Jason Reed https://www.dailydot.com/author/jason-reed/ The Daily Dot | Your Internet. Your Internet news. Tue, 01 Jun 2021 04:06:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 YouTuber D’Angelo Wallace is taking down the art world with his ASMR chill https://www.dailydot.com/irl/d-angelo-wallace-youtube/ Wed, 03 Apr 2019 12:00:38 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=562717 d'angelo wallace

“Writer, artist, content creator”: These seem less like legitimate professions these days and more like abstractions used to describe anyone seeking attention on the internet. But D’Angelo Wallace is not just anyone. His YouTube channel, which he uses to skewer internet art culture and YouTube itself, has racked up over 100k subscribers in under a year—and for good reason.

With his razor-sharp wit, the 20-year-old San Antonio native makes videos that are dry, cutting, and downright hilarious without going for the easy laugh—a rarity on the platform. If you’re a jaded artist like myself, you can’t help but love the insight he brings to the nonsense involved in this career field.

His channel is a mix of commentary, (not) tutorials, reviews, and outright tragedy doused in silly sarcasm with a dash of self-loathing, all in a neat little package. “Why would I ever make more than 10 minutes of content?” he tells his viewers. “I operate in the space between ‘bare minimum’ and ‘not good enough’ and that space ends exactly at the 10-minute mark.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiq1OCpK9wI

One of Wallace’s latest videos, “Following a Bob Ross tutorial with the default round brush,” is the perfect example of what makes his channel great, offering his meta-humor sensibility while calling back to two of his earlier videos about questionable art how-to's. Then there is his beloved subject, Ross, the prototype of the unfollowable YouTube digital painting tutorial. If you’ve ever tried to paint alongside him, you know just how painful it can be.

“Wait, I am not ready for the mountain.. I am.. I am not ready,” Wallace says while trying to follow along. “He’s moving faster than I can even process. I haven’t even finished the first thing that he’s already done. Green? Wait, I haven’t even done the blue yet.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-OwtVYYxn8

It’s his deadpan delivery that gives the videos just the right feel, matching his vaporwave-lite aesthetic with an almost ASMR-like quality. They’d be relaxing if I wasn’t laughing while I watched.

“That really slow, tired cadence that I had in [one of] my first videos on my channel with a voiceover, I recorded in my closet because I needed good acoustics,” he tells the Daily Dot. “I only had 36 subscribers. I didn’t want to make the video. I just wanted to, like, draw and put it online.”

Since he uploaded the video a year ago, it has garnered over 400K views.

“I never could have foreseen it,” he says, “so I was left in a really weird spot where it’s like, ‘OK, so if this is what I’m known for, thankfully, I don’t ever have to act more energetic than I am.’”

That monotone cadence is also a layer of protection. He believes YouTubers often feel the pressure to “keep up this positive, you know, energetic facade,” which is impossible. “I've had all kinds of videos on my channel,” he says. “If I recorded them on bad days, nobody would know. It’s how I am. I'm not overly energetic. I'm not happy all the time. I don’t think any of us are, and if I'm talking about something I dont wanna talk about, which often times comes up, I'm not gonna try to make it sound like I care. So that’s where a lot of my delivery comes from—I feel like it’s just me wanting to keep it genuine.”

However, for Wallace, making videos isn’t as simple as just getting in front of the camera and talking and drawing. “Some people don’t actually realize that my content is written,” he says, “which I think is because I'm delivering it so low-key. They’ll watch the whole video and just think I just turned the camera on.”

Wallace has a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Our Lady of the Lake University. “I thought that meant I would get to shoot movies all day, but instead it meant I had to write scripts all day,” he says. He said he took classes on writing for television and movies, and that’s where he learned the value of working out ideas. “We had plenty of writing workshops where we would sit around and pick apart each other’s scripts for hours. It’s more productive than it sounds, and now I write the scripts for my YouTube videos in much the same way that I learned in college.”

Now with his YouTube scripts, he’ll have an idea, sketch it out—jokes, delivery, and all—then come back to it the next day and cut, cut, cut. “I cut so much stuff from my scripts, you have no idea,” he says.

His first couple of videos built him a following of admirers who were there for the art nerd jokes, and for the most part, he says, his subscribers “keep it civil" in the comments section. But because the internet and the art community—and, hell, even Wallace himself—loves drama, several of his videos have caused some controversy.

One is a great takedown of elitist attitudes regarding digital art, as espoused in a tweet by Jake Parker, the founder of the popular October drawing challenge Inktober. “The FULL experience of Inktober” highlights the weird gatekeeping surrounding what is “real” art and what is not, and what the “full experience” of Inktober really means. (Notably, Parker partnered with Adobe for Inktober a year later, so I guess we have a final ruling on whether digital art is real art or not.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqsLcYqmoRw

Another controversial video involves popular YouTuber Holly Brown (roughly 250k subscribers) who was accused of tracing a character in one of her works. She posted an explanation video that caused more problems than it solved. In it, she claims that she used the character as a reference, but then says she “straight up... traced it.” She goes on to justify it by saying she does it to “help with composition” and that she “forgot that [she] hadn’t redrawn the final image.” This didn’t sit well with many who saw it, and D’Angelo’s video reply to it exploded. In it, he picks apart the quasi-apology at every eye-rolling juncture, but he also ends it on a high note.

“What we should not do is trace artwork and upload it to Twitter without credit,” Wallace says at the video’s conclusion. “But.. I think we should also not cancel Holly Brown. It doesn’t negate all of the good that Holly has actually done on her channel, and all of the good videos that she’s made. I’ve made mistakes, you’ve made mistakes, it could be argued that YouTube itself is a mistake—and we can criticize those mistakes and laugh at them, but we can also do that without trying to end somebody else’s career. I don’t have time to cancel anybody, there are too many Tik-Tok compilations to watch.”

He says with that video, he stopped being so “universally popular,” as it garnered 2,000 dislikes. “All of a sudden, I was no longer the YouTuber you could just like. I was like the art drama YouTuber, and it was like, ‘Well, if you’re gonna give me that badge, I'll wear it proudly.’”

As a YouTuber critiquing the art industry, Wallace says it’s part of his job to find content that sparks discussion, with videos like “Color dodge the issue—rossdraws tracing without credit,” in which called out the account of Ross Tran, who has over 800k subscribers. It resulted in an Instagram apology from Tran the next day, and hopefully a wider awareness of art ethics among his substantial fanbase. Wallace also has exactly 10 minutes of content for James Charles, a popular makeup artist with over 15 million subscribers, who has been accused of stealing design ideas.

“Art drama is huge and people like to pretend that they don’t like it, and they don’t want it in the community," Wallace says, "but they’re still watching every video that comes out, which I think is hilarious.”

Wallace also isn’t afraid to listen to commenters. He realizes that it seems as if he’s saying that professional artists never trace, and he got a lot of flak from commenters saying, “Well, this is how professionals do it.”

“My opinion on the matter is just be transparent,” he says. “If you’re using someone else’s resources for your own benefit and often profit, it doesn’t hurt you to disclose it. You know, I'm not gonna think any less of it. I use all kinds of references in my own artwork.”

For now, Wallace’s creative focus is on the work he makes for YouTube. “I really like what I've been able to build so far, but I feel like, at this point, I've just laid the foundations,” he says about his YouTube channel. “I have my fanbase, they’re here for me, which I think is amazing. I would love to do this full-time. It’s not what I'm doing at the moment, but I'll do what it takes to get there.”

As a guy who’s notorious of calling out art drama, Wallace is also self-aware enough to understand that turnabout is fair play. “It’s only a matter of time before someone makes [a video] about me.”

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post YouTuber D’Angelo Wallace is taking down the art world with his ASMR chill appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> d'angelo wallace

“Writer, artist, content creator”: These seem less like legitimate professions these days and more like abstractions used to describe anyone seeking attention on the internet. But D’Angelo Wallace is not just anyone. His YouTube channel, which he uses to skewer internet art culture and YouTube itself, has racked up over 100k subscribers in under a year—and for good reason.

With his razor-sharp wit, the 20-year-old San Antonio native makes videos that are dry, cutting, and downright hilarious without going for the easy laugh—a rarity on the platform. If you’re a jaded artist like myself, you can’t help but love the insight he brings to the nonsense involved in this career field.

His channel is a mix of commentary, (not) tutorials, reviews, and outright tragedy doused in silly sarcasm with a dash of self-loathing, all in a neat little package. “Why would I ever make more than 10 minutes of content?” he tells his viewers. “I operate in the space between ‘bare minimum’ and ‘not good enough’ and that space ends exactly at the 10-minute mark.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiq1OCpK9wI

One of Wallace’s latest videos, “Following a Bob Ross tutorial with the default round brush,” is the perfect example of what makes his channel great, offering his meta-humor sensibility while calling back to two of his earlier videos about questionable art how-to's. Then there is his beloved subject, Ross, the prototype of the unfollowable YouTube digital painting tutorial. If you’ve ever tried to paint alongside him, you know just how painful it can be.

“Wait, I am not ready for the mountain.. I am.. I am not ready,” Wallace says while trying to follow along. “He’s moving faster than I can even process. I haven’t even finished the first thing that he’s already done. Green? Wait, I haven’t even done the blue yet.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-OwtVYYxn8

It’s his deadpan delivery that gives the videos just the right feel, matching his vaporwave-lite aesthetic with an almost ASMR-like quality. They’d be relaxing if I wasn’t laughing while I watched.

“That really slow, tired cadence that I had in [one of] my first videos on my channel with a voiceover, I recorded in my closet because I needed good acoustics,” he tells the Daily Dot. “I only had 36 subscribers. I didn’t want to make the video. I just wanted to, like, draw and put it online.”

Since he uploaded the video a year ago, it has garnered over 400K views.

“I never could have foreseen it,” he says, “so I was left in a really weird spot where it’s like, ‘OK, so if this is what I’m known for, thankfully, I don’t ever have to act more energetic than I am.’”

