Good day, my lovely listeners! You are listening to the Forty Auty podcast. Tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health. With all those tantalising tongue twisters out of the way, let's get into the show. Good day, listeners! Welcome back to another episode of the Forty Auty podcast. Today is a little bit of a strange one because I'm recording on the weekend. It's been a very relaxing, calm weekend for me. Went to this really posh spa on Friday for my girlfriend's birthday and it was very, very crazy place. Very crazy place. But I'm feeling nice and fresh and cool for the next week and I've got a little podcast to sort of get things going. Today we're going to be diving further into the topic of autism parenting. We're going to talk a lot about the divide between the autistic community and the autism parent community. It's something that I think not a lot of people address. We tend to in these days, we tend to fight rather than get together and have an honest conversation. So this is what we're going to be doing and I have someone here, Eileen, who is here to talk about her experiences with being quite badly bullied online by the actually autistic community. Eileen, how are you doing today? Hey, I'm doing good. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for us to talk about this subject today. Me too. It's definitely something that I've wanted to address for a long time. As I said, we tend to in this culture to be a bit triggered by a lot of different topics and if someone says something that we don't like or we don't agree with or someone's on the other side of the fence then we tend to be very harsh with those people. Would you like to give everybody an idea of your background? Who you are, what you do as a job, the kind of stuff that you do online? So my name is Eileen Lamb. I'm French as you can tell by my accent, but I live in Texas now in the United States. I'm a mother of two little boys. Charlie is seven and he has severe autism. He's mostly nonverbal. My youngest son is Jude and I'm on the spectrum myself, but I was diagnosed with level one autism, which would have been considered as burgers a few years ago. Online I talk about autism a lot, mostly from my perspective as a parent raising Charlie, but I talk about my own autism too and I wrote a book about it called All Across the Spectrum, which talks about the spectrum because even though we share the same diagnosis, our experiences are so different from each other, my son and my experience. So that's why it was important for me to talk about all sides. I don't like the word sides, but all of the spectrum. I understand what you mean. I think there is definitely, I definitely under-exaggerated or underestimated rather just how varied autistic people can be. I knew that it was a spectrum and I knew that we all share different traits, but there is a wide variety of traits that are out there. Yeah. And I think that's confusing for people who don't know about autism too because in the movies you often see autism as very gifted people like the good doctor and rain man and always a servant skill or something when in reality for so many people it's not like that. I don't have a skill like this, I wish. Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think also that the stereotypes around an autism condition as well like being good at maths or engineering or coding or it's like one of those things like the more that I talk to autistic people the more that I realize just how like there's not many people who have met that are very very good at maths who are autistic. Could you tell us about sort of when you did your book and the kind of things that you did around it when it was released? Yes, I started writing it a while ago. So two years ago I pitched my book to a publisher and they were really interested in my story and they also love my photography. So their idea was that I would tell my story about autism and the spectrum but also include my photography to tell my story in a unique way. So that's what we did for my book. We included photography with my story and I like that because photography is for me a way to express myself and I feel like I'm able to tell the story in a way that is really real. I started writing it in 2017 and it was published in 2019 last year and you know I haven't done much promoting of it on social media and stuff because I don't want people to feel like I'm profiting of autism or and by the way like writing a book that's not gonna make you rich like it's something that I see always on social media or writing a book about it you know profiting off of it when really like writing is not a very profitable thing. In any case I loved writing that book and the pictures and being able to tell my story and showing both sides again. I don't like that word but I think you know what I mean of the spectrum or aspects of the spectrum you know and how different autism can be for everyone and that's also what I do on social media. I try to show this but always with a lot of love because it's important for me that people know that autism is not a gift for everyone but also that it's not something to be scared of and that you know autistic people are just as worthy of love and you know having jobs and being respected as anyone else so it's really a balance between the two and that's kind of what I do on social media or at least try to do. Well I've had a look through your Instagram and your pictures and stuff and you are right like your photography is really good. Thanks. It definitely tells like a story in each picture that that you've posted. Would you be able to give us your experience with being diagnosed and the kind of journey that you went on to get your son diagnosed as well? Yeah so my son got his diagnosis first so Charlie was 22 months old when he was officially diagnosed. We noticed that he lost his words when he was around 18 months which was really scary as a parent. He only had you know a dozen words so he wasn't like a big talker or anything but you know he was at the edge where we expected him to start talking more not less so that's when we called early childhood intervention in the United States. Come to your house and do you know free assessment or shift depending on your income and Charlie qualified for all they had to offer so if it was speech therapy, occupational therapy, parent support but after a few months they told us that it was basically out of their league and that Charlie needed more health than this so that's when they recommended we get him evaluated for autism and he took the M chat. I don't know if you have that in the UK probably too. M chat.  Yeah yeah exactly for like parents who you know are worried they can do it at home and very quick and Charlie scored 18 out of 20 so like you know really a lot of concerns obviously and yeah he was diagnosed at 22 months old by the developmental pediatrician here in the US and from then he started ABA therapy so that was Charlie's story. After he got diagnosed is when I decided to seek a diagnosis actually I don't like that expression. I went through a therapeutic assessment to know why I was struggling because I was struggling in a lot of ways that were similar to Charlie but I didn't see how at that time it could be linked to autism it seems so crazy to me that I would have lived with autism for so long without knowing you know I didn't know that much about autism then. I needed help from a professional so I went through a therapeutic assessment that was like 20 hours of questions and talking. Yeah I was really really intense and at the end of it you know that you got the right diagnosis at least you know it's not a little thing. 20 hours of talking yeah well not in a row. Oh okay okay I was just picturing you just like nodding off in an assessment just like can we please stop talking this is too much. That's funny no I couldn't do that either. Yeah that that was it and at the end of the 20 hours over a few weeks she told me that I indeed had autism level one obviously yeah and I felt relieved in somewhere that everything I had been struggling with as a kid in France had an explanation because I always felt like something was wrong with me you know like why am I like this or even as an adult like why can't I go to the grocery store without freaking out when people go to Target it's a store here like to have fun and to me it's like so stressful and scary to be inside a store and it's like what is wrong with me and now I have all this you know so many things that started making sense after that like I can't get gas if I'm going to a different gas station than the one I know the buttons are different like little things like this and I had very hard time maintaining friendships making friends yeah it must be quite really good like I was diagnosed quite early at about 10 but I only really started reading about autism when I was in my 20s at university and it definitely does it gives you a new lens on your life now helps you figure out why things are happening I guess if you don't if you didn't know that you're autistic then you would you know assume that you were like a bad person or that you just weren't capable and it must be a very scary thing to deal