Pretty-eyed glass frog (Centrolene callistommum)
The scientific name of this species “callistommum” is derived from the greek kallistos that means “the most beautiful” and omma that means “eye”. This individual is from the Chocó in Esmeraldas province, Ecuador.
(text/photo: Santiago Ron)
(Source: olanise)
うみはひろいよ
no guys just imagine
all the kids playing this songI NEED THIS IN MY BRAIN FOREVER.
baby toco toucan
(photo by ancassell)
Birds Have Juvenile Dinosaur Skulls
Below content via smithsonianmag.com“Birds are dinosaurs. That much is certain. That deep connection, bolstered by fossil finds and theoretical frameworks, has made dinosaurs seem more bird-like than ever expected. From feathers to nesting behavior, many aspects of avian natural history are now known to have originated among non-avian dinosaurs.”
“Despite the fact that birds represent the only surviving dinosaurian lineage, though, their growth pattern is different. Instead of going through a period of protracted change, as with non-avian dinosaurs, the skulls of young birds are anatomically almost identical to those of adults. And birds take a much faster, more direct route to maturation—many bird species grow to adult size in a year or less. As a new Nature study by Bhart-Anjan Bhullar and collaborators suggests, this feature of bird life can be traced back to ancient transformations that effectively locked bird skulls into a permanent juvenile anatomy.”
“Bhullar and co-authors used a technique called geometric morphometrics to survey the degree of skull change among birds, various non-avian theropods, the archaic archosaur Euparkeria and the modern American alligator. By tracking landmarks on the skulls in virtual models, the researchers were able to quantify how much the skulls of particular creatures changed. As expected, most non-avian dinosaurs retained the ancestral growth pattern—juvenile skulls were significantly different from adult skulls, regardless of how big those dinosaurs were.”
Read the full article on smithsonianmag.com
Whoever is the wisest among you is also just a conflict and a cross between plant and ghost
-Nietzsche
Yeah, if someone is proud they don’t use “reference” to do artwork, they must not have much else to be proud about…
“Yeah, if someone is proud they don’t use “reference” to do artwork, they must not have much else to be proud about…”
This. The greatest artists and illustrators used photo reference. Not a little, but A LOT. Norman Rockwell was notoriously slow because he insisted on shooting photo reference of goddamn everything. Alphonse Mucha, whom everyone idolizes, photo referenced or used a model for damn near all his work. Vermeer used a rudimentary pinhole camera before cameras even printed to film to trace compositions onto canvas. James Gurney works from life, builds models, or uses photos. All those manga artists you love reference, trace, or just plain paste altered photographs into their work (actually they have their uncredited assistants do it).
To boast about not using reference is one of the most amateur things an artist can do and it means precisely squat, particularly if you are working digitally with ctrl+z, colour adjustment, and trick brushes.
So quit it! Just do the work. No one cares about how you got there or cares about reading your clever tutorials that are just a thin excuse for you to shit your shitty opinions or air your balls so everyone can smell how rosy they are. Just do the work D:
The tone with which this is written is angry and offensive! And I totally love it. Until I started working in a “real” art job (like, one that involves me working collaboratively with other Homo sapiens) I never realized that ref is the grease that keeps shit moving. Nobody is expected to reinvent the wheel every time they have to draw something new. If your boss tells you to draw in a retro style, you don’t have to jump in your time machine and live in the 50’s until you get it. You learn to Google and look at screenshots and piggyback off of your betters. Same with learning how to create background art, anatomy, textures, compositions… Most people here have reference books and art-of books and they look at them! What!! (I didn’t go to art school so I don’t know if this is common, but it blew my mind at first). The important part is that you’re still making original things: referenced information is not being simply regurgitated, it is being processed by your brain and synthesized into an original, awesome product.
Just don’t steal things, okay? Reffing properly is learning how to use the entire world as an art tool. Artists that copy paste, like the manga artists that were mentioned, have to do it because they put out like 30 pages a week; I think most of us can afford to have higher standards than that.
(Source: 8bitmaximo)
Feminist Frequency - Tropes vs. Women: #1 The Manic Pixie Dream Girl
I like what she’s saying, but not her examples. (500) Days of Summer and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were about how those women were individuals, not necessarily about how they inspire the lead male. While Joseph Gordon-Levitt was heavily inspired by Summer in (500) Days of Summer, in the end she was still very much her own person with her own rules and her own feelings.
And ESOTSM was a tragic romance about two very weird people in a very weird situation who, despite how much they hate eachother, can’t ever be apart.
So I like the point she’s making, but not her examples in particular.
I agree!
In addition, the two movies you’ve pointed out even look at the Manic Pixie Dream Trope dead in the face and then come out on the other side. The men seem to expect a MPD girl, but then the women are their own people and it is part of the reason why the relationships fall apart.“ I’m not a concept. Too many guys think I’m a concept or I complete them or I’m going to make them alive, but I’m just a fucked up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don’t assign me yours.” - Clementine Kruczynksi
The photoset only works if you read the comments above! :D
Manic Pixie Dream Girl can be an annoying trope, but I mean seriously? Eternal Sunshine pretty much states directly in its dialogue that it is subverting that trope. If anything it shows the danger of trying to make that kind of relationship work in the long run (and yet the movie still manages to be fun and charming because Michel Gondry).
There are so many feminist problems in the entertainment industry but it is so frustrating when people claiming to be feminists go after people who are actually writing really good female characters, as anyone might notice if they weren’t so busy looking for something to be offended at.
Also I cannot in good faith outright condemn Manic Pixie Dream Girls because I like Thor which has a plot of “my new boyfriend fell out of the sky” and that is about equal in terms of realistic romantic prospects.
Giant otter pup (Planet Earth Live - BBC)
Derp.
staceythinx: Slime Molds by Kim Fleming
Kuriositas has put together a great collection of images by macro photographer Kim Fleming for their post Slime Mold - Alien Landscapes On Earth. In it, they’ve coupled her beautiful photos with interesting information about slime mold. Beautiful and interesting are not words I would have expected to use for something called “slime mold”, so it’s definitely worth checking out even if the subject seems unappealing at first.
(Source: bat-wing)
Tenzin’s ballin’