That monotone cadence is also a layer of protection. He believes YouTubers often feel the pressure to “keep up this positive, you know, energetic facade,” which is impossible. “I've had all kinds of videos on my channel,” he says. “If I recorded them on bad days, nobody would know. It’s how I am. I'm not overly energetic. I'm not happy all the time. I don’t think any of us are, and if I'm talking about something I dont wanna talk about, which often times comes up, I'm not gonna try to make it sound like I care. So that’s where a lot of my delivery comes from—I feel like it’s just me wanting to keep it genuine.”

However, for Wallace, making videos isn’t as simple as just getting in front of the camera and talking and drawing. “Some people don’t actually realize that my content is written,” he says, “which I think is because I'm delivering it so low-key. They’ll watch the whole video and just think I just turned the camera on.”

Wallace has a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Our Lady of the Lake University. “I thought that meant I would get to shoot movies all day, but instead it meant I had to write scripts all day,” he says. He said he took classes on writing for television and movies, and that’s where he learned the value of working out ideas. “We had plenty of writing workshops where we would sit around and pick apart each other’s scripts for hours. It’s more productive than it sounds, and now I write the scripts for my YouTube videos in much the same way that I learned in college.”

Now with his YouTube scripts, he’ll have an idea, sketch it out—jokes, delivery, and all—then come back to it the next day and cut, cut, cut. “I cut so much stuff from my scripts, you have no idea,” he says.

His first couple of videos built him a following of admirers who were there for the art nerd jokes, and for the most part, he says, his subscribers “keep it civil" in the comments section. But because the internet and the art community—and, hell, even Wallace himself—loves drama, several of his videos have caused some controversy.

One is a great takedown of elitist attitudes regarding digital art, as espoused in a tweet by Jake Parker, the founder of the popular October drawing challenge Inktober. “The FULL experience of Inktober” highlights the weird gatekeeping surrounding what is “real” art and what is not, and what the “full experience” of Inktober really means. (Notably, Parker partnered with Adobe for Inktober a year later, so I guess we have a final ruling on whether digital art is real art or not.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqsLcYqmoRw

Another controversial video involves popular YouTuber Holly Brown (roughly 250k subscribers) who was accused of tracing a character in one of her works. She posted an explanation video that caused more problems than it solved. In it, she claims that she used the character as a reference, but then says she “straight up... traced it.” She goes on to justify it by saying she does it to “help with composition” and that she “forgot that [she] hadn’t redrawn the final image.” This didn’t sit well with many who saw it, and D’Angelo’s video reply to it exploded. In it, he picks apart the quasi-apology at every eye-rolling juncture, but he also ends it on a high note.

“What we should not do is trace artwork and upload it to Twitter without credit,” Wallace says at the video’s conclusion. “But.. I think we should also not cancel Holly Brown. It doesn’t negate all of the good that Holly has actually done on her channel, and all of the good videos that she’s made. I’ve made mistakes, you’ve made mistakes, it could be argued that YouTube itself is a mistake—and we can criticize those mistakes and laugh at them, but we can also do that without trying to end somebody else’s career. I don’t have time to cancel anybody, there are too many Tik-Tok compilations to watch.”

He says with that video, he stopped being so “universally popular,” as it garnered 2,000 dislikes. “All of a sudden, I was no longer the YouTuber you could just like. I was like the art drama YouTuber, and it was like, ‘Well, if you’re gonna give me that badge, I'll wear it proudly.’”

As a YouTuber critiquing the art industry, Wallace says it’s part of his job to find content that sparks discussion, with videos like “Color dodge the issue—rossdraws tracing without credit,” in which called out the account of Ross Tran, who has over 800k subscribers. It resulted in an Instagram apology from Tran the next day, and hopefully a wider awareness of art ethics among his substantial fanbase. Wallace also has exactly 10 minutes of content for James Charles, a popular makeup artist with over 15 million subscribers, who has been accused of stealing design ideas.

“Art drama is huge and people like to pretend that they don’t like it, and they don’t want it in the community," Wallace says, "but they’re still watching every video that comes out, which I think is hilarious.”

Wallace also isn’t afraid to listen to commenters. He realizes that it seems as if he’s saying that professional artists never trace, and he got a lot of flak from commenters saying, “Well, this is how professionals do it.”

“My opinion on the matter is just be transparent,” he says. “If you’re using someone else’s resources for your own benefit and often profit, it doesn’t hurt you to disclose it. You know, I'm not gonna think any less of it. I use all kinds of references in my own artwork.”

For now, Wallace’s creative focus is on the work he makes for YouTube. “I really like what I've been able to build so far, but I feel like, at this point, I've just laid the foundations,” he says about his YouTube channel. “I have my fanbase, they’re here for me, which I think is amazing. I would love to do this full-time. It’s not what I'm doing at the moment, but I'll do what it takes to get there.”

As a guy who’s notorious of calling out art drama, Wallace is also self-aware enough to understand that turnabout is fair play. “It’s only a matter of time before someone makes [a video] about me.”

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post YouTuber D’Angelo Wallace is taking down the art world with his ASMR chill appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> 4 visual artists you need to follow in 2017 https://www.dailydot.com/irl/artists-to-watch-2017/ Tue, 03 Jan 2017 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=164638

Picasso once said “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth,” and after a year like 2016, we could all use some more of that. I’ve scoured the web for a handful of great artists that you might not know and asked them some questions about what they do. If 2017 isn’t going to be any easier, it may as well look nicer.

1) Danielle Bostic

Danielle is a freelance illustrator from Savannah, Georgia who graduated in 2015 from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her current work is digital, but she uses traditional art practices in her approach, and it shows. She describes her work as a mixture of classical portraiture and contemporary fantasy art.

Golden

Golden

Danielle Bostic

“I’ve pretty much been drawing since the day I learned how to hold a pencil,” she told the Daily Dot. “I figured I wasn’t much good at writing with it so I started drawing instead. People and nature tend to be the driving focal point within my art, but I try to look beyond the person as a mere reference. Rather, I attempt to capture the subtle nuances that one doesn’t see at first glance. To make it even more interesting, I add fantastical elements, with hints of mystery, often using symbolism to express a certain emotion or tone for the piece.”

In the Dark Pinewood

In the Dark Pinewood

Danielle Bostic

Her concepts and compositions are brilliant, her color choices bold, and I get lost in the brushwork every time. You can follow Danielle on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

2) Terrell Davis

Newhive, with its uniquely expressive platform, continues to be a place to find new, interesting artists. After seeing School of the Art Institute of Chicago student Terrell Davis’ impressive collection there, I was surprised to find an entirely different artistic direction on his Instagram. There I found an entrancing collection of desktops covered with various items in thematic colors. He assures me these are not impeccably lighted photographs, but 3D renders, which seems an even more impressive feat.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKeSVdigbrc/

Raised in London, Toronto resident Beth Yirtaw has been doodling and drawing for years but never considered it to be anything more than a hobby.

“When I started sharing my work on social media, friends began to show an interest and would ask me to create pieces for them. When I left my job in retail and started travelling, I had more time to create larger and more detailed illustrations. All of my work is created by hand and then edited on Photoshop and Illustrator to make a sharper, bolder image. With the encouragement of my family and friends I started my own Etsy shop in August selling my artwork as prints. Reading positive feedback from happy customers is the best thing and I can’t wait for my work to grow in the new year. ''

Yirtaw can be found on Instagram, and you can freshen up those walls with some new art from her Etsy store.

4) Abel M’Vada

If ever there were a time for the S P A C E M A N    A E S T H E T I C, it is now. These subdued neon looping GIFs are where the despairing emptiness of space collides with our existential dread to find resolution in the soothing nostalgia of a time yet to come. Switch on some vaporwave and let the experience wash over you as you drift into the void.

[Placeholder for http://abelmvada.tumblr.com/post/154191318672/this-galaxy-isnt-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us embed]

“I'm a digital artist (but you knew that already), a lapsed musician, and a self-proclaimed citizen of the internet,” M’Vada says by way of introduction. “I was born with a severe and incurable case of irreverence, and a general disdain for authority. My education includes a brief and uneventful interval in film school followed by a more productive, but ultimately pointless stint in business school.

“These days I'm a perpetual student supporting himself by doing mostly non-art related work. Right now I'm attempting to focus more of my time and energy solely on artwork, so any exposure I get is greatly appreciated. Also, I like sandwiches. More than is considered normal.”

[Placeholder for http://abelmvada.tumblr.com/post/151915515102/looks-like-i-picked-a-bad-night-to-go-for-a-walk embed]

[Placeholder for http://abelmvada.tumblr.com/post/154656244922/gif-artists-collective-challenge-december-scale embed]

Follow Abel on Twitter, Tumblr, or IRL (just bring a sandwich if you do). 

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post 4 visual artists you need to follow in 2017 appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]>

Picasso once said “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth,” and after a year like 2016, we could all use some more of that. I’ve scoured the web for a handful of great artists that you might not know and asked them some questions about what they do. If 2017 isn’t going to be any easier, it may as well look nicer.

1) Danielle Bostic

Danielle is a freelance illustrator from Savannah, Georgia who graduated in 2015 from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her current work is digital, but she uses traditional art practices in her approach, and it shows. She describes her work as a mixture of classical portraiture and contemporary fantasy art.

Golden

Golden

Danielle Bostic

“I’ve pretty much been drawing since the day I learned how to hold a pencil,” she told the Daily Dot. “I figured I wasn’t much good at writing with it so I started drawing instead. People and nature tend to be the driving focal point within my art, but I try to look beyond the person as a mere reference. Rather, I attempt to capture the subtle nuances that one doesn’t see at first glance. To make it even more interesting, I add fantastical elements, with hints of mystery, often using symbolism to express a certain emotion or tone for the piece.”

In the Dark Pinewood

In the Dark Pinewood

Danielle Bostic

Her concepts and compositions are brilliant, her color choices bold, and I get lost in the brushwork every time. You can follow Danielle on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

2) Terrell Davis

Newhive, with its uniquely expressive platform, continues to be a place to find new, interesting artists. After seeing School of the Art Institute of Chicago student Terrell Davis’ impressive collection there, I was surprised to find an entirely different artistic direction on his Instagram. There I found an entrancing collection of desktops covered with various items in thematic colors. He assures me these are not impeccably lighted photographs, but 3D renders, which seems an even more impressive feat.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKeSVdigbrc/

Raised in London, Toronto resident Beth Yirtaw has been doodling and drawing for years but never considered it to be anything more than a hobby.

