a while back, ghostbong bought a very cheap, very used Roomba from craigslist. "so, you’re going to ‘hack’ this, right?“ said the man at the parking lot rendezvous. but we just wanted a vacuum. since then, the addition of the word “robot” to our casual, every-day lexicon is continually jarring, as if even living in the future will give you future-shock.
doing maintenance on the robot. the robot is stuck on a cord. the robot ate a sock. the robot ran out of power before it got back to its charging station. the robot knocked something over. it doesn’t help that the Roomba programmers saw fit to outfit the little thing with a series of Artoo-like MIDI scales and honks, to convey the mood of its message: docking successfully produces a tiny fanfare, and getting its brushes jammed on a foreign object makes it cry out in sad distress. do i verbally reassure the robot when i pull a wad of cat hair and bread bag tabs out of its works and set it back down on the floor? you bet i do.
but the larger point is that it is now possible for me to say (or type) out loud and without irony, sarcasm, or any kind of fictitiousness: “the robot knocked over the kitten’s water dish >:I ”
the future is here, and it is me on my knees on the floor yanking hairballs out of a domestic droid while it softly boops at me
Still one of my favorite posts of all time.
Our Roomba is named Reggie (after Jeeves). He is our favourite son. It is a delight to see him on his daily patrols around the living room, masterfully navigating the sofa and then cheerfully and confidently running straight into the door.
Reg likes to eat USB cables. Unfortunately they don’t agree with him and jam up his intake. When this happens does, he sings a sad song and I get a notification on my phone: “Reggie is stuck!”. Soon after, I see that he has completed his job. I text my girlfriend. “Thanks for rescuing Reg!” Again.
Sometimes he can’t find his way back to his house under the TV stand and we have to pick him up and put him on his charger.
I find myself congratulating him for going a good job while doing his monthly maintenance and apologising when he is trying to do the kitchen and my feet keep getting in the way.
Reg is easily the best £500 I’ve ever spent. Also our floor is really, really clean.
Hey hey! We just drew a cute sketch of one of the alters in our system (Ava) and, since we’re really happy with it, we’ll share some proportion and facial construction tips that will hopefully help you with drawing too.
Picture for example above, explanation/details are below each picture.
The center of the eye almost always lines up with the corners of the lips (approximately–some people have slightly smaller or larger lips). If you’re confused about the size of the mouth, but the eyes look great, just draw a line down from the center of each eye and you’ll have the exact size of the mouth you need!
It’s approximately five eyes that go across the face (depending on your style, play with this a little). The head wraps in a circle, so if the end eyes go over that’s cool, especially when drawing the face at an angle or in a semi-realistic style like this.
The key part is thatone eye width is in between both eyes. This helps remain as a guide for typical eye-to-eye distance. Then, if you have a character who has wider or closer together eyes, you can change that consciously!
Enticing eyelashes have movement! They essentially work like arrows from the center of the eye. Upper eyelashes curve in the opposite direction of the lower eyelashes (directions are on the left side of the above picture).
Just make sure they curve, no one has straight eye lashes (unless you’re deliberately using that for stylistic effect)!
Hair has lots of movement too! Drawing arrows to start getting a sense of direction can be a great place to start. Start the arrow where the hair is attached to the head or pinned (like with a clip or hair tie) and then fan out from there.
Draw hair in sections/chunks that vary in size. See how some are thin sections and others are thicker? Typically on the edges of hair it’s thiner (like by the face, edges of the hair/outline) and in the center of sections it’s thicker.
As always, don’t be afraid to use references so you can see how hair falls on the shape of a human head!
A little neck trick: There is a V of muscles that connects near the collarbones and all the way up to under the ear. Make sure this V is something you draw (even if you erase it because your character has a thicker neck). The thinnest part of the neck cannot be thinner than this V.
Also, shoulder muscles start pretty soon after the neck, so see that thick red line on the side? That’s where the V and the shoulder muscles (the ones that get really sore on all of us) coming around the back connect. This gentle V will add a much more realistic look to the necks you draw and help the head look properly supported!
Cecil. She/her. During the day I sit in libraries staring at books. During the night I write queer fanfiction with a historical slant.
Some not-so-random facts: Gay space lizards are the best lizards. Star Trek is my life. I have too many DS9 ships. Classic Who and the Eighth Doctor Adventures make me grin stupidly. Kelas Parmak is the best. I will defend historically accurate portrayals of Alan Turing to the last drop of blood. Likes and asks end up in the name of @apolesens-otheraccount, because Tumblr doesn't have a way of changing which blog is your primary one. Nothing happens over there - this is the one to follow.