with for such a long time yeah yeah it's really interesting how I mean a lot of people are starting to get diagnosed later in life but yeah I always wonder like would my childhood life have been different if I had known before I don't know it's something I will never have the answer to but you know I was still in my mid 20s so it wasn't super late either you know yeah but there's some people who are diagnosed like when the 50 or 60 yeah that's that's that's like you've learned that's like at the stage in life where you've learned how to cope with everything and you just sort of you've got your life together and then someone comes along and says hey look you've been dealing with like so much of this stuff that you have no idea about yeah I can't imagine that that's all um because obviously he said that you saw a lot of your own traits and your own behaviors and difficulties in your son has that given has your son's diagnosis and his sort of development given you sort of a different perspective on yourself yeah yes and no like there are so many ways in which I relate to Charlie for instance the noise like it's something that's funny in a way it's not but when there is a loud noise we're always the two people within half a second with you know covering our ears and people just look at us like what what they didn't even hear anything you know yeah it's some kind of connection here on how autism affects us in similar ways but seeing the difference in like communications for instance between Charlie and I it's given me a different perspective on autism in general not not just my own but that's what motivated me to to talk about it just so people can really understand the wide range of experiences of autism that's a very good cause to kind of shoot for like I I don't understand why I do I do understand like how people can be about personally you know if you're going out of your way to try and change people's lives and make a positive impact I you know all this this abuse that you've been receiving just it astonishes me that people can the I think it's the combination of the internet and it's also a lot of different cultural factors that are that are coming into play as society progresses but yeah so one of the things that I've been trying to think about for like a while people don't like anything relating to levels of functioning in the autistic community I think I'm pretty sure I understand where it's coming from because it's kind of like it's I think it's mostly people who would be diagnosed medically as being high functioning don't particularly feel like that label applies in in all sense or at least to an outsider really encapsulates their experience it makes it difficult though so you know I work I work in schools and I I meet a lot a lot of kids with with autism who vary in their ability to be independent and so it's it it's one of the things that I've been thinking about for a for a while now because it's like how do we how do we talk about the the kids and the adults that can't live on their own and can't so function independently without using functioning labels it's like right yeah I think it's it's important though to you know to make the difference you know like how before it was as burgers and then autism like it was different and I feel like that was perfect because it showed people that the difference in you know skills and being able to be independent and communicate and you know functioning label I don't always see them as harmful because when someone says low functioning I don't see it as oh he can't do anything look at that no it's more of you know he's gonna need more support rather than he can do this so maybe that's the way to phrase it a higher higher support or severe you know I use severe because I feel like it's you know it's one word and again it's not I don't find it degrading because it's just a way to indicate that someone needs more help than another person you know it's not their fault so I try you know I say I have high functioning autism too there's there's a balance and I'm sure we could find a middle ground between functioning labels and using nothing at all just so there is a way to tell the difference you know maybe we'll find a way someday yeah I think it's it's a lot like a lot to do with words and how they appear and make us feel so things like severe and autism combined kind of you know no matter the intention and meaning behind the word some people I don't think can get past the the actual word if that makes sense like in this society we take things for at face value and then leave them so we'll see something the user word that we don't like we say don't use that word then we get on with our day or we but the thing is especially in your case making making that distinction yeah making that distinction between people who can live on their own and can you know they have difficulties they have a lot of difficulties whether it's like social or sensory or executive functioning but they can live independently in a lot of cases whereas when we're talking about someone who's more low functioning they can't what I was wanting to you know to ask is to mention is that that sort of culture of getting quite upset at someone because of the words that they use or the the concepts that they use that other people don't agree with and people who reply and react to those things may only be sending like a a single line of disagreement or hate or something like that but for people like yourself you get many of those and I'm I'm guessing that they kind of sort of stack up and they don't really make you feel that comfortable on social media terrifying could you tell us a little bit about your your experiences with online bullying or harassment yeah so you know like I said to me it's important to show all aspects of the spectrum because you know on paper I have the same diagnosis as Charlie but in reality he's probably gonna need someone to take care of him for the rest of his life and I don't know if you're able to find a way to communicate whether that's verbal or not we've tried so many things from PEX AC go talk sign language and of course you know talking so just to show you that we're trying everything to get him to communicate with us and right now he can express basic needs such as I want plus item is AC and he has like 20 word approximation he has apraxia too so it's just you know it adds up but it's important to me that people see the difference between both sides again that word of the spectrum and for autistic adults a lot of them they find this offensive that I use terms like severe autism or that I put my son in ABA therapy there's a lot of controversy about ABA therapy and a lot of misinformation too for instance autistic adults say that ABA therapies don't try and teach autistic kids to communicate unless it's a verbal form of communication talking but that is not true at all because like I said the first thing they tried with Charlie when he was two was PEX you know the picture communication exchange communication program where the kid gives you a little picture to tell you what he wants that didn't work for us but like we tried a lot of different form of communications and another miscommunication misinformation about ABA is that they prevent kids from steaming and they will only do it if the kid is harming himself like they don't stop Charlie unless he starts he has a steam where he just like hits his face and he even got a step infection from it because you know he cut himself a row and he got infected you know that's when you stop it and I don't think it's bad to say this you know like why would I want that and you know some kids like head bang and they can't control their steams like in any case I'm talking about all of these things on social media and they don't agree with me so then I get bullied and I use that word and it's a powerful word but it is absolutely what it is because it's not one comment here when one of them comes I'm sure they post my post in one of their private group because every time I get one comment they're also like dozens and dozens sometimes hundreds of the time coming to attack me on my post yeah I have like a folder with all the screenshots and it's very hurtful stuff like hearing that I'm an abusive mother that cps should be called on me all of these things oh and I'm being told all the times that I'm ableist or that I have and then when I tell people but you know I'm on the spectrum too as I said I have self internalized ableism so basically I feel like I can never win and it's frustrating to me because I love a lot of things in the neurodiversity movement like I think the concept is good but the way people are going about it and taking their ideas too far is just hurtful for the autism community as a whole and I've talked about this with some of my my autistic friends on instagram and every everyone that I talk to always has this deep-seated anxiety about saying the wrong thing like these are people who follow this stuff and and sort of tweet and use you know use things like ableist and and all of that stuff and they really struggle with the with that anxiety they don't want to say the wrong thing I've had people who have joined the autistic community and