dsilverz

...there wouldn't be a Jerry for Tom to chase anymore. And, depending on the owl (e.g. an Eurasian Eagle-owl, Bubo bubo), there wouldn't be a Tom, either (yes, an owl can hitch a domestic cat if she's large and powerful enough, there's even a photo I once saw depicting this happening and the cat seemed to be very confused "y aM fAlling upwArDs!? meoww?!").

"Hootie" (or "Ollie") would bring about the ultimate end for the entire cartoon in the first episode she were to be featured, perhaps in the first three seconds of her appearance. And this end would be the most quick and the most silent end for a cartoon, like, ever.

I use Misskey forks (currently Catodon, after having migrated from Calckey) to interact with the Fediverse, especially the part encompassing the threadiverse (mostly Lemmy), because I like having a microblogging feed while being also able to interact with (and posting my own) Lemmy threads (and Catodon, specifically, implemented this interesting "Forums" feature for better interoperability with Lemmy, a feature of which I'm using right now to post this question thread).

Because I don't have a Lemmy account anymore, and because federation isn't always immediate between the threadiverse and what I'd call the "microbloggingverse" (encompassing Mastodon, Friendica and several other platforms, including Misskey and its forks), I developed the habit of using some non-Cloudflare Lemmy instances (including, but not limited to, lemmy.ml) as a guest to browse global Lemmy threads sorted by "New Comments", copying its federated URL and fetching it directly from my Misskey side whenever I want to interact with a post or comment.

I also use said Lemmy instances to check my own modlog because I'm not entirely sure if I'd see anything (e.g. some DM or notification) from my side if a post/comment were to be removed or if some community/instance kicked/banned me. As far as it seems, my modlog is clean, and so is the modlog for my earlier, older Calckey account, I don't seem to have broken any rules so far...

... but I don't know. I recently interacted with some threads that doesn't show up in my profile when seen from any of the Lemmy instances I use for browsing Lemmy.

If said post don't show up, something tells me that I wouldn't be able to see modlogs for not-properly-federated posts if a mod action were to happen.

Does this proceed? Could it be happening that I'm not seeing modlog entries for my own Misskey accounts because these entries didn't properly federate with the instances I'm relying on to browse Lemmy? Or is this just because I've so far been successfully respectful towards my peers and never broke any community/instance rules (despite my own replies sometimes making my imposter syndrome scream inside me)?

Another in my esoteric series, with the owl flexing her ability to be fully animated (well, not so animated herself, given her grumpy expression in a cemetery. lol).

Feedback is appreciated.

Alt-text: short animation taking place during night time, in a graveyard containing several rows of headstones surrounded by a short grass. A brown screech-owl is perched atop one of the headstones from the middle of the first row. The gray headstones all have the same carved inscription: “Vita mori oportet”. A red, large crescent Moon, with the concave part facing upward, looms above the owl. A few stars are visible behind, with the same red tint. A skeleton is stretching on the grass, few meters away from the headstones. The animation begins with the camera very close to the skeleton’s skull before it starts moving through the grass, past the skeleton, slowly approaching the owl. As the camera approaches, the owl briefly unfurls her wings while looking up, closing her eyes and opening her beak as if she were screeching/hooting. Then she furls back her wings, develops a grumpy face and begins staring at the camera. When the camera is closer to her, she tilts her head slightly (a behavior typical of real owls), then briefly lifts her right talons (scene’s left side) towards the camera while slightly stretching her claws and blinking both eyes in a tender manner, then she suddenly straightens her posture while doing the same piercing gazing again as her eyes glow green (slightly exaggerated tapetum lucidum to convey an uncanny supernaturality).

#arsritualistemplii #occultart #mementomori #3dart #blender #3danimation #owls #gothicart

This is my 3D remake of a digital drawing I made in the past, depicting Lucifer/Samael and Lilith as complementary opposites. The drawing was made back in March, using Sketchbook. The 3D scene, which I made yesterday, finally implements a Blender model for Lilith's counterpart (Lilith was the first model/character I made as soon as I started tinkering with Blender and CharMorph three months ago).

While building a CharMorph model for Lucifer, I didn't look at my own drawing, I let my own "vibes" guide me through my choices for his appearance, yet I ended up with pretty much the same figure, so I guess this is as spiritually accurate as it can get for his anthropomorphic depiction... in fact, if you squint the eyes, he almost looks like a hybrid between Mark Pellegrino's Lucifer from Supernatural TV Series and Aziraphale from Good Omens (in time, while Lucifer is pretty much accurate in Supernatural, their Lilith is very far from who the actual Lilith is).

