Joker

It's a twig you fuckin' idiot. Fitting you can't tell the difference you liberal piece of shit. #trump2020 (I'm totally joking, by the way)

True... kinda. I was raised an only child by just my mom. When I was 21 my mom and birth father got back together (even though my mom told me he had died in a motorcycle accident years before) and my dad asked if my brother and I kept in touch. Because I didn't know I had a brother... the answer was no. Eventually my brother, father, mother and I were all back together after twenty years apart... my brother and I didn't know about each other until this moment. He is a year younger than me. There's also waaaayyyyyyyy more to the story. My brother lived with another family my parents knew in Kansas growing up. TPBM lives in the same town they grew up in.

First video = Protestors Second and third videos = Not protestors.

I was intimidated by going tubeless as well, and denied for a few years. But back in 2017 I had this gravel race coming up and I knew there would be a lot of small lava rock gravel sections and I was worries I'd end up on the side of the course fixing flat, after flat, after flat, and I didn't want to carry several spare tubes and Co2. So I did some research and saw how easy setting wheels up tubeless looked, then bought some tubeless valve stems (wheels and tires were already set up for tubeless), Stan's Sealant, and in less than half an hour my ride was set up tubeless. It was that easy. I will admit that those first few rides I kept waiting for my tires to deflate or burp really easily, but it never happened. Now... the hardest part of going tubeless is pumping up the tire. If you have a regular pump it can be done (I used a regular pump for my first two tubeless set ups) but I won't lie - it was the most time consuming and frustrating part of the set up. I eventually got smart and bought a high volume floor pump. It was fucking expensive for a pump but it makes pumping up tubeless tires a breeze.

Yeah, beading a MTB tire is sooooo easy. Don’t even need tools.

Are your wheels set up to run tubeless tires? I switched over to tubeless tires a couple years ago and have never looked back. Just last week I ran over some glass I didn't see and the tire started spraying sealant, and within seconds sealed the hole. A few pumps of air to top the tire off and I was back on my way. Less than three minutes. If I had to change a tube I would have been held up way longer, and we all know the struggle is real when trying to get a road tire mounted on a rim without one of these handy. Although I did get one of these last year for on-ride emergencies (if for some reason I need to insert a tube into my tubeless tire) and it works like a charm. Anyway, if you can go tubeless with your current rim set up, I'd recommend it. Are you still running those 3T Discus wheels? I think you can convert them to tubeless pretty easily with tubeless rim tape and some valves. On my gravel/CX bike (which I'm riding more than my race bike, right now) I'm running Donnelly CDG tires with Stan's Sealant. I'm able to ride the tires at a lower pressure (usually 65-70psi) and it makes my ride feel like a Cadillac. So smooth.

Just looked through a handful of pages online. They seem to really break every aspect down to its simplest form, and then guide you on how to make it stylistic. If a mentor isn't available, for under $20 this seems the next best step. @glorydays- you've had it for a while... what's your review? Did you find it helpful? Nice find. Thanks for sharing!!

I feel pretty good about it. The left bar of the A and the right bar of the N are a little 'wet-noddle' looking, but only slightly. I see what you were going for with the same curve mirrored on both letters, so it works. Overall I think this is pretty solid. 3D/drop shadow looks good, too. Nice job!

Not really knowing calligraphy myself this is a hard to answer question. I would think you need to know the basics of calligraphy in order to successfully mix it with your writing style, but I could be wrong. I've seen some absolutely incredible styles where the two have been mixed seamlessly... and I've seen some that made me wince. Personally, I would want to teach myself the basics of standard calligraphy, first. From there I would start experimenting with mixing writing handstyles and calligraphy. I would assume that, like anything, it would take a while to nail down so it looks right. That would be the fun part, though... the process. I'm guessing you've seen plenty of examples which has inspired you to want to learn but some of my personal favorites are the ones who are calligraphy traditionalists first, Graffiti writers second. Folks like Vincent Abadie Hafez and Luca Barcellona. I just did a Google search for tutorials and found this one: https://jakerainis.com/blog/a-calligraffiti-tutorial/ Kind of reiterates what I mentioned earlier but at least walks you through a few steps. A few years ago I grabbed a Pilot Parallel pen set and found them to be awesome. Once you get the nag of it you can always upgrade to a proper quill and ink set up, which will give you more freedom and opportunity to make your style look artistic. Unless you're just looking to learn a style for writing on the wall then ignore those bits and use a chisel marker.

Stink bombs are the only answer. Keep tossing 'em and eventually they'll move on.

@defyoner - Okay... okay, my pencils are down. That laser beam E is pure fire. You win. Thanks for that one!

Is Damage Team a crew?

