I kind of want to try doing fanart if I can find some nice simple Mocchin to draw. Link me yours! (or a friend's)

I want to collab. Let's draw our characters interacting!

This is Dip


He lives in a cactus, loves plants and food, and is very playful. He's always happy to hang out with others and go exploring, but he doesn't like when it rains (his poncho gets wet) or is too cold (his poncho is warm, but his feet get cold). He won't swim, but he'll try just about anything else at least once. Dip is about a foot tall, just FYI. 

The idea here is simple; draw your character doing something Dip can react to! All character types are welcome! Send me the PSD or PNG of your half and an idea of what you might want Dip to do and I'll draw him interacting. 

My half is going to be this style/quality; Happy mermay! and A Series of Unfortunate Dip

I'll also might draw a couple of Dip halves people can react to if anyone's game but doesn't have an idea themselves.  

Please let me know if you're planning to participate so I don't feel like I'm standing here all alone qAq

1. hxxkr
2. CaptainRennie
3. Bai-ZeWarrior
4. IzabelleGD
5. OPEN

Pretentious title is pretentious. I'm going to do past me a favor and do what I always hoped other DAers would do; tell you all my dirty little secrets.

No, not that kind of secret.

I have some pretty awesome software for various different functions hidden up my sleeves that I want to share with you guys. Pricing ranges from free to kinda expensive and a couple things probably don't work on Macs because I'm a PC user whoops but HAVE IT ANYWAY. In no particular order.

Also credit where credit is due, Horsepoint found half of these.

Also adding in a list of my favorite web development resources. I'll keep adding to it as I go, but these are my favorite places to go in order to shave a few minutes off when coding.

Lazy Nezumi

Website - $30 (for life, or per year if you want to get updates past the first year)

Holy shit guys. Like actually holy shit. I will go to my grave clinging to Lazy Nezumi.
Here's why it's awesome: (stolen directly from their website)

• Clean line-art taking forever?
• Forced to make fast strokes to avoid seeing any jitters?
• Uneven pressure in your strokes?
• Art software leaving ugly artifacts at the end of your lines?
• Hand shaking when you draw?
Take control of your lines! Lazy Nezumi Pro is a Windows app that helps you draw smooth, beautiful lines, with your mouse or pen tablet.

Yep. It's that smoothing function you never knew you needed, PLUS it has lots of sweet features to help you draw concentric circles, actually parallel lines, perspective grids on the go, and more! It's fucking awesome. AND the developer is really friendly and actually responds to questions! Go get it. Love it. Tell him he needs to make a mac version so I can finally use it at work. |D

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WinDirStat

Website - Free!

And look, there's a version for macs!
There's even a version for Linux machines that's how fancy this is.

Are you a nerd like me? Then you'll fucking love this program. The website looks sketchy as fuck but I promise it's safe.

Short for Windows Directory Statistics this thing basically scans your entire harddrive and then offers a visual map of the size and extension of EVERY. SINGLE. FILE. on your computer. Why is this useful? Because I skimmed 175GB of shit I had forgotten I had and wasn't using off my computer. That's like a third of my disk space that was cluttered with crap that I didn't need.

Plus let's be honest, I am a neeerrrdddd. It was fun to see all my files laid out and click through and see which ones are the biggest space-hoggers. And then cackle evilly while deleting them forever.  

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Telegram

Website - Free!

Sick of Skype? Or in my case, sick of it blue-screen-of-death-ing my computer every time I tried to download it? yes. The answer is yes. So much yes.

Welcome to Telegram! It's 900000x better. Seriously now I can "text" Horsepoint or prom-song (damn u canada) without incurring the wrath of international messaging, and actually have group chats in a format that doesn't make my eyes bleed. I can insta-chat with DA friends and have a record of our conversation that's easier to search than notes. I got all my classmates on it and now we can exchange cat videos and homework guides at the same time. And it's so light. And it's soooo easy to use. And is consistent between the desktop app (which is brilliantly executed) and the phone app! I love it so much I'm gonna let it sing its own praises too:

Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security, it’s super-fast, simple and free. You can use Telegram on all your devices at the same time — your messages sync seamlessly across any number of your phones, tablets or computers.

With Telegram, you can send messages, photos, videos and files of any type (doc, zip, mp3, etc), as well as create groups for up to 1000 people or channels for broadcasting to unlimited audiences. You can write to your phone contacts and find people by their usernames. As a result, Telegram is like SMS and email combined — and can take care of all your personal or business messaging needs.

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ShiftEdit

Website - Free!

For any coders out there, welcome to heaven. ShiftEdit is an FTP program and a code editer in one. Use a single ShiftEdit login to simultaneously access any website you own, and code/publish instantly in the browser for immediate updates. Seriously. You can code right there (they have great syntax highlighting AND error codes) and when you hit save it'll automatically FTP the new info straight to your website. Forget diamonds, this is a girl's best friend.

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Spine

Website - $70

"Animation brings games alive. We believe creating great animation requires not only powerful software, but a powerful workflow. Spine is dedicated to 2D animation, providing an efficient workflow both for creating amazing animation and for integrating it into your games."

Aka, animate in a super cool environment with fairly easy to use tools for waaay less than its competitors. This one's less of a lifehack cause it is fairly expensive, comparatively, but I've had good fun with it! It's how I made this thing.

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TeamSpeak

Website - Free!
Get a server for as little as $2 a month at NFO

If you still hate Skype as much as I do but need to do live voice chatting so Telegram isn't quite covering all your needs, get TeamSpeak! It's traditionally used for gaming but dude it works just as well just to hang out. Get a 10-slot server for $2 a month, everyone downloads the client for free and then you can go hang on the server literally forever. It sounds great, has 1000x the features you'll ever need, and it's easy to get running.

Also as Horsepoint says: "As a person who has used skype too, you should add that TS sounds way better than skype since it has the option of detecting when you're speaking - which skype does not, so you get any old crap through."

I use it both for personal stuff (anyone who's played Minecraft with us knows we pretty much live on it) as well as for voice conferences for my consulting business. I can't recommend it enough!

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So that's your dose of super cool software. Seen me use something you're not familiar with or have something of your own to share? Let me know!