“When I started sharing my work on social media, friends began to show an interest and would ask me to create pieces for them. When I left my job in retail and started travelling, I had more time to create larger and more detailed illustrations. All of my work is created by hand and then edited on Photoshop and Illustrator to make a sharper, bolder image. With the encouragement of my family and friends I started my own Etsy shop in August selling my artwork as prints. Reading positive feedback from happy customers is the best thing and I can’t wait for my work to grow in the new year. ''

Yirtaw can be found on Instagram, and you can freshen up those walls with some new art from her Etsy store.

4) Abel M’Vada

If ever there were a time for the S P A C E M A N    A E S T H E T I C, it is now. These subdued neon looping GIFs are where the despairing emptiness of space collides with our existential dread to find resolution in the soothing nostalgia of a time yet to come. Switch on some vaporwave and let the experience wash over you as you drift into the void.

[Placeholder for http://abelmvada.tumblr.com/post/154191318672/this-galaxy-isnt-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us embed]

“I'm a digital artist (but you knew that already), a lapsed musician, and a self-proclaimed citizen of the internet,” M’Vada says by way of introduction. “I was born with a severe and incurable case of irreverence, and a general disdain for authority. My education includes a brief and uneventful interval in film school followed by a more productive, but ultimately pointless stint in business school.

“These days I'm a perpetual student supporting himself by doing mostly non-art related work. Right now I'm attempting to focus more of my time and energy solely on artwork, so any exposure I get is greatly appreciated. Also, I like sandwiches. More than is considered normal.”

[Placeholder for http://abelmvada.tumblr.com/post/151915515102/looks-like-i-picked-a-bad-night-to-go-for-a-walk embed]

[Placeholder for http://abelmvada.tumblr.com/post/154656244922/gif-artists-collective-challenge-december-scale embed]

Follow Abel on Twitter, Tumblr, or IRL (just bring a sandwich if you do). 

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post 4 visual artists you need to follow in 2017 appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> Here’s the best chance America has to revamp the Electoral College https://www.dailydot.com/debug/national-vote-electoral-college/ Thu, 10 Nov 2016 16:32:22 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=101699

Out of the past five U.S. presidential elections, the Electoral College has failed to select the president chosen by the people twice—a 40 percent failure rate. Thankfully, there’s a solution.

First drafted in 2006, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would provide a way to give that power back to the people by promising every electoral vote go to the overall popular vote winner. Since it only takes 270 electoral votes to win, the compact effectively only needs that many electoral votes to work. So far there are 14 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have passed the compact into law. This totals 189 combined electoral votes, just 81 votes short of becoming a reality.

But if Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak signs the National Popular Vote bill, recently passed by the Nevada Senate, that will bring the total of participating electoral votes to 195. Eight other states have passed legislation in one house, placing another 76 electoral votes within reach. It seems to be one of the few issues that has bipartisan support, also making headway in GOP-controlled Missouri and Georgia.

The push for changes to the Electoral College has new life after Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote while losing the electoral vote to Republican Donald Trump, echoing former Vice President Al Gore’s electoral loss to George W. Bush. Movement toward this goal is already in the works.

Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, and Arizona all have pending legislation. Their electoral votes would be worth 57, which would bring the total to 246 if they pass the compact at the state level, leaving just 24 electoral votes needed.

It’s a short path from there to ending “swing states.” There won’t be “fly-over” states, because your individual vote will suddenly become much more valuable. Single red voice in a blue sea? Proud blue in a wide, red patch? We’d all likely feel less disenfranchised with politics in general if we felt that our voice mattered—although high-population states like New York, California, and Texas would likely get a lot of attention.

The growing spikes showing the interest in the ‘national popular vote’ are a promising indicator that more and more people are ready to dispose of an outdated system.

Google

 

Google

 

Even this guy feels strongly about it.

If you live in a state that hasn’t signed on and want to see this change happen, contact your legislators.

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Here’s the best chance America has to revamp the Electoral College appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]>

Out of the past five U.S. presidential elections, the Electoral College has failed to select the president chosen by the people twice—a 40 percent failure rate. Thankfully, there’s a solution.

First drafted in 2006, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would provide a way to give that power back to the people by promising every electoral vote go to the overall popular vote winner. Since it only takes 270 electoral votes to win, the compact effectively only needs that many electoral votes to work. So far there are 14 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have passed the compact into law. This totals 189 combined electoral votes, just 81 votes short of becoming a reality.

But if Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak signs the National Popular Vote bill, recently passed by the Nevada Senate, that will bring the total of participating electoral votes to 195. Eight other states have passed legislation in one house, placing another 76 electoral votes within reach. It seems to be one of the few issues that has bipartisan support, also making headway in GOP-controlled Missouri and Georgia.

The push for changes to the Electoral College has new life after Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote while losing the electoral vote to Republican Donald Trump, echoing former Vice President Al Gore’s electoral loss to George W. Bush. Movement toward this goal is already in the works.

Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, and Arizona all have pending legislation. Their electoral votes would be worth 57, which would bring the total to 246 if they pass the compact at the state level, leaving just 24 electoral votes needed.

It’s a short path from there to ending “swing states.” There won’t be “fly-over” states, because your individual vote will suddenly become much more valuable. Single red voice in a blue sea? Proud blue in a wide, red patch? We’d all likely feel less disenfranchised with politics in general if we felt that our voice mattered—although high-population states like New York, California, and Texas would likely get a lot of attention.

The growing spikes showing the interest in the ‘national popular vote’ are a promising indicator that more and more people are ready to dispose of an outdated system.

Google

 

Google

 

Even this guy feels strongly about it.

If you live in a state that hasn’t signed on and want to see this change happen, contact your legislators.

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Here’s the best chance America has to revamp the Electoral College appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> Judge in Stanford rape case faces recall threats https://www.dailydot.com/irl/stanford-university-brock-turner-rape-judge-recall-petitions/ Mon, 06 Jun 2016 16:59:55 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=118343

Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Allen Turner received a six-month sentence for raping an unconscious woman because his judge, who cited his age and lack of prior convictions, didn't want to ruin the rest of his life. But the widespread outrage over Judge Aaron Persky's lenient sentence has produced two petitions seeking his removal from the bench.

Following the sentencing decision, and inspired by the publication of the victim's message to her rapist, Persky's critics are circulating two petitions advocating his recall.

Persky, who is up for re-election in the fall, is running unopposed. In lieu of drafting a candidate to oppose him, the petitions' creators focused on driving people to the California judicial performance commission's complaint page. Both petitions urged supporters to make two specific complaints.

Appearance of bias toward a particular class: Pensky sentenced fellow alumni and athlete Of Stanford university to an unusually lenient sentence of 6 months for a unanimously guilty verdict on three counts of sexual assault. Despite Mr Turner showing no remorse and despite being caught in the act.

Inappropriate comments on the bench: "a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him(Brock Turner)" in relation to why this convicted rapist would serve such a short sentence. 

Interestingly, Persky has a history of campaigning on his strong support for women who are the victims of sexual abuse.

On his since-deleted campaign website, Persky touted his past work as a prosecutor responsible for "keeping sexually violent predators confined to mental hospitals."

PerskyforJudge.com

In his resume, also posted on the campaign website, Persky touted his past work as a board member for the Support Network for Battered Women. 

PerskyforJudge.com

And in another biography posted on SmartVoter.org, Persky noted that he was a Stanford alum. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations in 1984 and a Master's Degree in International Policy Studies in 1985.

Turner was also a student at Stanford when he raped his victim.

SmartVoter.org


Phone calls and emails to Persky were not returned by press time. The clerk for his department told the Daily Dot that the judge would not comment on the case.

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Judge in Stanford rape case faces recall threats appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]>

Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Allen Turner received a six-month sentence for raping an unconscious woman because his judge, who cited his age and lack of prior convictions, didn't want to ruin the rest of his life. But the widespread outrage over Judge Aaron Persky's lenient sentence has produced two petitions seeking his removal from the bench.

Following the sentencing decision, and inspired by the publication of the victim's message to her rapist, Persky's critics are circulating two petitions advocating his recall.

Persky, who is up for re-election in the fall, is running unopposed. In lieu of drafting a candidate to oppose him, the petitions' creators focused on driving people to the California judicial performance commission's complaint page. Both petitions urged supporters to make two specific complaints.

Appearance of bias toward a particular class: Pensky sentenced fellow alumni and athlete Of Stanford university to an unusually lenient sentence of 6 months for a unanimously guilty verdict on three counts of sexual assault. Despite Mr Turner showing no remorse and despite being caught in the act.

Inappropriate comments on the bench: "a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him(Brock Turner)" in relation to why this convicted rapist would serve such a short sentence. 

Interestingly, Persky has a history of campaigning on his strong support for women who are the victims of sexual abuse.

On his since-deleted campaign website, Persky touted his past work as a prosecutor responsible for "keeping sexually violent predators confined to mental hospitals."

PerskyforJudge.com

In his resume, also posted on the campaign website, Persky touted his past work as a board member for the Support Network for Battered Women. 

PerskyforJudge.com

And in another biography posted on SmartVoter.org, Persky noted that he was a Stanford alum. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations in 1984 and a Master's Degree in International Policy Studies in 1985.

Turner was also a student at Stanford when he raped his victim.

SmartVoter.org


Phone calls and emails to Persky were not returned by press time. The clerk for his department told the Daily Dot that the judge would not comment on the case.

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Judge in Stanford rape case faces recall threats appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> 4 ‘Game of Thrones’ products we really wish existed https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/game-of-brands/ Mon, 21 Sep 2015 17:54:13 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=138127

Have you been seeing all these Game of Thrones-branded products in the aisles recently? I was at the grocery store the other day, picking up a bottle of Valar Morghulis to ease the between-season angst I’ve been feeling since last seeing Westeros, when I spotted it. Walking through the aisles, a familiar face leaped out at me from the detergents.

