This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

This is more aimed at professional folks I think, or small business from hobby printers.

My wife is hitting the limits and frustrations of using Cricut Explore 3 to cut her heat vinyl projects. Suddenly, they've released a new machine type and adjusted the software they use which makes her machine cut faster (yay) but now it's more sloppy and not cutting as well as it did (it's not the blade, I repeat, IT IS NOT THE BLADE!)

Her frustrations are becoming mine due to the earache. Does anyone on Tildes do heat transfer and normal vinyl work? She's also looking at printing to vinyl roll and cutting; her aim is mostly tees and teddies. Due to this, loading a full roll and having a lot of waste isn't ideal.

We're after advice and what her upgrade steps are. We looked at printing to film (DTF) and garment (DTF) options, but we are definitely going to stay with vinyl for now.

Thoughts, advice, options, anything of value to say is all welcome. Not to self promote or anything, but to give you ideas of what she makes Https://thunderlizard.co.uk/shop and look at near any item. You can see it is like 2x4", 8x8" and max usually 12x12" sizes and a mix of vinyl types from plain through to glitter. Hopefully seeing that should allow for better and more accurate advice.

Thanks all!

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Let's say I want to draw/paint things like this: 1 2

Think black/death metal album covers, medieval renaissance, dark/sci fi scenarios.

I know this takes years of practice and I just want to do these as a hobby.

I am just lost to where I start. Just pen and paper and focus learn how to draw people first? Is there any online courses/resources?

The second thing is I don't want to spend money so I won't learn to do these with oil or any real world material. If I do commit to the hobby with pen and paper, I will go to digital (drawing tablet + Linux/krita) and stay on that forever.

It's the same with guitar. I play guitar for years and I'm settled for life with a nice guitar + mid priced digital pedalboard with nice effects/simulations (ampero II stomp) and a 1x12 flat speaker cabinet. No more purchases.

I'm trying to get back into drawing. Ye gods, my skills have gone downhill. As a total pro, I started out drawing a head and went from there with no care for composition and no clue where I'm going with this one—guess it should be some sorta chibi barbarian or something? Anyhows, any suggestions appreciated.

I know I need some darker tones to give it that spatial feel. Some pencil pieces, even if they're merely sketches, manages to get the tones just right. I think some of it is about having degrees of shading, where some smaller detail have even darker shadows. But it is hard to get right, don't even know if there's a word for it.

Here's my sucky drawing!

As an author who normally writes a lot of thrillers with dark subjects, I found at the outset of last year that I just couldn't add any more darkness to the world. Lisica is a story I've been incubating for over 20 years, about a fictional island 1600 km off the coast of Oregon in the middle of the Pacific. I've just finished the series and it needs a new set of eyes to take it to the next level.

It is pure escapism, a love story about eleven researchers who are sent to Lisica for eight weeks to categorize the island's life before a new global satellite agreement comes into force and the USAF has to reveal the island to the wider world. The novels are equal parts scientific discovery, (with special emphases on data science, field biology, geology, meteorology, marine science, archaeology, and linguistics) and equal parts torrid romance between all these beautiful people. In many ways it is a utopian story, about people in paradise doing valuable work who can also love without hurting others. There is no toxic masculinity or bullying on this island, no sophomoric communication problems, no jealousy nor regret. It is my belief that natural challenges such as storms and cliffs and the mystery of the unknown is enough. This isn't Lost. There is magical realism here but it is more realism than magic.

I'm hoping to find a few qualified beta readers who have a background in these sciences, to help me make sure I present them correctly. But it's a lot to ask, for sure. Each of the four volumes is 15 chapters of exactly 26 pages each. 1560 pages in all. 425,000 words. If anyone knows a retired biology teacher with plenty of time on their hands, that's basically who I need at this stage.

My next step is to turn each chapter into audio episodes. As well as an author, I'm an Audible narrator and professional character actor. It is why each chapter is exactly 26 pages long. They make for sixty 42 minute audio episodes. I will eventually release the series week by week for free on my literary podcast over the next year.

Hopefully, this scratches someone's itch. Thanks for reading!

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

I've never really been much of an artist myself, but one of my kids (11m) really likes drawing, painting and making small animations on his ipad. I'd like to give him some gentle encouragement, if that's likely to help him enjoy creating artwork more, but I'm not sure what would be a good approach. Does anyone have some suggestions? He told me that he likes drawing objects and landscapes, but I think that's only because he's not confident in drawing live subjects.