have been very very much shunned and put off doing their own advocacy it's very frustrating to for me to hear stories like that because it's it's very much just a set of jargon that people have constructed just over the time of social media everyone's trying to be more socially acceptable and and trying to you know figure figure out what some nasty other people are doing doing to them and it just it just feels awful you know I consider myself to be quite open-minded and I do like to have discussions rather than you know as as has happened to you sort of make those snap decisions about someone and then push them away and trying to bully them and and make them feel terrible when in reality they probably haven't even read your book and don't really understand who you are as a person yeah that's true you know and I feel like I'm pretty balanced all things considered too um and that I could find some middle ground with them but when you're getting insulted on each post and I mean constantly harassed by the same people it's no like it doesn't make me want to have conversations you know just last week a mother lost her life who was an amazing autism advocate um in a house fire I don't know if you've heard about this in in the US she had a son with severe autism and she uh he didn't understand that he needed to get down you know the house was on fire so she went back inside to try to to save him from from the fire and telling him come down you know we got to get out the house is on fire but he wouldn't and he was a he was a big boy he was 15 I believe and they both passed away in the fire so she passed trying to save her son and what happened two days after that is that some of those actually autistic you know it's the hashtags they used the neurodiversity movement posted a blog about insinuating that it was a murder suicide and that she had you know set her house on fire on purpose and you know the the family saw the post and they apologized after that and took down the post but it just to me showed how much hatred there is against autism parents I know this term is also frowned upon autism mom autism parents to that even after a mother dies trying to save her autistic son like they still managed to you know go after her it's just like so it affected me so much to read that yeah you know I really wish they would chill and not attack people all the time because there are so many parents who would listen to their experiences and what they have to say if it was done in a way that is not aggressive for instance I I don't mind if people say I have autism or you know person first language or I don't mind and attack all parents who say their sons have autism like if someone says my son has autism just said the autistic community doesn't like that word but I'm like but that's not true though it's just you know you and your group of people because I talk to a lot of autistic people who don't care either way you know as long as it's respectful I don't mind if people say you have us burgers um you have high functioning autism you are autistic you have autism it's it's okay I know people don't they mean well so just very um it's like with the world has been trained to focus on the very superficial meaning behind things like you use this language so this means that you're a bad person inside even if you don't know it it's very I think it's just awful because I think if people would actually sit down and talk or listen and try and try and be respectful each other we could you know this divide between autism parents and the autistic community would be smaller you know or at least just a little bit more integrated what I like to say is everybody can be an asshole like you can be an autistic asshole you can be a mother or an autistic person and you can be an asshole everyone can be one you can be a neurotypical and you can be an asshole it doesn't distinguish based on based on what you believe it's just about whether you're willing to hear people out and sort of try and find common ground I think I agree apart from the the messages and the the comments and the the bullying have you ever tried to talk to anyone from from the autism the adult autistic community have you managed to find someone who gets what you're saying and doesn't shun you for it yeah I actually two people more than two now three people who used to be part of the actual autistic community it's funny because it's just a hashtag but yet it's also a community you know or anyways they left the the community and then reached out to me to uh to apologize and that was so nice to hear from people who used to you know be part of those who attacked me online then uh come around and yeah I also talk about two people I mean who I've never been part of the actual autistic community but who are on the spectrum themselves and yeah you know something that's really sad that I talk about in my book too is that when I had a I got diagnosed with autism I thought that I was gonna have that I had found my people that I was gonna have somewhere where I belong finally and it's just been the worst you know I was bullied in France at in high school but nothing like what I've experienced by people who I feel like should be my own you know that I I thought we were gonna be like a big family and all in this together and so it was really heartbreaking to feel like so rejected and yeah that's another sad thing about this that's awful I'm so sorry why it's it's it's really awful yeah there are some nice ones you're right you know like there are souls everywhere but there are also nice people everywhere it's just about it's about finding the uh the nice ones yeah it's so hard to find why do you think there is such a big divide between the autistic and the parents communities not just for yourself but sort of the wider community I think because first of all actually autistic are very intense in their views and advocating and parents feel attacked and when you feel attacked it doesn't make you want to you know listen necessarily which makes the actual autistic community even more angry and it's just like a circle but also I think there is a big divide because those actually autistic who attack parents are and I'm gonna use that high functioning for the most part and parents you know often have sons who are more or daughters severely affected by autism so they see the difference between you know someone who is able autistic but attacking them at right this moment you know on social media and they see their kid at home who is you know not even able to communicate to get a glass of water and so it's hard to understand the actually autistic perspective when what they see at home is so different from the experience of the people attacking them and I think that's making the divide be you know bigger yeah yeah I can I can definitely see that one one thing that I have noticed as well is basically when I started doing my podcast on my youtube stuff I joined many many different groups I joined some autism only groups I joined some open autism related groups this is on facebook and I joined some parent groups as well one one thing that I've you know I've found is that there is a lot of hate brewing up in these these groups like from both sides you know like autistic people saying oh god like look at these people they're they're torturing their kid and or I've had such a you know I've had a really horrible experience with ABA and you know this is a common practice and then on the other side with the parents I see you know look these people don't understand you know my kid these people don't understand like what I've been trying to do as a parent and and sometimes they can be quite mean and vindictive towards autistic people in those groups so I definitely think that the the divide is it's very much a product of segregation like we've got a very big mentality of we're into fight it's difficult to to to try and bring these people together without having that ingrained mindset of these people are the enemy we need to prove them wrong we need to show them how they're doing wrong rather than kind of chatting like exchanging ideas and trying to connect and reach some common ground yeah that's that's that's my opinion on it and it's it's something that I've been you know as I said been thinking about for a long time my mom like she's an autism parent she she has you know ideas that differ from some parents but they but within that community they talk about it and they they sort of connect but the other community is involved in that sort of fighting mentality it's very difficult to sort of bring people together in that sense yeah extremely difficult one of the the aspects of you know what we consider to be evil is believing so much in something that you go to the extents to bully and and hate or seek revenge on good people and it's not necessarily a conscious act but it but it happens right it's like you've got justification to do it that makes sense in your eyes what ways do you think that we could possibly bring these people together and sort of open that dialogue and then get rid of all this bad blood it's a very difficult question to answer but yeah you know I think that both sides have to understand each other so I I get it