I sculpted his outfit from scratch after struggling to find a proper formal attire model under Creative Commons to dress him. His horns and wings are borrowed geometries from Lilith's, geometries of which were also sculpted by myself. I'm likely going to add and change things in this Lucifer model, such as a tie/bow-tie, a golden scepter (I understand Lucifer as a ringmaster of sorts), a golden Venetian mask, maybe aviator sunglasses, as well as his animal companion/zoomorphic manifestation, the New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) to match Lilith's companion/zoomorphic manifestation Western Screech-owl (Megascops kennicottii) (trivia: corvids and owls are known to have a complex relationship, mirroring that of Lucifer and Lilith).

This post originally has two pictures; as I'm posting from a Misskey platform, I'm not sure whether Lemmy and other threadiverse platforms will properly bring both of them. Both have lengthy, detailed alt-texts I wrote, you may want to check these for additional details on the symbologies I purposefully imbued.

#arsritualistemplii #occultart #3dmodeling #3dart #digitaldrawing #sketchbookart

In a continuation series regarding my 3D owl (Megascops / Screech-Owl) model, I built an entire scene full with a desert landscape, a dynamics inspired by real events (such as the Dutch "terror-oehoe") while also imbuing artistic (Lovecraftian) and esoteric (Lilith, hereby symbolized by both the owl and the Moon) symbolism.

A short animation (CW: potentially triggering video due to some flashing as the camera moves through a chiaroscuro/high-contrast scene; not overly flashing per se, but in order to keep things safe, do not watch that video if you have epilepsy) will likely be among the comments.

I changed many things for the owl model since my one-week-ago thread, including the tapetum lucidum, slightly more ear tufts, a new "grumpy" morph alongside the "eye blinking" morph, as well as improved painting/texture for her fur/plumage (now she's hopefully looking less of a racoon and more of an actual owl).

Credits:
- Skeleton character: Public Domain (CC0)
- Moon texture and sky texture: actual scientific imagery from NASA SVS (yes, this scene's Moon is as real as she could be for a 3D scene; both textures I got from NASA website were projected onto very large UV spheres as part of a miniature universe sandbox in Blender; the Moon's visible face is the same visible face as seen from Earth, although this detail ended up obfuscated by the bloom effect I used)
- Sandy texture/material used for landscape: Public Domain (CC0)
- Other elements, such as the owl, the desert landscape mesh, as well as this specific composition/choreography and the resulting rendering are content made by me.

Alt-text:
High-res rendering of a 3D scene where the owl (medium-sized Screech-owl with dark brownish fur and glowing green eyes from tapetum lucidum) is gliding mid-flight, visibly sharp talons extended forwards in a clawing gesture, mere centimeters away from swooping down onto a living human skeleton (anatomically-accurate masculine skeleton, seen partially in this specific perspective) who was running from Her but stumbled and is now falling down to the ground as they appear screaming. Both are amidst a vast, featureless desert with smooth dunes, surrounded by a clear/starry dark night sky with a slight reddish tint. The camera angle is dramatically tilted diagonally, centered and focused at the owl while the de-focused skeleton falls to their knees at the bottom right corner. At the bottom left corner, almost besides the owl, a large crescent Moon is visible with a highly-glowing partial lunar eclipse (as in, Moon is being lit at the bottom side while featuring the reddish glow typical of lunar eclipses, thus appearing as a belly-up crescent resembling devilish horns).

#ArsRitualisTemplii #3dmodeling #lovecraftian #occultart #spookyart

Licensing wasn't exactly a thing I used to think about for the personal projects I create. I used to use Creative Commons and WTFPL almost interchangeably (the former for artworks, the latter for code), as if these were to mean the same "I don't care about what you're gonna do with this creation" (narrator voice: these didn't mean the same thing).

But, then, one aspect I've been thinking about for my ongoing project (doing a 3D model of a full, animatable owl I've sculpted from scratch in Blender), an aspect of which will likely influence other projects I happen to create after the ongoing one, is licensing.

To the one hand, I don't want to require attribution, I don't care about attribution precisely because I'm taking nothing with me after I die someday. Preferably, I'd want it to be part of Public Domain so every human and (who knows?) non-human living being could use it for free (even though I myself had my costs while creating the things I create, it's important to me that I release my personal creations free of charge so these are affordable for anyone to use/modify/appreciate).

To the other hand, and this is a feeling that have grown more and more intense deep down inside me as the days pass (a hatred for capitalist greed exploiting the creations originally made and dedicated for free; a hatred for the exploitation of the means of artistic production), I don't want projects deriving from and/or using this creation to be closed behind private property, I don't want these to be put behind paywalls.

Originally, I'd be inclined to use CC0, as my initial thought was to dedicate my creations to the Public Domain (as all art and knowledge should be, IMHO), but then there's the phenomenon in which a corporation (e.g. certain corporations with cartoonish rodent mascots) takes something from PD, does enough to be past the legally-required de minimis threshold for it to be copyrighteable, then close it behind paywalls and trademarks. And even though I'm just a random nobody, I do NOT want this to happen with my creations, I do NOT want this to happen more than I do not want to require attribution. I want it to stay free, free as in libre and, especially, free as in gratis (free of charge). I also want everything that ever makes use of it, as well as every derivative of it, to be free.