Mr. Brian (CC BY 2.0)

It couldn’t be! But then again, I was holding an officially branded Game of Thrones adult beverage. I laughed to myself and walked further down through the health and beauty section toward the checkout. That’s when these condoms caught my eye.

lookcatalog/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

I know Tyrion says, “We always love the wrong woman,” but this is absurd. A dong of ice and fire? Who's looking for that? Anyway, I tried them on, and they’re far too roomy. Good on ya, Imp.

I turned down the snack aisle against my better judgment, but a bag of chips was the perfect compliment to this moody Belgian Dubbel. I didn’t even make it to the chips before I spotted these sugar-frosted nightmares. Mother of Desserts? TOO FAR.

Dan4th Nicholas/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Well, of course I bought two. Will you look at the cherry filling just pouring out of that thing? I was slightly less messy when eating mine than Khaleesi is on the box. They’re clearly knock-offs, but what is Little Debbie going to do in the face of three dragons—send lawyers?

I also made one last impulse purchase before heading home, partly because it was healthy, partly because I saw a three-eyed crow in a dream (again).

Kevin Steinhardt/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

There’s no prize hidden in the box, and it pretty much tasted like regular bran flakes, but Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor. Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor, Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor. Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor? Hodor Hodor.

Photo via Game of Thrones/HBO | Remix by Jason Reed

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The post 4 ‘Game of Thrones’ products we really wish existed appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]>

Have you been seeing all these Game of Thrones-branded products in the aisles recently? I was at the grocery store the other day, picking up a bottle of Valar Morghulis to ease the between-season angst I’ve been feeling since last seeing Westeros, when I spotted it. Walking through the aisles, a familiar face leaped out at me from the detergents.

Mr. Brian (CC BY 2.0)

It couldn’t be! But then again, I was holding an officially branded Game of Thrones adult beverage. I laughed to myself and walked further down through the health and beauty section toward the checkout. That’s when these condoms caught my eye.

lookcatalog/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

I know Tyrion says, “We always love the wrong woman,” but this is absurd. A dong of ice and fire? Who's looking for that? Anyway, I tried them on, and they’re far too roomy. Good on ya, Imp.

I turned down the snack aisle against my better judgment, but a bag of chips was the perfect compliment to this moody Belgian Dubbel. I didn’t even make it to the chips before I spotted these sugar-frosted nightmares. Mother of Desserts? TOO FAR.

Dan4th Nicholas/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Well, of course I bought two. Will you look at the cherry filling just pouring out of that thing? I was slightly less messy when eating mine than Khaleesi is on the box. They’re clearly knock-offs, but what is Little Debbie going to do in the face of three dragons—send lawyers?

I also made one last impulse purchase before heading home, partly because it was healthy, partly because I saw a three-eyed crow in a dream (again).

Kevin Steinhardt/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

There’s no prize hidden in the box, and it pretty much tasted like regular bran flakes, but Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor. Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor, Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor. Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor? Hodor Hodor.

Photo via Game of Thrones/HBO | Remix by Jason Reed

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post 4 ‘Game of Thrones’ products we really wish existed appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> 6 ways to give yourself an Internet man makeover https://www.dailydot.com/irl/man-makeover-internet/ Fri, 12 Jun 2015 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=129627

For most of my life, I’ve never known how how clothes were supposed to fit, or that I could even look good in them. I’ve cloaked myself in hoodies and baggy jeans my entire life—almost all in a blue/grey palette, save for the time I branched out and bought an (gasp!) orange hoodie. So what if I looked like a graffiti cartoon from 1993? It’s what I knew.

But one day, the dryer ate three pairs of jeans in one round, two of them being my last ‘good’ pairs. So I had to drag myself to the sixth-largest shopping center in the country to buy a new pair of overpriced dad jeans.

I’m a proud father two times over, but I don’t want any part of the “suburban-Dad-nearing-retirement” look. You can call it normcore all you want but at the end of the day you’re wearing a pair of white Keds and $60 Lee jeans that make it look like you’re wearing an adult diaper.

I needed help. I knew the Internet had to have a better way.

1) Clothes make the man

I decided to sign up for Trunk Club, a startup that matches you with a stylist who picks out 10 days’ worth of clothes for you. The service allowed me to try on everything at home and return what I didn’t like. It’s a bit like the shopping montage sequence in Pretty Woman, but this time it’s Richard Gere’s turn and he doesn’t have to leave the house to buy clothes. Also, he’s not rich.

Jason Reed

I talked on the phone with Stephanie, my stylist, before she sent the first trunk, so she could get a feel for what would best suit me. You can request specific items, or let your stylist fill your trunk and see for yourself what works and what doesn’t. The first trunk came with an email pairing the clothes, suggesting different outfits to try, but subsequent trunks haven’t. Pricing is slightly lower than you can get from buying these items directly, and even lower if you add in the shipping costs. But be prepared to drop a few dimes: It’s not cheap.

One of the advantages of Trunk Club is that it sends you clothes that you never would have picked out for yourself. For instance, I never would have picked up these yellow shorts in the store but damn, they look good with a bunch of my shirts.

Jason Reed

I would have been hard-pressed to try on skinny jeans, even if it were an option in the stores around here. But I trusted Stephanie’s judgment. I now officially have what I like to call "The First Pair Of Pants That Has Ever Looked Right On Me™." I guard them with my life. Once we dialed in the right size, it was easy to find some nice dress pants as well, so I’m set for a business meeting (should I ever have one in the flesh, that is–I work remotely).

Jason Reed

Granted, the price is about what I’d pay for three pairs of dad jeans, but I’d rather have one pair that I look forward to wearing than three that just take up drawer space while mocking my very existence. I even picked up these suede sneakers by Clae through Trunk Club. I’ve been wearing the same style of chunky black Reeboks for about a decade and to be honest, they look ridiculous because I have really skinny ankles. Shoes that actually fit make a hell of a difference.

Jason Reed

Having assembled a “casual” wardrobe, I decided to enlist the Internet to start looking for dress shirts. I have yet to find the proper fit for a dress shirt because of my quote-unquote “unique” shape—long arms, thick shoulders, skinny neck. When I wear suits, I usually look like I’m wearing my Dad’s hand-me-downs. That’s why I enlisted the help of Proper Cloth.

Jason Reed

Proper Cloth lets you design your shirt and then makes it to order. Basically, it lets you be your own fashion designer for a day. (Careful, though—I spent way too much time playing with different combinations).

The first shirt includes a free alteration, so you can get the measurements dialed in exactly as you like it. It’s a no-brainer, but a pricey no-brainer. A single shirt is going to run you around $125, but solid-color v-neck tees are five for $25. One or two of these dress shirts will get me through the few fancier engagements of the summer.

2) Find your menswear inspiration.

I found all sorts of great men’s fashion posts on Tumblr, but this one really did it. It’s more than a primer on men’s fashion; it also contains information on what to look for in terms of construction, as well as how to care for your purchases. I learned how to revive an older pair of my nice leather shoes with a few minutes of work. Also, who knew there were so many different types of pockets?

Giphy

3) Get new skivvies

After hearing on the Joe Rogan podcast what the average length of time that men hold onto underwear is—seven years, according to the Rogan podcast—I decided I was in the market for a new pair of underwear as well. Because the lower elastic on my boxer briefs had given up, which made me look like I was wearing a pair of bloomers, I decided to give MeUndies a try. 

Jason Reed

The MeUndies had a pouch in the front. I no longer felt like a defective Ken doll, what with my lack of frontal smoothness, and I didn’t have to commit to wearing bikini briefs or something equally horrible. I thought I looked like a superhero. Plus, they made my wife laugh.

Giphy

4) Face forward.

My clothing in order, it was time to address my face. My glasses, specifically. The rest will just have to do as is.

I wore the same crap frames for at least two years. I paid something in the neighborhood of $250 the last time I went to America’s Best for frames that I didn’t like. But they were the best of the three options I had, and I held on to them longer than I should have because of the cost.

This was before a good Internet friend turned me on to Warby Parker. Warby Parker lets you pick out five frames to try out at home, for free. I had a new eye exam for $50 at my local Lenscrafters and turned the information over to WP, who then sent me my new goggles a few days later. I spent $100 less this time around for frames I really like.

Jason Reed

5) Get swole 

In my opinion, the Dadbod craze is associated with normcore apparel, so in an attempt to get in shape when my daughter was born, I bought a single 25-lb. kettlebell. I’m not a gym person, so I figured I would follow the Keith Weber Kettlebell Cardio workout at home with my little starter bell.

Giphy

I took most of my instruction from Pavel Tsatouline’s YouTube videos with help from Reddit’s r/kettlebell community. Two years later, I now have two 55-lb (24 kg) kettlebells from Onnit, plenty for me to hit every muscle (and some I didn’t know I had). My energy level is higher than it’s ever been and I can throw a small cannonball if the situation ever arises.

Onnit

If you don’t want to look like a flamingo from the waist down, it’s time for some squats. The Runtastic app gives me a metric to work with, tracking how many squats I do. I don’t know if it’s the ability to show off a new personal best on Facebook, or feeling guilty whenever I see a graph of how many days I’ve slacked off, but I started two months ago and I’m a third of the way through my 10k squat challenge. It has a digital voice coaching you to break a new personal record and a tiered program which slowly ramps you up to Joe Rogan levels of pre-workout body weight squats.

Runtastic

Eventually I found my way to Reddit’s r/gainit, where people go for advice about packing on lean weight. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Some people were advocating “GOMAD”, or “Gallon of milk a day.” But for the most part, it offered solid, common sense advice.  

After a while, I started to wonder what my caloric intake was. My Fitness Pal is a website and app with a calorie tracker, in whichever direction you want your weight to trend. I’ve put on roughly 15 pounds of muscle over the last 6 months. I’m not the Rock, but we all have to start somewhere.

Giphy

6) Get your beauty sleep

With all that new exercise and proper diet, you’re going to need some rest.

I started tracking my sleep with my phone a couple months ago, and the data it provides is very helpful. The more you use it, the more it learns to predict your best bedtime, sleep length, and wake time. As you can see in the following image, I’m sleeping quite a bit better than I was. Unfortunately, this isn’t a result of merely using the app, but a testament to my physical therapist, who I started seeing about halfway through the graph.