you know actually autistic want to be heard because it's true we're the one living with autism and some of them for instance did have bad experiences with ABA and I don't want to invalidate them you know just because my experiences have been great doesn't mean that theirs you know yeah but so I think it would take validating their feelings while having them understand that you know things have changed and parents are not the enemy we want the best for our kids and also it would take actually autistic not you know like there there is a group with like five six seven thousand people that is just too shame autism mom like that is not okay that's just like straight up bullying you know so they need to drop that aggressive way of advocating and talking to people because you don't get anyone to listen to you when you do that and I think parents will be more likely to listen and make them feel validated and and heard if that happened and I also think that if we're gonna be talking about this subject we need to drop the puzzle piece and you know those things that are like they don't do anything for the autism community to fight to fight about whether the puzzle piece symbol is harmful or not or whether you know someone prefers to be called autistic or person with autism you know let's focus on the things that are actually going to help the autism community like a be a therapy that's a big issue because that's something that can possibly help so many people yet there is so much so much misinformation right now because 20 30 years ago it wasn't what it is now and I think that's its subject we need to talk about just get out of the way so we can find some common grounds and there are actually some groups where both autistic and parents and professional are trying to not reform maybe yeah but you know come together for a solution so that's brilliant so you've got lots of practitioners and parents and autistic people having that that dialogue and like talking about some of the aspects of it that's really productive that's that that's really great to hear yeah obviously when you get into this if you if you shoot straight for the media like if you're autistic and you you go online and you find these concepts and these these people with these these ideas and these emotions behind things it's it's hard not to turn a blind eye and not read into it a bit more an ABA was definitely one of the things that I personally didn't look into you know I just yeah ABA's bad like I hate it it sounds horrible they torture these kids not good but no I know I know but you know that was my my gut reaction and I know it's it's it's definitely something that it happens in everybody but I think that the difference is being able to sort of just suppress it a little bit and realize that getting more information on the topic and getting over people's opinions is a lot more beneficial to yourself than sort of putting up a wall and yeah podcast that I that I did with Michelle Rogers we were sort of talking about ABA because I work in schools and some of the practices that we do with the children are ABA based as you said things like with the pecs and the the visual cards and the timetables and wait ways to help them communicate and looking looking at sort of ABA and on paper and sort of looking into the research like it does seem to work you know like I'm not going to say that it doesn't work and you know the more that I'm learning about it the more that I'm realizing that these people who are grown up and and gone on social media to talk about ABA have that experience of ABA when it was you know sort of first being reformed and kind of used and I know it's been used for longer than that but I think it has changed a lot well and if they're able to talk about it on social media 20 years later maybe it did work because I would love for Charlie to be able to you know give his opinion on autism on social media 20 years from now mm-hmm I think it's it's a lot to do with people who are sort of I guess subjected to bad practitioners so it's not necessarily the practice that's the problem it's the the way that it's delivered exactly are they too rigid with it are they too loud and and dismissive and they don't use enough positive feedback and they don't give them breaks and they don't make sure that they enjoy the sessions like there's a lot of factors that come into that it's not necessarily the the protocol or the things that you do it's where for that teacher is good like what they do and they make sure that the child is happy right yeah I mean there are you know if you go to the doctor and you don't like him he's bad you're not going to stop going to the doctor it doesn't mean that doctors are bad you just had a bad experience with a doctor and that's something that people don't understand is that just because there is you know a few bad therapists doesn't mean that the profession the practice of ABA is abusive and that's also where you know they could make a difference as autistic adults by just telling parents hey listen so ABA is fine just make sure that when you look for a center an ABA therapy center they are not doing these things but they are doing these things how about that isn't that a nice way to you know talk about the issue you know so you're getting they're getting their voice heard and parents are still getting ABA they're just getting good ABA and no fighting involves well there's you know like Michelle's child she I think is she oh god I can't remember her child her child is absolutely delighted to see the person that works with her with the ABA like in my mind I don't see how that is bad you know maybe they might some some people in the past might have very kind of draconic vision of how to help an autistic person but from from what I've seen in schools it it doesn't seem abusive no it's not and it's not saying that you know anybody out there who has experienced ABA in in the past and has had a bad experience that those feelings and that experience aren't invalid which obviously is you know something you've always got to think about but it's it's it's a different time zone it's a different method it's a different practitioner you know there's a lot of factors involved I think so I think in terms of bringing communities together I think for the large scale things I think we just need to work on seeing past the superficial stuff and shooting for really what that person is trying to achieve with their work if someone's trying to raise awareness of for example like with myself like comorbidities and autism then it should you know that that is my way of advocating and that's what I'm trying to get from it and if I use terms that you don't agree of it it doesn't get away from what I'm trying to do that's that's I think if we if we can get past that and we can teach people to be less emotionally charged about topics and and try and expand their knowledge and follow people that they don't agree with and and sort of hear them out and think about it and do their own research then those lines that are drawn in these social media platforms would you know ease up a little bit it's a good theory I don't know if it would work in in reality I think you'd have to change a lot of people's minds about a lot of things yeah okay so would you like to give everybody three main things that you want people to take away from the podcast anything that we've talked about that you want people to think about yeah I want people to know that autism is different for each person on the spectrum that's really the most important thing for me so I don't like when autistic people say we because like they don't speak for me and I don't speak for them either you know I speak for myself as an autistic adult and and for my son but you know if someone talked to you your experience as an autistic adult will be different from mine even though you know we share a lot of things in common we're all different just like neurotypical people are different too you know autistic people are different from each other so there is not one autistic voice and that's very important you know because when people read things about oh autistic people are like this or autistic people prefer that we say autistic instead of person with autism well no not all we're all different from each other another thing that's important to me is bullying and being aggressive when trying to get someone to listen to you is just gonna have the opposite effect I I don't want to listen to people who are just yelling at me and coming to my social media all the time like hundreds at a time to tell me that I'm abusive and a horrible mother that's just not useful especially since we have more in common than they think and I would love for everyone to come together like in the way I said for instance about ABA autistic adults can advise parents on what to look for in an ABA center instead of just saying a very drastic ABA is bad no it's it's not black or white you know there is nuance and that's where we can meet each other and that's what we should focus on I think the last one will be that I want autistic people to understand that it's possible to feel two ways about something for instance just because I'm gonna say my son has severe