As far as I could research about this (especially as IANAL), I learned that, once I dedicate something to PD, reinforcing PD over the derivatives/uses is legally impossible (makes sense as there's no such thing as a "Earthly Representative of the Public Domain Commons" to sue/punish every corporation daring to privatize something taken for free from the Commons).

It seems like I have only two major choices: I can choose between dedicating my creations to PD (and therefore waiving all my rights over these, including my future ability to sue whoever puts price tags and/or trademarks on top of the things meant to be free) and accept that a landlord can do past the de minimis to exploit these for corporate whims, or I can choose to keep some rights over these (particularly the attribution part) for me to have the legal means to enforce a share-alike licensing requiring the derivatives and projects using these to inherit the gratisness.

Are these my only choices, really? Is there something, preferably tested legally across jurisdictions, which I could use for my projects (especially for my ongoing 3D project once I feel ready to release it) to satisfy this will? Or it's actually something impossible (enforcing gratisness)? If my current jurisdiction influences on the available choices, I'm Brazilian.

It's been merely two months since I pivoted from digital drawings (some of which I shared with this community) to a hyperfocused tinkering with 3D modeling in Blender (mostly designing a CharMorph humanoid model, changing it extensively while also sculpting and adding assets such as wings and dress), and this is my first successful sculpting of an entire new character, as well as my first successful rigging that didn't rely on CharMorph or similar ready-to-use character libraries (other than Rigify and its Bird metarig for the armature, which I had to modify in order for it to match the sculpture).

I was missing a (preferably free) owl model for my esoteric scenes (the owl is meant to be alongside the aforementioned humanoid model in my scenes), and every free model I could find available online didn't seemed fitting for the kind of symbology I'm working with; other owl models, perhaps slightly better fitting to the specific symbology I was seeking, were paywalled models, so I ended up throwing it all up and trying to do it myself (which I intend to release publicly as a CC0 project).

As a trivia, I started with the idea of sculpting a Great Horned Eagle-Owl (Bubo virginianus), but I ended up pivoting to a Megascops (specifically, this one who was one of my main visual inspirations), as Screech-owls felt somewhat easier for me to sculpt than eagle-owls. Well, even though a Bubo would be better to my scenes, it still fits the symbolism.

Another trivia: notice her eye pupils, they can dilate (morphable via Shape Keying; because both eyes share the same mesh, changing the morph will affect both eyes, although in real owls the pupils can dilate differently across both eyes depending on whether there are direct light shining onto one of them).

There's a lot I still feel I need to improve, especially the texture (my detail-oriented side looks at this result and can't help but notice the bizarre similarity with a racoon or possum, given the way I painted the face texture), the UV map (there are some seams due to my specific parameters for Smart UV Unwrapping; my potato laptop can do 4096px textures, but I try to make it easier for it and stick with textures up to 2048px, downscaling to 1024px when I feel it's too heavy to work with, but this leads to pixel seams), as well as additional rigging bones for the metarig (especially the eyelids, as IRL owls can and do blink).

Suggestions are welcome!

#arsritualistemplii #3dmodeling #blender #3danimation #owls

A fallen tree in a non-existent existence

This is my gnostic-nihilist extrapolation of the classic, philosophical "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?". It turns out, there was never a forest nor a tree to begin with. As René Magritte would say, "ceci n'est pas une arbre", both ontologically and in semiotics, as my drawing is just a signifier from a non-existent signified.

Alt-text:

A four-panel comic.

The first panel depicts a fallen tree surrounded by other trees alongside the text "A tree fell amidst the woods, but there was no one nearby to hear or see it falling".

The second panel is the same scene, but now the surrounding trees have a translucent, wireframe appearance that of a computer simulation. The text is "and the nearby trees weren't actually there: these were merely hallucinations from the tree's near-death experience".

In the third panel, the surrounding trees vanished completely while it's the ground being depicted with the translucent, wireframe appearance. The text is "and so was the ground, there was no ground, no dirt, no land, no biome".

In the fourth panel, the ground is gone, with the tree hovering in the middle of a purple void, the fallen tree is depicted with the translucent, wireframe appearance, and there are now three texts. The first two texts, as paragraphs above the fallen tree, says "The tree doesn't exist. There's no tree. / It's fallen since the beginning of its non-existence (never been an «it»)”. A third text, appearing as a red-colored speech inside a black and red speech balloon at the bottom right corner, is meant to break the fourth wall as it's spoken by an entity (for those who are familiar with my earlier drawings, the entity is Death Herself) addressing the viewer (us) as "wandering tree" (a twisted nod at the biblical verse Mark 8:24), says "Oh, hey, wandering tree! I was expecting ye, hon. Time to leave this silly Samsāra ye've been put in by Yaldabaoth".

#ArsRitualisTemplii #digitaldrawing #darkart #occultart #philosophy

@artshare@lemmy.world