badbastion

Long story short, my old tablet+computer+graphics program are no longer useable, so i'm on a WHOLE NEW SYSTEM with a newer tablet that i'm not familiar with, and a graphics program i'm even less familiar with.

Sooooo, I need to practice hardcore to get good enough to draw things I can actually share with people.

Please give me some prompts! I promise that I will at least try to do each one of them. Nothing too complicated, please, I'm just trying to get used to the new tablet & program.

Alsoooo, does anyone know of any cheap or free graphics programs? Now all I have is photoshop CS4, and I don't love it. I really don't like GIMP, and I can't get Paint Tool Sai (my program of choice) to work on my laptop.

Thanks a bunch!

Hey, everyone! One of our friends is also in need of help. merakieross has posted about her medical situation on her tumblr here. In short, she's in a bad situation with both medical bills and college fees (which need to be paid in order for her to keep her student medical insurance) coming due by July 10. She's an awesome artist (see below for an example!) who is hoping to take commissions in order to help pay for her medical expenses.

However, we'd like to help her by also holding a fanworks auction! I'll selecasharp will be offering fic (selecasharp from teashopmuses as well as on tumblr) along with vintagejacqui (also on tumblr and a fellow writer on the youknowtheyarebrothers tumblr), pixymisa from teashopmuses, and dimeliora (nonastrega on tumblr), and art along with lightthesparks and pixymisa as well. If you'd like to offer your own fic or art, please feel free!

To participate, you can either A) offer your art/writing/vids/etc. up to bidders, B) bid on others who have made offers, C) put an idea you'd like to see up and how much you'd be willing to donate, or D) choose one of the ideas from C and fulfill it!

The auction will start today, June 7, and will run until June 21. Note: June 21 is not the date by which you need to deliver your work to your winner. It's just the last date for people to bid on offers. You can talk to your winner and decide on the details/due date. If you're unsure about how a fanworks auction works, please check out the previous post at this community.

You can find the original auction post here :)

I am in dire need of groceries, so I'm opening commissions.

Any characters, any fandom or OCs, any rating, almost any kinks

$25 per character, colored art with no background

Backgrounds and complicated stuff might cost extra.

Half the payment will be due up-front, and the other half will come when you approve the sketch.

I'll also record podfic for you, though I'd have to figure out how to charge for that if it comes up.

I'd be happy to answer any questions :) If you don't want to do it in the comments, you can email me to commission me or to ask questions at badbastion@gmail.com


If you don't want to/can't commission me but would like to help, I'd greatly appreciate even a dollar or two that I can put toward milk or bread or peanut butter. My paypal address is duckducknoose@gmail.com; alternately, my Walmart accepts eGift cards.

Sweet and generous milly_gal is in some serious financial trouble, and could use fandom's help.

Read about it here in her journal, or here on her gofundme page.

She's offering up graphics for donations over 20# (don't know how to make the pounds sign lol) if that sweetens the pot for you :)

We just got back from my hometown, and it was great to see my family again. Stressful for two people used to being largely by themselves to spend a week on a family of five's couches, but really great to see them still :)

It looks like we got an apartment! I'm 99% sure - just waiting for the complaince report to come back, which takes a few days, but since we didn't lie about anything and had all the paperwork done fully then it's mostly a formality, seems like. They've already told us we could move in on May 9th as long as the report comes back fine. We may be able to get in earlier, on the 1st. Yay!

We also got to see some of our old friends while we were there. It was so strange, and so wonderful, to actually be around friends. We live in a small retirement community (10,000 people, about 75% of them over 65) and we haven't been able to make friends in the three or so years we've been here.

EVEN BETTER, when we move, we'll be away from this terrible, dangerous, precarious living situation we're in. Just thinking about being in Texarkana again makes me feel FREE, which is something I'd never thought it would when we moved away years ago. I know a change in latitude doesn't always mean a change in attitude, but in this case, I think it will. I think that being around loved ones and friends, and in a town where my boyfriend might actually be able to get a job, and in an area with better mental health & social services, and away from here, is going to help both of us a lot. I worry about getting my hopes up, but I think the weight of our depression and anxiety is going to lighten quite a bit. I might even be able to draw again, lol.

I'm going to thank you all again, and I'm not going to stop being grateful. Without your help, we couldn't have made the trip to find the apartment, and we wouldn't have had the security deposit to hold the apartment, and we wouldn't have had the money for the pet deposit, which was stressing me out beyond what was rational. So we get to keep our little guys! \o/ We're gonna be squeaking by on the money, but oh man, I don't even care if we're broke as hell. We're going to get out of here.