Some ideas I had, but I'm not certain of:

• Sketchpad?
• Guide or drawing techniques book?
• Finding and recommending a good youtube channel?

If there's something that helped you at this time of life please let me know, thank you!

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

I'm looking at making a major career change and I'm considering trying out one of our local newspapers to see if I can get into a semi regular gig with them. Is there anything in particular I should know or be looking for?

This is quite possibly one of the greatest struggles to writers: choosing a title. You'd think that writing a chapter or story would be the hard part, and to an extent it is, but somehow I almost always draw a blank at the title. Sometimes, I get lucky and a title just comes to me instantly. Usually though, I'm left staring at the top of the page after finishing trying to figure out what to call it. This doesn't just include the overall story, but even the title of individual chapters. Last year when submitting a short story for a contest, I had no clue what the heck to title it and ended up going with something like "Hawksbills and Ospreys" because the deadline was right there.

I know this is a common problem for writers. As someone who's active in the fan fiction sphere, the most common trick I see (and that I've used myself) is to pull a title from song lyrics or poems.

What about you? What are your tricks for trying to get inspiration for titles, and what sorts of "guidelines" do you follow to try to make them stand out?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Hello fellow creatives (not me though, I'm asking on behalf of my wife), would you be able to pass on some knowledge and sage advice?

Right now my wife is running an Etsy shop and personal site selling mostly Heat Transfer Vinyl based tees, teddies, bags, etc. She's making all of this using a Cricut Explore 3 as it was very hobbyist, along with a half decent heat press with electromagnetic pressure.

It's time to grow up a bit. We're going to be building a 5m X 5m building for her to work out of rather than a small office space in the house (she has a lot of stock) and with this, maybe it's time to upgrade the equipment.

She's not been fond of sublimation, although we have an A3 Epson for that. She's not keen on polyester. So the question is: does she upgrade from using a small Epson EcoTank and Cricut to something like a Roland BN20 or BN20D or simply go for a larger format cutter since she buys it buy the roll anyway? DTG seems very expensive and DTF is so new that you need to printer daily to stop the heads dying. I think she likes Vinyl and she also likes a little print and cut, but not so much of the latter as the combo she has is pretty shite.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? I'm trying to look at a budget of sub £10k for hardware. Happy to second hand if it's recommended.

I have two goals this year. The second is to submit at least one short story to a literary magazine. The first is to write one good short story (just kidding, the first is to write one story a week in the hope that one will be good enough to submit).

Of course the goal in my secret heart is to have my submission accepted but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Walk before you can run, and so on.

So, writers (particularly of fiction), have you ever submitted a short story to a literary magazine? How did it go? Did you learn anything in the process that you wish you’d known before? Any tips for a rookie?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

If i have a lot of acrylic on canvas paintings and I want to produce prints to sell, where do you make the prints? Local Kinko's/staples?
Clear plastic bag or no? Brief artist blurb at the back? Post card?

Have you ever bought a print? What made you want to buy it or what stopped you, and what would have made it go from no to yes?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

How do you begin? Do you have rituals or specific places you work? How do you decide it’s done?

I’m interested in hearing from creatives of any kind! Maybe we can draw inspiration and wisdom from someone who isn’t in our creative sphere.

I'm curious what people have made with the assistance of any of the new AI tools.

Let's skip low-effort things like asking ChatGPT to generate an essay and posting it as-is. But besides that, if you made something you think is cool, post it here.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Hello, long-time lurker here who only recently obtained an account!

I personally like Uniball pens (although annoyingly they do tend to smudge more than I'd like). I'm trying to find a less wasteful option (i.e. a refillable pen) but not really sure which models are good.

I'm looking to obtain a nice notebook, but I do feel that a lot of the popular models (e.g. Moleskine, Leuchturm) are a bit overpriced!

What kind of stationary do you use?

Back in the day https://ffffound.com/ was one of my biggest inspirations for imagery and creative ephemera.

I miss it sometimes and have a vast archive of downloaded inspiration. I discovered a lot of material under the radar of pop culture.

Kind of like picking up a circa 2009 vice magazine from a shop. I was seeing and feeling things that felt textural and well curated.

Is there something around that I haven’t seen?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Hi everyone - newly minted Tildes user and Reddit refugee.

I want to know how many of my fellow DIY amateur (or absolute pro) musicians are around, and where your recent jams are posted.

What kind of music do you like making - what's your workflow?

