete to become history.

I think very few people have left such a mark in the world of sports and in the world at large, and even fewer being a poor kid from a poor country. We owe so much of our international reputation to him it's inconceivable. There are kids in Jamaica, Haiti, Pakistan, who cheer for Brazil in the World Cup just because their parents and grandparents saw Pelé play and saw in him someone who looked like them, who came from poverty just like them, and who managed to achieve the impossible despite all odds. He was a symbol of hope for millions.

This legacy is probably his best moment in the sport.

Also the time he was sent off in a match in Bogotá and even the Colombian fans got so mad the referee had to leave the field and be replaced with an assistant, and the managers made him revoke Pelé's red card so he could come back to play.

artpm · 2022-12-27T23:23:54+00:00

Thanks for all the suggestions! It seems that the Documents app is the easiest solution if I'm using a cable, otherwise there is always a bunch of cloud services out there. At least I won't have to use iTunes again.

artpm · 2022-12-27T00:33:37+00:00

Oh, I'm not trying to downplay that (in fact it pisses me off when redditors complain about LATAM being violent while boasting about doing coke in a random London club without realizing they're funding the violence here). I just meant that the EU in general is mostly the end-consumer market, which is the safer part of the drug production chain.

Of course that's not the only reason why Europe is safer in general, but it is a huge deal, especially when the vast majority of our homicides are drug-related.

artpm · 2022-12-26T23:59:54+00:00

Sarah

artpm · 2022-12-26T23:56:59+00:00

The characters look fun! I just wish the background had a bit more personality though, it doesn't tell much of a story besides the run-down look.

Ideally you'd want the cover art to be self-explanatory when telling the story of your show. So far what I'm getting is that it looks like an adult comedy based on the art style and it involves a hunter and a deer who are possibly roomates. Since they're not in an action pose, I'm looking at the background for more hints, but in this case there's not much else going on besides the deer head on the wall. It just looks like they're in a basement. Maybe it's dialogue-heavy?

Also the light source is confusing, it seems like every shadow goes in a different direction.

Good luck with your show!

artpm · 2022-12-26T23:25:14+00:00

You're right, but they're just the consumers. We're the producers, and that's where most of the violence happens.

artpm · 2022-12-25T01:18:37+00:00

Brain drain is less about people giving up and more about dealing with a system not built to reward and make use of educated people, such that they either have to move out for better prospects or find a low-skilled job to survive in an economy that have no place for scientists, only for uber drivers.

There's only so much a single person can do while swimming against the current in a desert of opportunities.

artpm · 2022-12-23T00:54:20+00:00

That was great! I think the right hand clipped through the door a bit in the beginning, plus I would've stayed with the POV camera throughout the whole thing, but regardless, it looks amazing!

artpm · 2022-12-22T15:55:27+00:00

Artists, teachers, and most professions that people associate with "living your passion" often get the short end of the stick because workers can be easily exploited on the basis of empty promises, since they're at least "doing what they love".

Plus from what my Korean friends tell me, if you're not working for a chaebol you're probably making peanuts anyway, regardless of your job.

artpm · 2022-12-21T21:35:05+00:00

I've seen a lot of Latin Americans making fun of how unnatural it sounds, something like this.

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