We couldn't have done it without your donations, and I really do believe it was your good thoughts and positive energy that put us in the right place at the right time to have the apartment manager who turned us down be the kind lady who referred us to the low-income, tax-credit housing apartments where we ended up, and then to find the helpful lady at the desk who explained very clearly everything we'd need to have our application processed in as stress-free a manner as possible. I am babbling, but thank you, thank you, thank you <3

I've had a few inquiries about whether you can use paypal to donate on the GoFundMe site, and the answer is that you can't.

But if you still want to help, you can send money to my paypal with the email duckducknoose@gmail.com, and I can mark it down as an offline donation of it on my GoFundMe page as counting toward the total raised. It would help out a lot, either way.

We'll be taking the trip on Monday to try to find a place to rent, and it would be really great if we had the money to put down a deposit on the spot, in case we find something while we're there. We're getting pretty close, and even a dollar or two would help. Thank you for reading, and thanks again to everyone who's helped out so far!

My boyfriend and I are in a really rough living situation, and we're trying to get out of it. We want to move back to my hometown across the state from where we live now, so that I can be around my family and better mental health care and social resources. I'm planning to drive there next week to look at apartments/fill out/turn in applications. However, the gas money is going to make my grocery budget pretty much nil. I'm disabled and on a low fixed income, so we barely get by as it is.

Family's going to try to help with some of the moving costs, but they're at poverty level and won't be able to help much. I don't really even want to think about how we'll be able to afford this.

I hate asking for help, but I don't know what else to do right now. Please help.

If you could spare any money to help me out, please send it to me through paypal with the email duckducknoose@gmail.com.

If you'd rather, you can send a WalMart ecard that I can use for groceries. You can do that online here, and you can use the same email address as above.

Any amount would make a difference. I wish I could do something to give back, but right now I can't. I promise that I'd be incredibly grateful if you could help, and that it would all go to a good cause, and that I'd find a way to pay it forward when I'm in a position to do so.

If you don't have the extra money, any kind of positive energy or internet hugs you could send me way would also be appreciated.

Thanks for reading <3

So, for the last week or so I've been trying to get back on the "draw every day" horse, and I've been partially successful. I haven't done anything post-worthy, but I've at least managed a doodle every day. The problem is, I have a hard time deciding what to draw when I'm not fandom-inspired, which I'm not right now. So I'm asking you guys for some drawing assignments!

It can be just about anything. Scenery, vehicles, animals, portraits, still life, objects, etc. I'm not asking for porn or pairing prompts or anything, but assignments for portraits/character studies are also welcome.

The shows/manga/comics I'm familiar with are, in no particular order:
Psych - Burn Notice - Supernatural - Teen Wolf - True Blood - Game of Thrones - True Detective - Brooklyn Nine Nine - Naruto - Bleach - Attack on Titan - Anything by Junji Itou - Sherlock - Firefly - Harry Potter - Batman (films, cartoons and comics) - Spiderman (films, cartoons and a little bit of comics) - Marvel Universe (films only) - LOOOOTS of horror movies - and I can't think of any more off the top of my head. ETA: American Horror Story - Eyeshield 21 - Hemlock Grove - Death Note

I'll probably stick these in a randomizer and pull one out whenever I want something to draw :)

Please don't give me anything complicated, haha. I can't guarantee that I'll post these or even finish them, but it'll give me some things to try when I'm short on ideas.

Your help is appreciated! :)

Podficcing has me by the baaaallllls right now, you guys. Don't get me wrong, I love it! It's just, I get fixated on one aspect of creativity and I hang out there for a while. I've joined at least one podficcing challenge in my frenzy to record ALL the fics. I'm learning so much! I love the learning as much as I love the doing :) You guys should try it, at least once. However, I do understand that a lot of people don't care for podfic, and that's ok, too.

Are there any of you who would offer me permission to rifle through your fics, and try to record one if it calls to me? That is, if you don't already offer blanket permission. But you could point that out if you want to, as well :) You guys know there are certain pairings and things I like, but I'm also interesting in trying new things. So anybody can leave me a comment, even if it just says "ok", and I may rummage through your bits and pieces ;D

Aaaand, if you want to make your fic available to anyone who wants to record it, you can go to this Blanket Permission List post at cakehole_club and leave a comment. That way you might one day be surprised by podfic in your inbox :D Some podficcing challenges are coming up as well, so podficcers will certainly be looking for a variety of material to work with.

I have a couple of podfics I have to edit, then post. (I wish I were actually good at graphic design! lol. I can draw, but when I try to make graphics, they're just kind of bleh.) Podficcing is just as, if not more, time consuming as art is, especially anything over ~2000 words. But it's really gratifying, because I eased into fandom by listening to podfic, and I listened to SO MUCH of it, and it makes me so happy to think that others are listening to my recordings, too :)

So yeah, if you like de podfics, there will be more. And if you don't care for them, or both, I'm gonna try to livestream either tomorrow or the next day to flex my drawing muscle so it doesn't atrophy, lol.