Where do you share the art that you make with the world? Do you use a social media site? A personal website? Do you keep it all to yourself? Is your art something that can't be shared online so easily?

As a hobbyist, I do digital and film photography, but I tend towards film unless the situation calls for it (like doing motorsports photography, for example).

I'm curious how many of this smaller community shoot film, and what everyone's relationship with film is. Do you shoot casually? Professionally? Part of this post is trying to gauge how much interest there could be in the occasional discussion of analog photography subjects. Would love to hear anything you have to say on the subject, be it film itself, gear (liking or collecting gear is not a bad thing!), or the process of shooting on analog formats.

If anyone is in the CA Bay Area there is a film group (organized through the Meetup app) that does semi-regular meets that we'd love to have more participants in.

Feel free to drop a link to wherever you post your work, if you do. I've really been enjoying posting on Glass for the last 6 months. It's paid but sure as hell beats Instagram, in my opinion.

I've always had a fairly structured routine life (clock in/out of work) and am able to stick to deadlines/routine in this format. There are only a few times in my life when I have more unstructured time and have to self-employ deadlines and things tend to fall apart during those instances (staying up late wasting time -> wake up late -> vicious cycle). I find when I'm held accountable to others (eg showing up for an appointment or a start time for work), things go fine, but when I'm only accountable to myself things tend to fall apart fairly quickly.

I'm sure many of you have jobs / hobbies where you work remotely and have to come up with your own schedules and am wondering what tips and tricks you've accumulated from your experiences that you would be willing to share that have been helpful for you to accomplish your goals?

I have a few months of free time coming up, and am hoping to make the most of it to improve my personal / professional life and make progress on my own personal projects/hobbies.

Some tips / tricks that I will be employing that have been somewhat helpful in the past:

• Creating a schedule for myself at least a day ahead
• Using time-blocking websites to block or temporize access to certain websites (I like coldturkey for PC)
• Minimizing distractions (putting phone on do not disturb / airplane mode), working in a quiet environment

Interested in what tactics you have all successfully employed in your own lives!

When talking with my therapist, the subject of writing is a constant. My obsessive approach to writing is a source of frustration.

I write well in my first language, and aspire to create short fiction . But I'm an over planner and way too critical of my own writing.

Anything longer than a single page is impossible for me because I'll obsess with editing and some misguided sense of "perfection", cutting paragraph after paragraph until I'm left with a decent micro story that you can read in two and a half minutes. Most of the time I don't even get this far.

So my question is, how can I force myself to be less self critical and obsessive, let things flow, and write longer stories? Are there any advices, books, courses, practices and exercises I can use?

I was told by the overlords that this was the way to ask permission to hear you! I wanna share, discover, and enjoy your personal music. I’ll add myself and some other projects to the bottom of this post, but I truly only want to hear you.

https://jlawson.bandcamp.com/album/visions

https://jeakams.bandcamp.com/

https://on.soundcloud.com/VkPckGcot1Xt9mjA7

Much love,
Jeakams

Personally I find it annoying when someone watermarks their photos, but I have a hard time justifying that annoyance when, not only are they entitled to attempt preventing people from stealing their work, they are entitled to do whatever the hell they want, categorically.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experience with the topic, especially if it helps me understand and be more accepting of photographers who watermark or digitally sign their work.

My absolute favorite sub even before getting defaulted was writingprompts. Basically people posted a prompt to spark an idea, and everyone would type up little stories. It's be cool to see some stories here so if you guys wanna try it, let's make Top Level Replies restricted to prompts, Second Level Replies the stories, and Third nested can just be the comments.

I'll post a prompt to get started, and a reply (I emailed these to myself back in 2015 so I don't have the username on hand). Don't be shy! And for any non-prompt replies just post a reply to the comment I made below for just that.

^{PS: Luna_Lovewell if you somehow find this please come back and write just a few more :]}

Many years ago I used to record a variety of music on an old Macbook and a dodgy copy of Logic Pro with various Native Instruments VSTs.

I had so much fun playing the drums badly on my midi pads, tightening them up in Logic, and then doing random stuff with the beat editor (changing velocity curves for specific notes like hi-hats, adding in random hits) to make it sound less rigid. Then maybe I'd record my acoustic guitar with my crappy mic, throw some reverb on it, add some vocals. Man, it was a blast!

It's been over a decade since I did that, and now I'd like to get back into that world again and produce some of my own backing music for my YouTube and TikTok videos, but I honestly don't know where to start.