autism doesn't mean that I don't love him because I often hear that from autistic people well clearly you hate your son look at how you talk about him because I say yes give your autism to me it's a way to describe that he needs more help and you know just because I describe struggles because autism is not just a gift it might be for certain people but it's not for everyone and it's not a gift for me it's not a gift for my son either it's okay to have negative feelings about something you know we can't take it to the extreme of if a parent says that autism is hard it means that they hate their kid no no of course not but it's really heartbreaking when your son is crying for hours on end and you don't know why because he doesn't have a way to communicate like I'm allowed to say that you know it breaks my heart I'm his mom and I don't know how to make it better like that happens one time he was limping and he took like 30 extras to find out where the the fracture was just because he wasn't able to tell us where he was hurting we knew he was hurting because he was crying and limping and like that's hard and so autism can be really hard yes does it mean we don't love our kids no I love Charlie so much you know and I want people to know that I love my son I love Charlie and most parents do I mean of course I can speak for all parents in the world but I I know that all the ones around me on social media talking about autism they love their kids and want to help them yeah I appreciate that I think you've definitely summed up what we've what we've talked about I do think that there are a lot of difficulties but I think if we keep talking about these things then then hopefully we can make a breakthrough you know it's not it's not nice to have these divides especially when both sides are trying to in different ways and in with different things but we're all trying to do what's best for autistic people exactly and that's that's the kind of that's the kicker and yeah I think autism does as you said present a lot of challenges our school school and system and our knowledge about what is in parenting is still kind of growing and changing now in this in this present time with all that knowledge and stuff it does make parenting harder like it's it's got to and it makes teaching a lot harder as well yeah but that doesn't mean that you don't like them and you don't love them and you don't care about them and you don't put in effort to connect with them well I've got one last question for you this is an open question and it's it can be completely subjective to yourself or to your general view of autism or to your son's autism but what does autism mean to you a lot of things autism is a lot of things for different people and it means a lot of things for me sometimes I like my autism because it can create some funny situation and you know when I take things too literally and like you know crooks you know autism can be attaching I love when Charlie flaps his hand and he looks so happy sometimes he just starts laughing I don't know why and it's just so so sweet I like that it makes us see the world probably differently than other people whatever that means for each autistic person I also think that it comes with a lot of struggles and for certain people it's you know little struggles and for some people it's a lot of struggles and they're very intense and they're gonna prevent them from living independently so autism is a lot of things for a lot of people and I think that's really what I want people to take away from this this podcast it is such a unique experience for each person there is some good things and some things that are less good and that's okay because at the end of the day we all want the same thing we want people with autism to be respected and loved and to have the same opportunities and rights as anyone else and I hope we can all come together to to make this happen beautiful you bring it a tear to my eye that was such a nice thank you very much for that thank you I'm glad it's been really great to talk to you I don't think I could have found a better person to to talk about these these things with I'm so glad we did that yeah it is a potentially very inflammatory subject for a lot of people so I'm guessing that if you've made it if you made it to this to this point and you're from the autistic community then you know well done like it's hard to to take on board of people's ideas and and thought processes but it all it all goes down to you and what you think and the research that you do and the opinions that you hear out that's that's the point of this podcast you know and not everybody will get through to the ends and listen to it to it in with glee but at least we're talking about something that's important and that could change things for everybody hopefully we can hope we can try and that's that's the spirit that's the spirit that all that binds us together Eileen would you like to give some links out for people who want to follow your stuff or read your book and and all that yeah you can find me on social media at the autism cafe on instagram facebook twitter pinterest my website is the autism cafe dot com and my book is on amazon as a kindle and hardbook cover with all my photography and it's called all across the spectrum brilliant and I definitely do recommend you go and check out Eileen's account if only just to look at the awesome photography that she's uploaded I love the picture that you have is that you're somewhere where it's got boys will be boys but the boys is crossed out and it says what they're taught to be I like that one thanks yeah it's very nice it was a very hot topic wine it's very well done thank you well I really hope that anybody who is listening to this if you have any questions or you want to talk about this issue take it to the 40 ot podcast email me we can we can talk about these issues from a different side if you want so if you if you have any ideas on or stories that you want to share I am very open my inbox is very open to all of that please do not go on to Eileen's instagram and harassa that's not what we're trying to get from this please do not please do not I don't know how you do it like as soon as if I get a if I get a negative comment on youtube I think about it for like the entire day like I'm just like is my content actually bad like am I getting everything wrong is my brain oh my god it's so dysfunctional that so much it's yeah no it's hard and you get it on you get out on such a massive extent as well so well done for staying at it and and keeping going strong and being a good mom and all that stuff it's it's very admirable thank you so much and thanks for having me I hope we make a difference somehow and if you want to check out the 4080 podcast you can find it on spotify apple podcast and on youtube there's some other places that you can find it but if you want to go head over to my anchor profile all you gotta do is type in 4080 podcast sometimes slips up you can also check out my youtube channel as they're just growth for videos on autism mental health dating on the spectrum we've got a whole host of different things that you can watch through I have talked about this on the the previous podcast but I'm currently going through a very bad patch of mental health it's very up and down at the moment I'm back at work so there's there's that and I'm going to the gym so my plate is very much full of things that I'm trying to do to kind of keep me level so for the time being I won't be uploading a lot of youtube videos there probably one out every one month one and a half months depending on whether I've got time for it and depending where my head's at I hope that everyone can appreciate that and if you do want to stay updated with my life and the the other things that I'm doing you can find me on social media at Asperger's growth Facebook Twitter and Instagram very long outro apologies for that Eileen what what have you got planned for the for the rest of the day it's quite early for you in comparison you know it's very nice out because in Texas we get those summers where it's like 40 degrees Celsius every day and it's just getting nice so I think we're gonna go take a walk and I'll check out your videos too I've been so busy I'm meant to do it before our podcast and I didn't get a chance so I'll have to go check out your channel you do you do a lot of stuff so I understand that it's difficult for me to sort of find time to do that stuff as well so I completely understand I'll have to check out your book as well myself meaning to sort of um have a read of that is it available on audiobook or is it just no just keep kindle or or hard copy yeah okay well I'll have to check it out when I when I read it I'll probably make a little post about it I'll link it back to the podcast and stuff so thank you yeah thank you everybody for listening to this episode stay cool stay fresh stay always autistic and awesome you know unless you're not autistic and um I'll see you in the next episode later


