Archive of all blog posts

News & announcements: Site rebuild progress report #2

The theme of frantic (and joyful) work and crazy hours has continued in these last seven days of Line of Action re-programming. In my last report, I was able to say that all existing features had been re-created on a squeaky clean and extensible code base. That's meant that this week, everything that's been built is a brand-new feature! That's meant that by some measures you might think that progress... Continue reading

News & announcements: Site rebuild progress report #1

There's been SO much intense programming going on since our fundraiser ended. I've been pulling overtime every week and even working weekends to get us to our next evolution as fast as humanly possible. We hit a major milestone yesterday -- All of the existing features have now been re-created on a cleaner code-base, from the tools to the forums to accounts. Why did we spend time "reinventing the... Continue reading

News & announcements: Results of our fundraiser

With your help, we raised $8768 toward: Rebuilding and repairing the site to make it more stable in the face of the incredible demand The building of new membership features that will allow the site to better support itself and offer regular updates and new photo packs Optional “in-class” drawing tutorials. Goal setting, progress tracking and achievements. The ability to immediately... Continue reading

News & announcements: Last day of our fundraiser!

We are roughly 80% of the way to our first funding goal! This tier is the one that's going to enable us to rebuild the underlying code of the site, making it faster and stronger in the face of huge worldwide demand. It will enable us to keep the site running for many more years to come, even as demand rises, and offering our basic tools for free. This same code rebuild will suddenly enable us to create... Continue reading

News & announcements: Announcing our planned membership levels

Line of Action offering its tools as an entirely free service has allowed us to provide huge benefits to hundreds of thousands of art students around the world. I've received letters from people whose artistic skills have improved through daily gesture drawing classes on Line of Action, from art students whose grades have been saved through access to our tools, even people in rural areas with no other... Continue reading

News & announcements: Fundraising update #2

Great progress! We've reached 57% of our first funding goal! Can you help us get to 65% today? This fundraiser isn't just about getting cool new features and photos for the site that you've desperately wanted for years (though it's about that too!) It's about seemingly boring but critical repairs and upgrades that are needed to keep the site online. With 31,000 people using the site every week, we're... Continue reading

News & announcements: Fundraising update #1

In the last 18 days, we've raised almost $3,000, or 30% of our first funding goal. That's a great start, but with 31,000 people using the site per week, we have room for improvement. ;) There's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't be able to hit all of our goals before this fundraiser is over, and get all of the incredible new features and photos the community deserves! Here's what we've been... Continue reading

Deeper understanding of anatomy: Animal leg anatomy cheat sheet

We've spoken before about that oh-so common artist's mistake of believing that some animals have "backwards knees." But in that original post, we only discussed "digitigrades." Digitigrades are animals that walk on their toes, with the "sole" of their feet off the ground, like cats and dogs -- this leads to the common myth that they have "backwards knees," as their ankles are easily mistaken for knees... Continue reading