I guess the big difference now is that I'm on Windows, and there is no Logic Pro here. The Ableton and Maschine layouts don't really make sense to me (I think these are more loop driven?). Reaper seems quite spartan compared to how I remember Logic (I know this is probably not actually the case, but the discoverability is not great imo).

If anyone has any suggestions about where I should start - I'm mostly looking for something that has the same layout as Logic did 10+ years ago (or at least, something that would feel similar and intuitive)- a big timeline where I can drag stuff around and try different arrangements, a piano editor I can break out at the bottom, a drum editor I can break out, set the note length and just drag my left-clicked mouse across to have a million hi-hat hits and then play around with deleting different hits until I get the right vibe, the draw the velocity across all of them easily.

The gear I have right now:

• Maschine MK3
• Some M-Audio super mini midi keyboard
• An old-school Metric Halo ULN-2 (this thing STILL costs a thousand bucks?!)
• A few Shure mics and a Wave 3 USB mic

Thanks in advance!

I will be participating in a panel discussion about the intersection of art and Artificial intelligence next week, and I am curious how fellow creatives feel about Artificial intelligence.

Have you used AI before in the creative process? If so, what services have you used/prefer?

What do you think the role of AI is in the creative process?

Does AI enhance creativity or limit originality?

What are the ethical implications of using AI to create art?

I am always interested in how creative people express themselves. There is something very I find very relaxing about creating large scale ephemeral art. Every summer I create temporary beach art / typography with seaweed collected from the shoreline.

Couple of examples:
https://imgur.com/gallery/m7xZIvy
https://imgur.com/gallery/vBrlpBz
https://imgur.com/gallery/zYCpDuo
https://imgur.com/gallery/Mw5NIr2

Generally the process involves sketching out the design in the sand, then collecting 3-5, 39 gallon yard bags worth of seaweed. I then slowly trace the design and weave the seaweed into itself and the sand. These projects take about 4 - 8 hours depending on the scarcity of the seaweed and the size of the design. They disappear with in just a few days due to weather and human and animal activity.

So tell me, artists of tildes, what weird stuff do you create?

Edit: words

I know the topic is very generic, but post any resources that helped you to learn making music, be it learning playing instruments or mixing.

For me, justinguitar.com helped in learning guitar from scratch. Lessons are spread out pretty well to not make very big jumps in complexity, and I love Justin's presenting.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

I got into it at the beginning of this year and I have to say this is the most fun hobby I've ever picked up. I've always loved plushies but have been greatly intimidated by sewing. But I've also always been good at modeling with clay and being able to visually break down objects into shapes. Needlefelting is like being able to make plushies using the skillset of modeling clay vs the skillset of sewing. At least that's how my brain sees it.

So far I've made two plushies, one Black Frost from SMT and one Gammamon from Digimon Ghost Game. If it's possible to post pictures here I would be happy to show them, but I don't know how, if anyone would like to enlighten me I'd appreciate it. Otherwise I could link to a tweet with pics but I'm not sure if there's rules against self-promotion as my Twitter is linked to an online shop.

Anyone else here needlefelting? Share what you're working on! Or any tips you have!

For those that don't know, Art Fight is a collaborative creative project that sorts artists into two teams and lets them upload their original characters. In order to score points for your team, you have to draw the other team's characters, with more involved and polished artworks scoring higher points. I'm participating for the fourth time this year, and if you're going to as well, feel free to drop your art fight URLs in the comments so we can follow and "attack" one another!

I've been an After Effects user for 20+ years and I like to help people who are looking to learn. I would just ask that anyone asking a question has done due diligence searching for an answer already.
I also use 3D Studio Max and Vray.

I've been using Obsidian for notes for a year now and iA Writer for writing prose for a decade (wow!) and love both of them for their simplicity, cloud sync, and most importantly, their innate ability to get out of the way and let me work.

But I'm always interested in other people's workflows! What do you use to write or take notes?

I'm kinda taken aback at Meta's most recent generative music engine (musicgen). I can't believe some of the stuff that pops out of it. I'm trying to generate a few interesting samples for use in my IDMish music.

Hi Everyone!

First post on Tildes. I'm excited to have been invited to give it a shot!

I was wondering if anyone here is using Unreal Engine 5 for any project their working on? It could be game design, virtual production, architecture, automotive or you name it!

I'm currently testing out numerous areas of Unreal Engine 5 for virtual production.

Thanks!!

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.