Jason Reed

Was this an overnight process? No. It took time and effort. Was it cheap? Hell, no. I spread these out over the last six months, because I’m a working-class hero like you. But all in all, I spent less than $1000 on everything, and it feels like it was worth it.

I feel better. I look better. I have more energy for work and play than I had five years ago, before my kids were born. I saw things about myself that I wanted to change, and the Internet connected me to people with the right information, and companies with the stuff to make that happen. If you want to improve parts of your life, there are resources available to you to do so.

It’s a brave new world, and for a few bucks and a little sweat you can look the part, all without leaving the house.

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post 6 ways to give yourself an Internet man makeover appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]>

For most of my life, I’ve never known how how clothes were supposed to fit, or that I could even look good in them. I’ve cloaked myself in hoodies and baggy jeans my entire life—almost all in a blue/grey palette, save for the time I branched out and bought an (gasp!) orange hoodie. So what if I looked like a graffiti cartoon from 1993? It’s what I knew.

But one day, the dryer ate three pairs of jeans in one round, two of them being my last ‘good’ pairs. So I had to drag myself to the sixth-largest shopping center in the country to buy a new pair of overpriced dad jeans.

I’m a proud father two times over, but I don’t want any part of the “suburban-Dad-nearing-retirement” look. You can call it normcore all you want but at the end of the day you’re wearing a pair of white Keds and $60 Lee jeans that make it look like you’re wearing an adult diaper.

I needed help. I knew the Internet had to have a better way.

1) Clothes make the man

I decided to sign up for Trunk Club, a startup that matches you with a stylist who picks out 10 days’ worth of clothes for you. The service allowed me to try on everything at home and return what I didn’t like. It’s a bit like the shopping montage sequence in Pretty Woman, but this time it’s Richard Gere’s turn and he doesn’t have to leave the house to buy clothes. Also, he’s not rich.

Jason Reed

I talked on the phone with Stephanie, my stylist, before she sent the first trunk, so she could get a feel for what would best suit me. You can request specific items, or let your stylist fill your trunk and see for yourself what works and what doesn’t. The first trunk came with an email pairing the clothes, suggesting different outfits to try, but subsequent trunks haven’t. Pricing is slightly lower than you can get from buying these items directly, and even lower if you add in the shipping costs. But be prepared to drop a few dimes: It’s not cheap.

One of the advantages of Trunk Club is that it sends you clothes that you never would have picked out for yourself. For instance, I never would have picked up these yellow shorts in the store but damn, they look good with a bunch of my shirts.

Jason Reed

I would have been hard-pressed to try on skinny jeans, even if it were an option in the stores around here. But I trusted Stephanie’s judgment. I now officially have what I like to call "The First Pair Of Pants That Has Ever Looked Right On Me™." I guard them with my life. Once we dialed in the right size, it was easy to find some nice dress pants as well, so I’m set for a business meeting (should I ever have one in the flesh, that is–I work remotely).

Jason Reed

Granted, the price is about what I’d pay for three pairs of dad jeans, but I’d rather have one pair that I look forward to wearing than three that just take up drawer space while mocking my very existence. I even picked up these suede sneakers by Clae through Trunk Club. I’ve been wearing the same style of chunky black Reeboks for about a decade and to be honest, they look ridiculous because I have really skinny ankles. Shoes that actually fit make a hell of a difference.

Jason Reed

Having assembled a “casual” wardrobe, I decided to enlist the Internet to start looking for dress shirts. I have yet to find the proper fit for a dress shirt because of my quote-unquote “unique” shape—long arms, thick shoulders, skinny neck. When I wear suits, I usually look like I’m wearing my Dad’s hand-me-downs. That’s why I enlisted the help of Proper Cloth.

Jason Reed

Proper Cloth lets you design your shirt and then makes it to order. Basically, it lets you be your own fashion designer for a day. (Careful, though—I spent way too much time playing with different combinations).

The first shirt includes a free alteration, so you can get the measurements dialed in exactly as you like it. It’s a no-brainer, but a pricey no-brainer. A single shirt is going to run you around $125, but solid-color v-neck tees are five for $25. One or two of these dress shirts will get me through the few fancier engagements of the summer.

2) Find your menswear inspiration.

I found all sorts of great men’s fashion posts on Tumblr, but this one really did it. It’s more than a primer on men’s fashion; it also contains information on what to look for in terms of construction, as well as how to care for your purchases. I learned how to revive an older pair of my nice leather shoes with a few minutes of work. Also, who knew there were so many different types of pockets?

Giphy

3) Get new skivvies

After hearing on the Joe Rogan podcast what the average length of time that men hold onto underwear is—seven years, according to the Rogan podcast—I decided I was in the market for a new pair of underwear as well. Because the lower elastic on my boxer briefs had given up, which made me look like I was wearing a pair of bloomers, I decided to give MeUndies a try. 

Jason Reed

The MeUndies had a pouch in the front. I no longer felt like a defective Ken doll, what with my lack of frontal smoothness, and I didn’t have to commit to wearing bikini briefs or something equally horrible. I thought I looked like a superhero. Plus, they made my wife laugh.

Giphy

4) Face forward.

My clothing in order, it was time to address my face. My glasses, specifically. The rest will just have to do as is.

I wore the same crap frames for at least two years. I paid something in the neighborhood of $250 the last time I went to America’s Best for frames that I didn’t like. But they were the best of the three options I had, and I held on to them longer than I should have because of the cost.

This was before a good Internet friend turned me on to Warby Parker. Warby Parker lets you pick out five frames to try out at home, for free. I had a new eye exam for $50 at my local Lenscrafters and turned the information over to WP, who then sent me my new goggles a few days later. I spent $100 less this time around for frames I really like.

Jason Reed

5) Get swole 

In my opinion, the Dadbod craze is associated with normcore apparel, so in an attempt to get in shape when my daughter was born, I bought a single 25-lb. kettlebell. I’m not a gym person, so I figured I would follow the Keith Weber Kettlebell Cardio workout at home with my little starter bell.

Giphy

I took most of my instruction from Pavel Tsatouline’s YouTube videos with help from Reddit’s r/kettlebell community. Two years later, I now have two 55-lb (24 kg) kettlebells from Onnit, plenty for me to hit every muscle (and some I didn’t know I had). My energy level is higher than it’s ever been and I can throw a small cannonball if the situation ever arises.

Onnit

If you don’t want to look like a flamingo from the waist down, it’s time for some squats. The Runtastic app gives me a metric to work with, tracking how many squats I do. I don’t know if it’s the ability to show off a new personal best on Facebook, or feeling guilty whenever I see a graph of how many days I’ve slacked off, but I started two months ago and I’m a third of the way through my 10k squat challenge. It has a digital voice coaching you to break a new personal record and a tiered program which slowly ramps you up to Joe Rogan levels of pre-workout body weight squats.

Runtastic

Eventually I found my way to Reddit’s r/gainit, where people go for advice about packing on lean weight. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Some people were advocating “GOMAD”, or “Gallon of milk a day.” But for the most part, it offered solid, common sense advice.  

After a while, I started to wonder what my caloric intake was. My Fitness Pal is a website and app with a calorie tracker, in whichever direction you want your weight to trend. I’ve put on roughly 15 pounds of muscle over the last 6 months. I’m not the Rock, but we all have to start somewhere.

Giphy

6) Get your beauty sleep

With all that new exercise and proper diet, you’re going to need some rest.

I started tracking my sleep with my phone a couple months ago, and the data it provides is very helpful. The more you use it, the more it learns to predict your best bedtime, sleep length, and wake time. As you can see in the following image, I’m sleeping quite a bit better than I was. Unfortunately, this isn’t a result of merely using the app, but a testament to my physical therapist, who I started seeing about halfway through the graph.

Jason Reed

Was this an overnight process? No. It took time and effort. Was it cheap? Hell, no. I spread these out over the last six months, because I’m a working-class hero like you. But all in all, I spent less than $1000 on everything, and it feels like it was worth it.

I feel better. I look better. I have more energy for work and play than I had five years ago, before my kids were born. I saw things about myself that I wanted to change, and the Internet connected me to people with the right information, and companies with the stuff to make that happen. If you want to improve parts of your life, there are resources available to you to do so.

It’s a brave new world, and for a few bucks and a little sweat you can look the part, all without leaving the house.

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post 6 ways to give yourself an Internet man makeover appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> How to use Photoshop to make a hilarious, viral-ready profile pic https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/photoshop-masking-guide-change-background-add-lasers-and-cats/ Wed, 01 Oct 2014 20:17:42 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=73931

If you’re in desperate need of a high school yearbook photo redo, this is your chance.

In the spirit of Draven Rodriguez, a Schenectady, N.Y., high schooler who successfully petitioned his school to allow him to take his yearbook photo with his cat and a background full of laser beams, we whipped up a handy Photoshop guide on how to recreate this same effect.

Schenectady student petitions to have this photo in the yearbook https://t.co/C1naGEl3yF What do you think? pic.twitter.com/Wuv84wVVZi

— CBS 6 Albany - WRGB (@CBS6Albany) September 10, 2014

Here are the three easy steps needed to spice up your own pic. If you can’t figure it out or are otherwise technologically impaired, email your photo to challenger@thedailydot.com and we’d love to help you out. 

1) Choose your image

Photos with a solid background will help the crop you make much smoother. A green screen is ideal but unlikely to be lying around your house. Do your best, or look your worst. Your choice.

For this tutorial, the Daily Dot’s senior politics reporter Kevin Collier was kind enough to let us use this photo of him.


Photo by Cooper Fleishman

2) Mask it

If you’re not a Photoshop pro, you can try your hand with Bonanza.com’s free “Background Burner,” which does a decent job of masking out the image with a little effort. The end result is transparent PNG file.

Otherwise, in Photoshop, start by duplicating your background layer and get masking. You can find the mask icon in your layer menu. The tool allows you to remove parts of the image without deleting them.


 

It took two and a half minutes to mask Kevin’s smiling face, and that mask was done completely with the pen tool.

 

3) Add background/noise filter/saturation

Now that you’re all masked up and ready for the ball, drag or copy/paste this incredible background by Emily into your document. Size and position as necessary. If it looks good, you’re all set. 