How you doing beautiful? Oh, you looking cute You do something different with yourself. You looking good. What? Thanks for being here. Like it is so nice having such a beautiful Human being watching me speak right now. Thank you for being here today hair hacks I dove deep into hair hacks once it was quite a Experience I followed a hair hack video and made hair hack dry shampoo wasn't the best Oh, I made pineapple out of hair If you have no idea what I'm talking about I completely understand. We basically made a pineapple out of pipe cleaners I don't really remember what we did, but it was wild that video opened up my eyes to the hack world on YouTube One YouTube channel in particular five-minute crafts has plenty of hair hack videos So today why don't we just sit down and just watch all of the crazy shit they make up in order to make a Oddly satisfying an interesting video that makes kind of no sense 90% of the time That's what hair hack videos are to me. Just why are you doing this? Why is this happening? But also kind of like why am I intrigued what's going on here?  And then you don't do it. Let's watch five-minute crafts show us how hair hacks are done There are plenty of things to watch with you and plenty of hacks to hack We're gonna debunk them give you my two cents on each of these hacks, and I'm sure it's gonna get quite wild.  By the way, it's just music this entire time playing so I'm not playing any of their sound So yeah, okay, so we have gems on Oh What you cannot start this like this there is no way I literally just press play on this and we are getting Gems on what looks to be packing tape and now we're ironing the packing tape onto our hair because why not? Well, that's not a hack. That's just literally hair gems. I actually thought she was just ironing packing tape onto her head I don't know. Okay looking good says okay, we're bathing. We are washing our bodies and we are going for it Oh, no, we're saying. Oh, I forgot my headband and My glue gun and I'm gluing things to my headband the inside of it. I'm gluing a Shield a plastic shield to my headband. Oh No, oh No, you can't go that fast past that are you kidding me? You're not gonna get away with that No if any of you out there do this please send me a picture Please I need to laugh kind of cool. I want to hate this However, I don't listen girl if that's what you got to do I mean you could also use a shower cap That's like $1 or you could go spend about $30 in order to make this whatever you want to do It's your life, man. Oh, sorry. I just realized she's trying to protect her makeup not her hair I don't know. We're moving on. Okay. We are trying to draw on her hair with marker. Oh I'm familiar with this. I am familiar with this if you guys haven't seen my Following a Sharpie hair coloring tutorial yet Please go watch because I do something so wrong and I didn't know until you guys started commenting You see how she just dipped one end of the marker into the water and that end she ended up blowing on see I thought it was the opposite I thought you're supposed to blow on the end that you didn't dip in water So I was like getting Sharpie in my mouth during that entire video and it definitely wasn't safe So now I know in case you ever wondered and also that's a lot of ink mine didn't happen like that Okay, so now we're doing hair color. She's just coloring her hair with Pretty color. Okay, and this wig is the actual most synthetic thing. I've ever seen in my life So I don't know how you're gonna color it synthetic wig, but We'll see maybe the marker will end up staying Girl, don't play me like that. You just put clip-in hair extensions in your hair. Uh-uh. You are not getting past me miss Oh, oh Okay, five-minute craft. Yeah, I see you.   Okay, moving on. Okay with eyeshadow and we're taking into her hair. Well, I mean, that's not really a hack I mean, it is a hack if you didn't already know that you could do that. She looks kind of cool Is it the best look? No. Was that kind of like unrealistic? Yeah, because like what eyeshadow were you using how did that happen so easily and the colors came out so Vibrant What's going on here? You know what I mean? Okay, here we go with some bangs. It looks like We have plenty of a bang experience with my last week's video Hair just reacts to Horribly cut bangs or whatever I call this. Okay, so we are taking these horrible bangs in what world so she takes a Barrette or a like a large pin and somehow her bangs get straightened Never is that possible never never gonna happen in what world is that? Mathematically correct. Let me do the equation right now No, it'll never happen. No wrong. Okay. We have aloe vera, which I mean is is great for hair If you can find aloe vera near you, please go ahead with this hack I don't even know what the hack is yet, but I mean I do really like aloe vera boom and Then you just so oh, I've seen this one before. Okay, so they just happen to have like a magic bullet laying around I mean I like that could happen and then they happen to have like some kind of seed and some kind of charcoal and aloe vera plant and time to make this thing whatever they're making Okay, I have no idea what's going on at this point.   If somebody has the answer to that question leave it down below Let a boy know let up bro. Bro. No, okay Here's the other thing with five-minute hacks and hack videos in general I feel like they're just trolling us like they're fully just trolling the entire internet I want to be on set for one of these videos at some point five-minute crafts if you're like watching this Please hit me up.  I mean like these wigs look crazy this girl That's supposed to be dandruff She is so mad soap without BHB Distilled water soap without something and some charcoal. I don't know what that was Okay, and we're funneling it and and now it's in a okay Okay I just rewatched this and they still don't tell you what the black stuff is what kind of heck Okay, so she has dandruff. Let's break the scenario down She has dandruff and then we move on to a scene where they have a bowl And they put random black powder in the bowl and don't tell you what the thing is And then they tell you to put soap without BHBA I'm sorry I don't know what that is so if you can help me with that one that'd be great And then they put something else and then they put it into a bottle and then she puts on her hair And then something happens. We are not sure what happens.  I'm over that one. I'm pissed. All right. Let's watch a nice little Little styling one. This will calm me down a little bit. We really feel like a two-year-old Maybe like a 12-year-old also would look good in that but let's not put on a full-grown adult No full groans. Okay, pull the hair back put an elastic in put a pencil in wrap the hair around the pencil Where are we going now? What is this? I don't have any reaction to that in the world is sitting around thinking of these things What kind of sorcery is this?  Yes, I love it. Let's crochet some hair. Okay, two fingers man is one in enough so we're wrapping the hair around in a lot of circles and How did that just happen? That was cool. No No No, there is no Galaxy on earth that is going to work out. I'm just saying that is not possible Let's watch that again. Let's get a recap here So she puts these really tight twists in her hair and waits for a while and then takes them out and all of a sudden She has curling iron waves in her hair all of a sudden and somehow Twisting her hair in a tight corkscrew made that happen for her. No Elastic through the hair and through the hair Oh I just saw the most wild thumbnail so we're gonna watch this video It's 14 hair hacks and hairstyles every girl should know by the one the only true and true boom boom Okay, what's up girl? What's going on? Is that gonna come back later in the video or is that the entire thing we just saw was that the hack? Let me skim through this and find out that I just skimmed through the entire video and I can confirm That was the full hack. That was all This isn't 1980 anymore, we don't need to be ironing our hair with an actual iron.  