@NightmareOnElmStreet This looks wayyyy better than my first attempts at PS. My first attempts - you would have thought I did them in MS Paint. There's tons of free PS brushes online, so there has to be a free paint brush one you can download that'll look more realistic that the one you have. Maybe one of these will work? On your shadows, I would set that layer to "Multiply" and lower the opacity a bit, then give the layer a slight Gaussian Blur to soften the edges of the shadow. Play with how much blur and shadow opacity to see what feels right. In reality the shadows won't sit in front of the bag or the ladder, so you may have to manipulate the shadows a bit to get them to look right. See image below for how shadows would look. As for brick texture, search for seamless white brick texture so that you can tile your bricks without seams. It'll look more real. If you can find one that is white bricks, you can use that as your whole background and then layer color stripes over that. I think you can download free versions of textures here, but the resolution on the free ones might be low (Click on "Textures", then toggle through the folders on the left). Should work for what you're doing, though. Or just Google "Seamless white brick texture". I'm sure there's a way to get the birds to have the brick texture showing through as well - probably using a layer mask (someone else probably knows).

@NightmareOnElmStreet- I agree with what others have said with regards to using Illustrator for a type treatment such as this. I mostly say this because I'm way more comfortable in Illustrator than I am in Photoshop. I mainly use Photoshop as a photo and 3D render post editing tool so my skills with type in Photoshop are little to none. I'm technically not a graphic designer. Technically? Pfft... I'm not a graphic designer. I fake it, and barely get by at that. If I need to add type in Photoshop I always do the type in Illustrator and insert it into my Photoshop file as a smart object. That way I can scale the type as needed and not lose any detail. My design background is mostly retail environments and custom fixture design so I'm usually adding graphic treatments in my 3D model, rendering it, and then using Photoshop to edit those renders. ---------------------------------------------------- Yeah, not the typical use of jersey barriers or parking blocks, but that's what I love about it - using everyday objects in a new way. Had to remove the image because I just found out I shouldn't be sharing it. LOL!

I didn’t see that coming...

I might be able to help, too. Maybe... mayyyyybe.

Bring the left bar of the K to the same height as the A, then bring down the kick leg of the K to the same baseline of the A. Add a drop shadow to the whole thing and this is good to go. Like this...

Well, the second and third ones in the left row aren't bad. The third one - the letters are overlapping a bit too much, but not too bad. I know it's frustrating to nail simplicity but I also think you're being too hard on yourself. For clarity, I tried to do all the crazy semi-wild and wild style shit before I could do a decent simple style. About four years into being a writer I forced myself to go back and learn simples (and even then I wasn't good at them). And once again about twelve years later I retaught myself simples (much better, now). Getting simplicity to look right is harder than creating a wild-style piece... personal opinion. BUT if you can do a good simple you can do good semi-wild and probably wild-style pieces. This is my thought, anyway. Maybe the angle we should take for you is Blockbuster-style letters (see examples below). For the most part these are basically the direction we've been going - but maybe if you add serifs it might help you to align the letters more clearly (Conan & Bates are examples). Tick-Tock Blockbusters are cool, too. I would stick to straight-bottom versions for now, though.

Crap... I was looking at the drawing above instead of the username. Well @defyoner I hit you up by accident, but enjoyed the process. @delv- I owe you one.

Someone explain to me what destroying your community has to do with protest. Why would you loot and destroy businesses in your community? If it’s people from outside the community doing the destroying (as is being reported) why isn’t the community defending their surroundings? I understand the concept of folks seeing opportunity (looting) but once this is all over you’re left with a burned out community that has nothing to offer its residents. Who wants to live in a community that has no businesses to support it? If you owned a business and the community you supported looted and destroyed your business... would you be quick to rebuild in the same location? No cops would be a shit-show. It would be the Wild West out there. Nothing but dead bodies everywhere, every day. No thanks.

@glorydays Does this help? The previous sketches were based on no fonts, I just drew them and figured the closest font you could use that is similar would be Impact. In the example below I used Impact, traced it, then embellished it.

Any paper with guides is going to help you, so use what is available to you. I'm assuming you're talking about French Curve templates? Well, personally I would discourage you from using those, as I would discourage anyone from using any kind of ruler, but ultimately you should use what you feel is going to help you. If you feel a French Curve is going to help you learn how to best nail learning those curves then by all means get one. Rely on it to get you there and then put it in a drawer and forget about it. There's no French Curves for helping you nail those lines when painting a wall.

@glorydays Nix the Helvetica Bold and work with Impact - it'll work better with the graph paper. Also, there's several kinds of graph paper out there - Squared / Isometric / Spotty. The Isometric paper might serve you better once you start adding some Graffiti elements to your letters.