 

If you want to take it up another notch, select the masked version of yourself and run Filter>Noise on it. Your settings will vary (I used 2 percent monochromatic), but you should be able to see the noise pattern match up to the existing pattern in the background. You can also create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and clip that into your picture layer (by holding Alt and clicking between the two layers in the Layer palette), then reduce or increase the saturation as necessary to make your laser yearbook dreams come true.


 

Photo by Cooper Fleishman/Remix by Jason Reed

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post How to use Photoshop to make a hilarious, viral-ready profile pic appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]>

If you’re in desperate need of a high school yearbook photo redo, this is your chance.

In the spirit of Draven Rodriguez, a Schenectady, N.Y., high schooler who successfully petitioned his school to allow him to take his yearbook photo with his cat and a background full of laser beams, we whipped up a handy Photoshop guide on how to recreate this same effect.

Schenectady student petitions to have this photo in the yearbook https://t.co/C1naGEl3yF What do you think? pic.twitter.com/Wuv84wVVZi

— CBS 6 Albany - WRGB (@CBS6Albany) September 10, 2014

Here are the three easy steps needed to spice up your own pic. If you can’t figure it out or are otherwise technologically impaired, email your photo to challenger@thedailydot.com and we’d love to help you out. 

1) Choose your image

Photos with a solid background will help the crop you make much smoother. A green screen is ideal but unlikely to be lying around your house. Do your best, or look your worst. Your choice.

For this tutorial, the Daily Dot’s senior politics reporter Kevin Collier was kind enough to let us use this photo of him.


Photo by Cooper Fleishman

2) Mask it

If you’re not a Photoshop pro, you can try your hand with Bonanza.com’s free “Background Burner,” which does a decent job of masking out the image with a little effort. The end result is transparent PNG file.

Otherwise, in Photoshop, start by duplicating your background layer and get masking. You can find the mask icon in your layer menu. The tool allows you to remove parts of the image without deleting them.


 

It took two and a half minutes to mask Kevin’s smiling face, and that mask was done completely with the pen tool.

 

3) Add background/noise filter/saturation

Now that you’re all masked up and ready for the ball, drag or copy/paste this incredible background by Emily into your document. Size and position as necessary. If it looks good, you’re all set. 


 

If you want to take it up another notch, select the masked version of yourself and run Filter>Noise on it. Your settings will vary (I used 2 percent monochromatic), but you should be able to see the noise pattern match up to the existing pattern in the background. You can also create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and clip that into your picture layer (by holding Alt and clicking between the two layers in the Layer palette), then reduce or increase the saturation as necessary to make your laser yearbook dreams come true.


 

Photo by Cooper Fleishman/Remix by Jason Reed

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The post How to use Photoshop to make a hilarious, viral-ready profile pic appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> How to live-GIF: Tips and tricks for covering the World Cup https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/world-cup-live-gif-tips-tricks/ Fri, 13 Jun 2014 12:15:00 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=64309

Miley Cyrus twerking on stage while wagging her tongue. Ellen DeGeneres snapping the star-studded selfie of the century. Cornerback Richard Sherman ranting in a post-game interview. These are just three of the most talked-about TV moments of 2014. 

Milliseconds after these events occurred, Twitter and Facebook were flooded with millions of text reactions. But text is boring. Images, especially animated GIFs, rise above the din of the echo chamber.

Over the past three years, my colleague Fernando Alfonso III and I have live-GIFed more than a dozen different events, including the Grammys, the Super Bowl, and the Golden Globes. We’ve also been invited to Tumblr HQ to live-GIF the vice-presidential debates.

In total, our animations have collected more than 4 million Tumblr notes combined and been featured on the Huffington Post, PBS, and MTV. Now, just in time for the World Cup, we’d like to share our process with you.

1) Find the stream

This is the most difficult and most important step of all. First place to start is the official website for the event. Sometimes it will feature nice, robust, high-quality streams that you can choose from. The Oscars usually have four to choose from, and the MTV Music Awards even featured a Lady Gaga cam once. Sometimes the event planners intentionally squelch the stream to eliminate broadcast competition. In cases like that, Slingbox can help. Slingbox is a media streaming service that uses a box setup in someones home in which someone can have remote access. For a minimum upfront cost of $179, Slingbox isn’t cheap, but it is by far the most reliable way to capture GIFs.

Here’s a breakdown of the some of the biggest live-GIF events left in 2014 and the best way to GIF each:

FIFA World Cup: June 12–July 14

ESPN and ABC are kings of the slow-mo. After an aggressive head ball or quick breakaway goal, be ready for an immediate opportunity perfect for a GIF. There are also plenty of passionate fans who will undoubtedly lose their minds when their team scores. 

2014 MTV Video Music Awards: Aug. 24, 2014

MTV has a weird habit of cutting to celebrities in the audience when they’re not ready. That’s when you can catch Katy Perry getting hot and heavy with Rihanna. Then of course there’s the over-the-top performances that are always ripe with GIF moments.

U.S Open: Aug. 25, 2014

A great play, the crushing look of defeat, or a victory jig are what you need to be looking for.

Emmys: Aug. 25, 2014

It’s all about unscripted celebrity reactions. These are the times when you will see a person at their most genuine—that includes Ben Affleck taking home best film and Ellen DeGeneres sneaking up behind Sandra Bullock, which collected more than 200,000 Tumblr notes combined. 

MLB World Series: October

Baseball is slow and often uninteresting, so this will be a challenge. But if you can GIF a winning homerun or a dugout freakout, you will reap the Tumblr gold.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: Nov. 27

Floats are a dime a dozen. You want to zero in on a new float or a performance that is particularly cringeworthy or heartwarming. A stunning marching band is always something cool to GIF. 

Lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree: Dec. 3

It’s all about the tree. Make sure you start recording before it is lit and a few seconds afterward. That’s when you can catch some people embracing in delight.

2) Capture your footage

CamStudio is a free video-capture and streaming program for PC that I use for our live-GIF adventures. Here’s what I find to be a good middle ground for settings in Camstudio, with Tumblr size restrictions in mind:


 

Selecting “100 quality,” with “max frame rate” capture will reduce the amount of dropped frames and “skipping” in your image. I usually leave auto adjust checked, unless I’m trying to get a very small segment of a clip or having trouble grabbing a section with a lot of movement. In that case, you can increase the keyframe frequency, but be beware of the increase in overall file size. You don’t want to capture more than seven or eight seconds in real time or else you will have a massive file to parse. If you accidentally capture a large file and try to open it in Photoshop to chop up into a GIF, you may crash your entire machine. 

I never capture the audio because it’s a waste of processor speed and disk space. When I’m trying to move quickly, I want my files to be as small as possible, to reduce the time it takes to load each frame into my editing program.

If you can split-screen, do so. It’s much easier than switching between the capture area and the control area, and the sizes we’re working with should fit comfortably in one tab.

The free program VirtualDub is a little more involved to set up, but also has more control and increased capture ability (hypothetically, you could capture any stream coming across your video card, regardless of source, wink wink). Once you start to bump into the limitations of CamStudio, you may want to spend a little time checking out VirtualDub.

3) Isolate the video clip, export into frames

Since I capture more video than I need, I usually bring the clip in to Quicktime Pro to trim it down to size and export the frames. My export settings create a folder of JPEGs at 10 frames per second of video. This usually means that I can squeeze 36 frames at 500x500px into a 1MB file (also known as “Tumblr-sized”). 

Speaking of Tumblr, the platform has recently increased its file-size allowance. Be warned, GIFs larger than the “old” limit often preview incorrectly on the Tumblr dashboard and mobile app, or sometimes display a working preview but a still-framed full version. Preview is your best friend.

If you don’t want to give Apple any of your hard-earned bitcoins, you can get good results with VirtualDub. Whatever program you use, the concept is the same. Select the segment of video and export as files. If you aren’t going to modify them at all, this GifApp software can smooth the process considerably. Just select your video file, then select the size and length of your GIF. It has a live preview, built-in effects, and a simple user interface.


 

If you’re a Mac user, Gifgrabber works well.

If you want to bring them into Photoshop to alter them for any reason, use File>Scripts>Load files into stack, select “folder,” and then navigate to your folder of JPEGs. Once it’s loaded, in the Timeline window, select “create frame animation,” then select “make frames from layers.” Once they load, select Reverse Frames, as they load backwards. Then select All Frames, set the time delay to .06 seconds, and “loop forever.” You can also import frames directly from an .AVI file, but I find the controls to be lacking and the output jittery.

4) Size/frame delay/export

Depending on your GIF destination, size and compression can be incredibly important. An over-limit GIF on Tumblr displays as a still image. I can’t think of a worse fate.

The Frogman explains the GIF compression issue regarding the old Tumblr limits. Aside from changing your dithering to Diffusion at 99 percent, you should be close to the 1MB limit. If you’re brave enough to withstand the possibility of glitchy previews, you can use larger files on Tumblr right now. It’s like we’re living in the future. 

Main illustration and GIFs by Jason Reed

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The post How to live-GIF: Tips and tricks for covering the World Cup appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]>

Miley Cyrus twerking on stage while wagging her tongue. Ellen DeGeneres snapping the star-studded selfie of the century. Cornerback Richard Sherman ranting in a post-game interview. These are just three of the most talked-about TV moments of 2014. 

Milliseconds after these events occurred, Twitter and Facebook were flooded with millions of text reactions. But text is boring. Images, especially animated GIFs, rise above the din of the echo chamber.

Over the past three years, my colleague Fernando Alfonso III and I have live-GIFed more than a dozen different events, including the Grammys, the Super Bowl, and the Golden Globes. We’ve also been invited to Tumblr HQ to live-GIF the vice-presidential debates.

In total, our animations have collected more than 4 million Tumblr notes combined and been featured on the Huffington Post, PBS, and MTV. Now, just in time for the World Cup, we’d like to share our process with you.