It's not a good idea your hair will burn those things get so hot this girl's face too She's like why did I just do this like why did I just do that to this girl? Like she's my friend like I don't want her hair to fall off and the girl's like you can do it I'm okay down here. He's like no seriously. I don't want to do this to you She's like no really just do it and they did it so that's how that went If you don't have a lot of time, but a lot of friends for each other I have neither Rosie's hairstyle is very simple, but it looks great Separate a strand of hair and twist it so you get a loop pull another strand of hair through it Twist it into a loop the same way Keep braiding towards the other side and fasten it with a Bobby's head It's elegant and very easy in what world is that elegant or easy yuck? Don't ever wear your hair like that. I want to know where she's wearing that hairstyle to I Highly doubt she's wearing it anywhere Oh What did she just say a pony what's so long are you going to I want to work there a pony says I Know she can do this to her hair With paper How do we just go from paper to hair color? This looks just as good as if I got to a salon I Can't the delivery of that line was just too much It really pushed me over the edge. This looks just as great as if I went to a salon You can tell the girl doing the voiceover is like do I actually say that line? Really give it to us really give that to that delivery and she gave it to us so believable That was a lot that was stretch watch a few more. She is boiling water She's putting flaxseed and Boiling that and now the flaxseeds gone and now she has stocking and a cup and Jelly that was so cool looking and now she's squeezing the flaxseed jelly out And she has flaxseed paste now. I want to touch that Okay, flaxseed. I mean sure you could totally do that. You could also just buy a product with flaxseed in it Call me a genius. I don't know. Okay. I was intriguing flaxseeds are rich source Omega 3 fatty acids These fatty acids are essential for healthy hair growth nourishing follicles and hair shaft making them stronger and less prone to the image Well, okay flaxseed. I didn't know you could do all that maybe have to add some of that into some of my hair products That was like the most practical One I've seen in this entire time so that was kind of good. Okay, so we have a fork We're wrapping the hair around the fork And I don't like the sight of using kitchen utensils in hair And that's just me though and we are ironing and we are letting it go and we are getting Yeah the absolute most atrocious Spiral curls I have ever seen Good job. Okay. Now we have a chopstick. This will be better. This is a thing This is definitely a thing. Oh Tight curl. This is offensive. Is she gonna iron her hand now? I've done this one It doesn't really work that well like why not just curl it with a curling iron In what world is that a beach wave? Where what world when what time how they're giving us one more The pin I think I tried some of these this one looks the most promising. Oh, I did do this one I totally did this one. There's came out kind of good. I feel like Okay, see that one is cool. It's not a retro curl. However, it is cool. He doesn't make his whole head like that Okay, I think that was enough hair hacks for today. I'm all hair hacked out What can I take away from this video you ask? I know that's exactly what you were thinking Well, I actually learned that flaxseed is great for the hair. I learned that hair hacks are so Far from real life. This leaves me even with more questions slightly more intrigued. Why do these videos intrigue me? They are the most bizarre Videos I've ever seen in so many ways from the voice of the person from the people doing the hacks The person coming up with the script for these videos and the person doing the set for them and the makeup in the hair You're all weird. I don't know what their demographic is, but I don't think it's me or it is me All right, you guys I'm gonna get off camera and go think about these hacks more If you'd like to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, please do it's grab on to my seat And I also have a hair care line called X Mando hair, which you know what just go on the website read the reviews Check out the videos check out the descriptions of each product. You'll see why so many people love my hair products And that stuff just speaks for itself. So if you're wondering are your products good Let me tell you something. Yes, all the reviews speak for themselves So thank you guys for those reviews by the way if you've left one I really appreciate it and appreciate if you bought my products and Appreciate if you've supported me in any which way at all even just by watching this video or leaving a like down below Thank you for being here and thank you for doing that and thank you for being you And if you want to stay up to date on new product launches, which are happening very often in 2020 Follow X Mando hair on Instagram at X Mando hair and that is all for today. Thank you so much for watching today Don't forget to live your extra life and I'll see you next time. Bye


Hello, I will be guiding you through Clip Studio Paint today and showing you how I personally use this program and have everything set up. This video is sponsored by Clip Studio but it has been my main art program for years and I'm really happy to be bringing you guys this video. So this here is the default layout of Clip Studio Paint, but you can arrange the pellets however you like. To get started I'll show you how I arrange it for myself. To move any of the windows, just click and drag on them and drop them wherever you like. To get rid of any windows you don't need, drag them out and click the X. If you need to get a window back, you can get it from this menu here. So now I'll speed things up and arrange the interface. So this is roughly how I like to have everything set up. On the left I got the navigator, the tool properties and the sub tools. On the right I have all the color related stuff, I don't really use anything aside from the color wheel, color history, sometimes these sliders and sometimes this color set. This here is the quick axis where I've made custom shortcuts, I'll show you how to do that as well. Auto actions are also here, it's related to the quick axis. Tools and layer properties are here and layers and history are here. Oh and remove the timeline because I'm not really doing animation. You can save your workspace over in this menu by clicking here on register workspace and giving it a name. It's going to show up in this list so you can retrieve your saved layout anytime. You will also save your shortcut settings for you. So let's make a new file. These are the settings I normally start out with and the settings I've used in the drawing that I'll be working on today. To get started let's look at the preferences first and then shortcuts. There's a couple of important ones, such as here, under file you can enable autosave right here, enable canvas recovery and set the timer for how often you want it here. With the performance you can set the amount of undo steps that you have so the amount of times you can press Ctrl Z before it runs out of steps to undo. And make sure that this virtual memory path is on a drive that has some free space on it. And as a side note there is a light theme to clip studio as well and a slider to fine tune it. Next a quick word about shortcuts. You can find your shortcuts over here in the shortcut settings and the modifier key settings. I recommend you get familiar with these as you learn the program and change them to what feels comfortable for you. So I do want to give a special shout out to a couple of shortcuts such as the shortcuts to change brush size can be found right here under options brush size palette and also the pop-up palette. I've bound these keys to my tablet pen and with this feature I'm able to call forth a temporary color wheel or a temporary brush window so I don't need to move my arm to the side of the screen all the time. So those were under shortcut settings and pop-up palette. Some more shortcuts can be found in the modifier key settings and these are only for keys such as control alt shift and so on. I have swapped out the eyedropper and the object from control to alt because I use the eyedropper shortcut a lot and I feel like control is a lot easier for me to press than alt so you can do that here too if you like. But do look through this menu because here are a lot of very useful shortcuts that you might not have known about before. I'll briefly go over the panels and what they're here for. So the navigator I basically just used as a thumbnail view of my drawing. I don't really use these buttons because I have shortcuts for all of them but therefore flipping rotating and moving your canvas. Here under two properties you have settings for your tools and subtools are different options for your tools. This color stuff is for picking your colors or for seeing your color history. Quick access are my personal shortcuts. Speaking of that let me show you how to make them. So to make your own quick access shortcuts you go here create a new set. Let's make a new set. So set 2. So let's say you want to add a button here to make a new layer because let's be honest the button over here is kind of small. You right click the menu and go to quick access settings. And in this menu you can find all the things that you can add a button for. It's pretty similar to the shortcut settings menu. So making a new layer would be under layer and new raster layer. So if you click it and click add it's going to appear here. Now let's say you want a button for making a new clipping layer and that's more than one action that you can't find in the menu that I just showed. You can actually do that by using auto actions. Now this is kind of more advanced stuff but I wanted to show this anyway because when I was learning how to do this I had a bit of trouble finding information aside from the official clips to the website. So to make a new auto action you click this button, give it a name, new clipping layer. And then you click this red button and it will start to record what you're doing. So let's click this, make a new layer and then press the clip to layer below button here. And now we're done so let's click this top button. So there you have an auto action for making a new clipping layer. You can double click it to check that it works. So double click it and a new clipping layer shows up perfect. So to