1) Find the stream

This is the most difficult and most important step of all. First place to start is the official website for the event. Sometimes it will feature nice, robust, high-quality streams that you can choose from. The Oscars usually have four to choose from, and the MTV Music Awards even featured a Lady Gaga cam once. Sometimes the event planners intentionally squelch the stream to eliminate broadcast competition. In cases like that, Slingbox can help. Slingbox is a media streaming service that uses a box setup in someones home in which someone can have remote access. For a minimum upfront cost of $179, Slingbox isn’t cheap, but it is by far the most reliable way to capture GIFs.

Here’s a breakdown of the some of the biggest live-GIF events left in 2014 and the best way to GIF each:

FIFA World Cup: June 12–July 14

ESPN and ABC are kings of the slow-mo. After an aggressive head ball or quick breakaway goal, be ready for an immediate opportunity perfect for a GIF. There are also plenty of passionate fans who will undoubtedly lose their minds when their team scores. 

2014 MTV Video Music Awards: Aug. 24, 2014

MTV has a weird habit of cutting to celebrities in the audience when they’re not ready. That’s when you can catch Katy Perry getting hot and heavy with Rihanna. Then of course there’s the over-the-top performances that are always ripe with GIF moments.

U.S Open: Aug. 25, 2014

A great play, the crushing look of defeat, or a victory jig are what you need to be looking for.

Emmys: Aug. 25, 2014

It’s all about unscripted celebrity reactions. These are the times when you will see a person at their most genuine—that includes Ben Affleck taking home best film and Ellen DeGeneres sneaking up behind Sandra Bullock, which collected more than 200,000 Tumblr notes combined. 

MLB World Series: October

Baseball is slow and often uninteresting, so this will be a challenge. But if you can GIF a winning homerun or a dugout freakout, you will reap the Tumblr gold.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: Nov. 27

Floats are a dime a dozen. You want to zero in on a new float or a performance that is particularly cringeworthy or heartwarming. A stunning marching band is always something cool to GIF. 

Lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree: Dec. 3

It’s all about the tree. Make sure you start recording before it is lit and a few seconds afterward. That’s when you can catch some people embracing in delight.

2) Capture your footage

CamStudio is a free video-capture and streaming program for PC that I use for our live-GIF adventures. Here’s what I find to be a good middle ground for settings in Camstudio, with Tumblr size restrictions in mind:


 

Selecting “100 quality,” with “max frame rate” capture will reduce the amount of dropped frames and “skipping” in your image. I usually leave auto adjust checked, unless I’m trying to get a very small segment of a clip or having trouble grabbing a section with a lot of movement. In that case, you can increase the keyframe frequency, but be beware of the increase in overall file size. You don’t want to capture more than seven or eight seconds in real time or else you will have a massive file to parse. If you accidentally capture a large file and try to open it in Photoshop to chop up into a GIF, you may crash your entire machine. 

I never capture the audio because it’s a waste of processor speed and disk space. When I’m trying to move quickly, I want my files to be as small as possible, to reduce the time it takes to load each frame into my editing program.

If you can split-screen, do so. It’s much easier than switching between the capture area and the control area, and the sizes we’re working with should fit comfortably in one tab.

The free program VirtualDub is a little more involved to set up, but also has more control and increased capture ability (hypothetically, you could capture any stream coming across your video card, regardless of source, wink wink). Once you start to bump into the limitations of CamStudio, you may want to spend a little time checking out VirtualDub.

3) Isolate the video clip, export into frames

Since I capture more video than I need, I usually bring the clip in to Quicktime Pro to trim it down to size and export the frames. My export settings create a folder of JPEGs at 10 frames per second of video. This usually means that I can squeeze 36 frames at 500x500px into a 1MB file (also known as “Tumblr-sized”). 

Speaking of Tumblr, the platform has recently increased its file-size allowance. Be warned, GIFs larger than the “old” limit often preview incorrectly on the Tumblr dashboard and mobile app, or sometimes display a working preview but a still-framed full version. Preview is your best friend.

If you don’t want to give Apple any of your hard-earned bitcoins, you can get good results with VirtualDub. Whatever program you use, the concept is the same. Select the segment of video and export as files. If you aren’t going to modify them at all, this GifApp software can smooth the process considerably. Just select your video file, then select the size and length of your GIF. It has a live preview, built-in effects, and a simple user interface.


 

If you’re a Mac user, Gifgrabber works well.

If you want to bring them into Photoshop to alter them for any reason, use File>Scripts>Load files into stack, select “folder,” and then navigate to your folder of JPEGs. Once it’s loaded, in the Timeline window, select “create frame animation,” then select “make frames from layers.” Once they load, select Reverse Frames, as they load backwards. Then select All Frames, set the time delay to .06 seconds, and “loop forever.” You can also import frames directly from an .AVI file, but I find the controls to be lacking and the output jittery.

4) Size/frame delay/export

Depending on your GIF destination, size and compression can be incredibly important. An over-limit GIF on Tumblr displays as a still image. I can’t think of a worse fate.

The Frogman explains the GIF compression issue regarding the old Tumblr limits. Aside from changing your dithering to Diffusion at 99 percent, you should be close to the 1MB limit. If you’re brave enough to withstand the possibility of glitchy previews, you can use larger files on Tumblr right now. It’s like we’re living in the future. 

Main illustration and GIFs by Jason Reed

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The post How to live-GIF: Tips and tricks for covering the World Cup appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> How to restore a photo that’s been damaged, faded, scratched, worn, and torn https://www.dailydot.com/debug/how-to-restore-old-photo-photoshop/ Tue, 08 Apr 2014 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=58975

Before photos existed only as .jpgs, backed up on Flickr and Facebook and Imgur and in cheap portable hard drives, they were subject to the ravages of time. 

Prints only lasted so long. The negatives, from which they were originally made, were lost or destroyed. Saving these analog memories from their inevitable destruction can be as easy as a one-click desktop scanner, but sometimes the images have already suffered from damage. 

Software like Adobe Photoshop can breathe life back into faded photos—if you know how to do it right.

This is not meant to be an in-depth dissertation on photo restoration, but a quick and easy how-to guide to get you started. Experimentation is key; take these tools and combine them to impress your friends and family (and turn them into likes, karma, RTs, and reblogs, of course).


 

FADED IMAGES 

Channel surfing

For images that are washed out, look to Channels (Window>Channels). In a file with an RGB color space, each color is held separately in “channels” of Red, Green and Blue. More often than not, there is information available that can be used. Find the channel that shows most of the image. 


 

Discard the others by changing your color space to Grayscale (Image>Mode>Grayscale), then bump it up with Levels (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels). Dragging the black arrow from the left will bring up your shadows, while dragging the white arrow from the right will bring up the highlights.


 

MISSING PIECES

Meet the clone tool, your new best friend.

Photos get folded, torn, and worse. I’ve been asked to fix many things—pinholes, pen, crayon, tape, gum—and it’s almost always the clone tool that does the heavy lifting. 

Clothing tends to have patterns, which can be tricky, but once you get used to it, the clone tool can fix most of your problems. The trick is to zoom in and use a small brush with a little give around the edge. I usually work with 95 percent softness at a 300 percent zoom. 

To select the “source” part of the image for the brush, hold the Alt key while clicking your mouse. That sample will be used as the origin of the clone tool, allowing you to paint with whole sections of the image.


 

COLOR

It’s just like a coloring book.

Create a new layer, set it to the blending mode “Color,” choose a shade from the Color Picker, and start painting with the brush tool. 

There are several schools of thought regarding colorization. Some people prefer realistic coloring, while others try to reproduce the look and feel of early color photographs, many of which were done by hand with colored pencil directly on the negative. Check out some vintage pictures to get a feel for the color palette. Play around to see how different color values change the context of the photo. If the color is too saturated, you can always lower the opacity of the layer until it suits you. Make new layers for each piece of clothing so you can alter them separately. Take it easy with the hues—no one wants to remember their relatives IN TECHNICOLOR.


 

SELECTIVE COLOR REMOVAL

Get the stains out.

Some old pictures will have strange discolored spots that appear as they age. Sometimes this is due to the old retouching techniques, which were done directly on the print. Other times, as they age, the chemistry of the print breaks down, silver first, leaving blue spots. An easy way to get rid of these is with a Hue & Saturation adjustment layer (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue & Saturation). Under the preset menu, click the icon of the hand between two arrows. 


 

This will bring up a color sampler. Select the color you’re trying to eliminate and then slightly increase the range in the Properties window. Use the Hue/Saturation controls to bring it back to the skin tone. You may need to mask out parts or use the clone tool to clean up the edges, but selective color control can be used to get rid of yellowing tape stuck to pictures and for many other applications, like changing the color of a single object within an image.


 

MAKE IT BIGGER

Just say no

This is the request I get the most often. People have a grainy cellphone image of a blurry, old 4x6 (of a group shot, for example) and they want to take a single head and blow it up to an 8x10 suitable for framing. Allow me show you approximately what that would look like. 


 

Yeah, don’t do that.

Yes, there are great (currently incredibly expensive) scanners and Photoshop has cool algorithms to upsize images, but the “garbage in, garbage out” supposition applies here as it does in life. 

Experiment, have fun with the images. Save often. Take History states so you can play with different approaches to solving these visual problems and quickly compare the results. Ask Reddit, or bug me on Twitter (@bakedinapie). 

A warning: You might get sucked in and find yourself unblinking, hours at a stretch, hand cramped, legs asleep, tinkering. That’s the burden you must bear.
 

Want more? Try making a GIF.


Photo via cogdog/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

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The post How to restore a photo that’s been damaged, faded, scratched, worn, and torn appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]>

Before photos existed only as .jpgs, backed up on Flickr and Facebook and Imgur and in cheap portable hard drives, they were subject to the ravages of time. 

Prints only lasted so long. The negatives, from which they were originally made, were lost or destroyed. Saving these analog memories from their inevitable destruction can be as easy as a one-click desktop scanner, but sometimes the images have already suffered from damage. 

Software like Adobe Photoshop can breathe life back into faded photos—if you know how to do it right.

This is not meant to be an in-depth dissertation on photo restoration, but a quick and easy how-to guide to get you started. Experimentation is key; take these tools and combine them to impress your friends and family (and turn them into likes, karma, RTs, and reblogs, of course).


 

FADED IMAGES 

Channel surfing

For images that are washed out, look to Channels (Window>Channels). In a file with an RGB color space, each color is held separately in “channels” of Red, Green and Blue. More often than not, there is information available that can be used. Find the channel that shows most of the image. 


 

Discard the others by changing your color space to Grayscale (Image>Mode>Grayscale), then bump it up with Levels (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels). Dragging the black arrow from the left will bring up your shadows, while dragging the white arrow from the right will bring up the highlights.


 

MISSING PIECES

Meet the clone tool, your new best friend.

Photos get folded, torn, and worse. I’ve been asked to fix many things—pinholes, pen, crayon, tape, gum—and it’s almost always the clone tool that does the heavy lifting. 

Clothing tends to have patterns, which can be tricky, but once you get used to it, the clone tool can fix most of your problems. The trick is to zoom in and use a small brush with a little give around the edge. I usually work with 95 percent softness at a 300 percent zoom. 

To select the “source” part of the image for the brush, hold the Alt key while clicking your mouse. That sample will be used as the origin of the clone tool, allowing you to paint with whole sections of the image.


 

COLOR

It’s just like a coloring book.

Create a new layer, set it to the blending mode “Color,” choose a shade from the Color Picker, and start painting with the brush tool. 

There are several schools of thought regarding colorization. Some people prefer realistic coloring, while others try to reproduce the look and feel of early color photographs, many of which were done by hand with colored pencil directly on the negative. Check out some vintage pictures to get a feel for the color palette. Play around to see how different color values change the context of the photo. If the color is too saturated, you can always lower the opacity of the layer until it suits you. Make new layers for each piece of clothing so you can alter them separately. Take it easy with the hues—no one wants to remember their relatives IN TECHNICOLOR.


 

SELECTIVE COLOR REMOVAL

Get the stains out.

Some old pictures will have strange discolored spots that appear as they age. Sometimes this is due to the old retouching techniques, which were done directly on the print. Other times, as they age, the chemistry of the print breaks down, silver first, leaving blue spots. An easy way to get rid of these is with a Hue & Saturation adjustment layer (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue & Saturation). Under the preset menu, click the icon of the hand between two arrows. 


 

This will bring up a color sampler. Select the color you’re trying to eliminate and then slightly increase the range in the Properties window. Use the Hue/Saturation controls to bring it back to the skin tone. You may need to mask out parts or use the clone tool to clean up the edges, but selective color control can be used to get rid of yellowing tape stuck to pictures and for many other applications, like changing the color of a single object within an image.


 

MAKE IT BIGGER

Just say no

This is the request I get the most often. People have a grainy cellphone image of a blurry, old 4x6 (of a group shot, for example) and they want to take a single head and blow it up to an 8x10 suitable for framing. Allow me show you approximately what that would look like. 


 

Yeah, don’t do that.

Yes, there are great (currently incredibly expensive) scanners and Photoshop has cool algorithms to upsize images, but the “garbage in, garbage out” supposition applies here as it does in life. 

Experiment, have fun with the images. Save often. Take History states so you can play with different approaches to solving these visual problems and quickly compare the results. Ask Reddit, or bug me on Twitter (@bakedinapie). 

A warning: You might get sucked in and find yourself unblinking, hours at a stretch, hand cramped, legs asleep, tinkering. That’s the burden you must bear.
 

Want more? Try making a GIF.


Photo via cogdog/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post How to restore a photo that’s been damaged, faded, scratched, worn, and torn appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]> How Gifpop monetized the digital GIF community https://www.dailydot.com/debug/gifpop-monetize-digital-artist-community/ Tue, 24 Dec 2013 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.dailydot.com/?p=52663

It’s hard enough to make money as an artist, but a career in digital art can prove especially tricky.

Once you’ve seen a GIF, you’ve consumed it. Money never exchanges hands. That's convenient for the consumer, but not great for the creator.

Some GIF artists, such as Mr. GIF, have been able to obtain corporate gigs, lending their talents to major brands and TV personalities like Jimmy Fallon. But they're the exception, not the rule. Others, like Max Capacity, have storefronts that are uniquely thematic but don’t necessarily feature GIFs. Most GIF artists, like myself, don’t have a way to monetize animations.

So when when I first read about Gifpop, I immediately dusted off my Facebook login and broke out the credit card with little hesitation. For $12, I was able to transform my GIFs into actual, real-life pieces of artwork, and each artist gets 80 percent of all sales from their GIFs. I had to buy three. When the packaged arrived earlier this week, I couldn’t open it fast enough.

I was curious to see the limitations of the medium, so I picked two GIFs from my Tumblr and made another in Gifpop’s largest lenticular print—images made of angled plastic that give the illusion of movement and depth when you tilt them. Using Gifpop's online system, you can select up to 10 frames from any GIF you'd like and turn it into a lenticular print. The size of the prints can vary from a small business card to a larger 5-inch square, but its best to select a size that is proportional to the height and width of the animation.

The print of the dollar bill with the winking eye got better results than the child swinging on a black background. As Sha Hwang, a Brooklyn-based digital designer and one half of Gifpop, explained, it all comes down to image selection and the number of frames used in the print. 

“Clear movements help; shaky movements hurt,” Hwang said. “That's one reason we've been limiting the frame selection to consecutive frames—we don't want people uploading 10 distinct images and thinking it'll come out looking okay! Getting a perfect loop in 10 frames is a sort of sweet spot for us right now, and it's something all of our artists have been happy to work with. And a 'best practices' guide is something we really want to expand on.”

.@gifpop https://t.co/JvGwJy4MTo #gifpop #cool #thankyou

— Sneaky (@SneakyMission) December 17, 2013

Gifpop was started by Hwang and fellow designer Rachel Binx in November after their Kickstarter project collected $35,000—seven times their stated goal. 

“We didn't know what to expect, but were really blown away by the response, both from backers and press,” Hwang told me. “We started our Kickstarter being very adamant to ourselves that we wouldn't end up being something that dragged on for years, and so it's been a dense few months as we've worked to get Gifpop available to backers and the public.”

Gifpop has currently partnered with eight artists who can print and sell in bulk, including Mathew Lucas (89-a), Zach Dougherty (hateplow) and Lacey “lulinternet” Micallef, who has made GIFs for AMC, Frederator, and Tim and Eric.

Hwang hopes to expand that number greatly in the new year and improve the printing process even more.

“We've gotten inquiries from all over—from artists we've already been eyeing to artists doing incredible work we've never seen before,” Hwang said.

“I think we've hit on something that's been a constant question for digital/video artists as a whole. Selling digital art has always been hard, and we think that many online marketplaces for digital art don't have the artists in mind. Charging the standard gallery 50 percent fee for digital downloads of videos feels cruel and absurd. For us as designers and artists that hurts, and that's why we've set our terms so generously, and I think that's also what excites the artists we're working with.”

Agreed.

Video and main image by Jason Reed

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The post How Gifpop monetized the digital GIF community appeared first on The Daily Dot.

]]>

It’s hard enough to make money as an artist, but a career in digital art can prove especially tricky.

Once you’ve seen a GIF, you’ve consumed it. Money never exchanges hands. That's convenient for the consumer, but not great for the creator.

Some GIF artists, such as Mr. GIF, have been able to obtain corporate gigs, lending their talents to major brands and TV personalities like Jimmy Fallon. But they're the exception, not the rule. Others, like Max Capacity, have storefronts that are uniquely thematic but don’t necessarily feature GIFs. Most GIF artists, like myself, don’t have a way to monetize animations.

So when when I first read about Gifpop, I immediately dusted off my Facebook login and broke out the credit card with little hesitation. For $12, I was able to transform my GIFs into actual, real-life pieces of artwork, and each artist gets 80 percent of all sales from their GIFs. I had to buy three. When the packaged arrived earlier this week, I couldn’t open it fast enough.

I was curious to see the limitations of the medium, so I picked two GIFs from my Tumblr and made another in Gifpop’s largest lenticular print—images made of angled plastic that give the illusion of movement and depth when you tilt them. Using Gifpop's online system, you can select up to 10 frames from any GIF you'd like and turn it into a lenticular print. The size of the prints can vary from a small business card to a larger 5-inch square, but its best to select a size that is proportional to the height and width of the animation.

The print of the dollar bill with the winking eye got better results than the child swinging on a black background. As Sha Hwang, a Brooklyn-based digital designer and one half of Gifpop, explained, it all comes down to image selection and the number of frames used in the print. 

“Clear movements help; shaky movements hurt,” Hwang said. “That's one reason we've been limiting the frame selection to consecutive frames—we don't want people uploading 10 distinct images and thinking it'll come out looking okay! Getting a perfect loop in 10 frames is a sort of sweet spot for us right now, and it's something all of our artists have been happy to work with. And a 'best practices' guide is something we really want to expand on.”

.@gifpop https://t.co/JvGwJy4MTo #gifpop #cool #thankyou

— Sneaky (@SneakyMission) December 17, 2013

Gifpop was started by Hwang and fellow designer Rachel Binx in November after their Kickstarter project collected $35,000—seven times their stated goal. 

“We didn't know what to expect, but were really blown away by the response, both from backers and press,” Hwang told me. “We started our Kickstarter being very adamant to ourselves that we wouldn't end up being something that dragged on for years, and so it's been a dense few months as we've worked to get Gifpop available to backers and the public.”

Gifpop has currently partnered with eight artists who can print and sell in bulk, including Mathew Lucas (89-a), Zach Dougherty (hateplow) and Lacey “lulinternet” Micallef, who has made GIFs for AMC, Frederator, and Tim and Eric.

Hwang hopes to expand that number greatly in the new year and improve the printing process even more.

“We've gotten inquiries from all over—from artists we've already been eyeing to artists doing incredible work we've never seen before,” Hwang said.

“I think we've hit on something that's been a constant question for digital/video artists as a whole. Selling digital art has always been hard, and we think that many online marketplaces for digital art don't have the artists in mind. Charging the standard gallery 50 percent fee for digital downloads of videos feels cruel and absurd. For us as designers and artists that hurts, and that's why we've set our terms so generously, and I think that's also what excites the artists we're working with.”

Agreed.

Video and main image by Jason Reed

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