use this as a button in your quick access menu go ahead and right click to go to the quick access settings again and in this menu go to the auto actions. Find where you saved it, it's probably in the default category unless you made a new category and find the auto action that you made. Now you can add it to the menu here and there we go. Now I can make a new clipping layer with just the press of one button. You can also change how these are viewed here on the menu by going here to view. I have it on tile 4 columns because it suits my screen size well. You can have a list too for example. Now this actually applies to most of the menus you have in clip studio such as the color history from this menu in the corner. You can change the size of the tiles. You can also do that over here in the brush menu. Here change the view of the brush selection as well as the layers. You can change the size of the thumbnail and how it displays. So let me go over all of the tools next. Here we have the zoom tool and the hand tool. I use these pretty much all the time. The shortcuts for them are C for zoom and H for hand but you can also use them using spacebar and control spacebar. And under the move tool there's also the rotation tool which is normally bound to R I believe. The operation tool is primarily for dealing with 3D layers or with timelines or vector lines. This move tool here is for moving the contents of your layer but I don't really use this because using control T for transform lets you do the same thing except also being able to resize and skew whatever you've selected. So next are the selection tools.  So now that I've selected this square I can only draw inside this square. Here you have all the buttons for the things you can do with this selection. The most useful one is probably this bucket here to fill the selection. But another useful one is control shift I for inverting the selection so then you can interact with everything except the part you initially selected. The auto select tool is another way to select things not manually but it can automatically select a range of colors for example. On the next line here we have the pencil, pen, airbrush and brush. These are all your drawing tools. I highly recommend looking through these menus here the sub tool menus and trying out all the different ones. See what the program has to offer and what you like the best. The pen tools are particularly nice for doing clean line art and the airbrush for doing really soft shading and gradients. The brush tool has some more brushes than have a more traditional feeling. The eraser lets you erase yeah that's pretty self-explanatory. But I should mention you can also erase using the brush tool by selecting this transparent color here so what you're painting is not a solid color but transparency. The eye dropper tool can pick any color straight from your canvas so say for instance I wanted this exact gray from this end of the brush stroke I could get it with the eye dropper tool. And as I mentioned before you don't have to click this you can just hold down alt while you're using the brush tool but I've changed it to control personally. Now the blending tool or specifically the blur tool within the sub tools of the blending tool is one of my favorite tools within Clip Studio Paint. It lets you make really nice soft edges because you can set it here to increase the intensity of the blur based on how hard you're pressing down on your pen. You can make really nice gradual soft edges. This decoration tool here has all the fancy decorative brushes. These are really fun so do look through these as well. There's all kinds of stuff like plants, special effects, flowers, patterns, you name it. Next up we got the gradient tool, you can make nice gradients, you can also customize your own gradients here. And of course you can download other people's gradient sets as well as you can brushes and pretty much anything else from the Clip Studio assets.  And using this tool here the figure tool you can make straight lines, boxes, perfect circles any of that stuff. So if you happen to need a perfect circle go here pick the ellipse, hold down shift, drag it out and there you go. But I should also note that you can make straight lines also using the brush tool and then you just click somewhere on your canvas, hold down shift and then click again somewhere else like that. Now the ruler tool is also great, the perspective ruler is especially great if you like drawing backgrounds. But a less known feature is the symmetrical ruler.  Next up this tool, this rectangle, this frame tool and the speech bubbles therefore creating manga I don't really use them so I won't go too much into them. Text tool is for text of course and lastly this correct line tool is for dealing with vector lines. So I'll show this to you guys in a second after I explain what vector layers are. So layers you can think of them as like a stack of paper whatever is on the top of the list will be the top paper and on the bottom the bottom paper so if I were to click this button to make a new layer paint something in on top of this scribble here it will naturally be on top and if I move this one now below the layer with the black scribble it's going to be below. So if you think of them as stacks of paper you'll be good. These normal layers can also be called raster layers because what you're doing is basically coloring in individual pixels. Now on the vector layer on the other hand you're not coloring in individual pixels but the program is saving each line as like data. So if you draw a line you can edit this line in any way you want by pressing control and then dragging these points. There's also something useful you can do with the eraser tool. Now here in the settings if you select this middle one erase up to intersection it's going to erase the vector line all the way up till the point where it meets another line. So if you have something like this you can simply do this and this and you'll get a perfect cross. So thanks to these features vector layers can be great for line art. Now this tool that I skipped over before this you can use to further edit your vector lines. So for example this correct line width tool you can click here to thicken or narrow the line and set the amount of pixels at a time that it takes away or adds to it. So then if you just select this tool and go over your vector lines they'll get thinner. So if you're unhappy with your lines you can use this tool to edit them. I personally don't do line art with vector layers just because I'm used to sculpting the lines as I go in this way with with the eraser which you cannot do with the vector lines. So that's all personal preference but it's a very useful feature that's good to know about. When you're dealing with vectors you're also not going to lose any quality when you edit the lines. You can skew them make them smaller larger it's not going to change the quality. Another very useful feature of layers is the clipping layer function. So it's this button right here clip to layer below. I even have a button for it in my quick axis menu like I showed before because I use this feature so much. So what it does is makes it so that whatever you draw on this layer is only going to show up right on top of the layer that it's clipped to. So you cannot go outside the bounds of that layer but if you unclip it now you can see what I actually drew. But when it's clipped it's only going to show right on top of that black screw. A similar thing can be achieved by using the transparency lock here which makes it so that you cannot interact with any of the transparent pixels on this layer only the pixels that you already colored with something like so. Masks are also something I use sometimes when I want to hide something but I don't want to delete the actual data in case I want it back. So you can use a mask by painting in with this transparent color once you've selected the mask. It's going to essentially just erase but here's the thing you've erased it on the mask and if you ever want it back you just go back to the mask pick any solid color and you can get it back. So that's all I wanted to say about the technical stuff. Let's start painting. I'll explain my process as I go and show you the tools and features in action. I'll start off with just the rough sketch of my character. In this stage I often use control t to transform my sketch and move some parts around. I first pick the lasso selection tool select an area circle it then do control t and then move it around. If you hold down control while you're transforming the selection you'll be able to skew the selection not just resize it. Doing this can make the lines blurry but it doesn't matter when it's just the rough sketch. Make sure to also flip your canvas occasionally so that you'll be able to spot out the things you need to fix in your rough sketch. So over here I'm using the airbrush to color in the background. To start off coloring the character I normally make a flat base with a gray that's slightly darker than the background. Slightly lighter would do as well as long as you can make out the silhouette. After that's done I just start adding in the flat colors. My sketch layer is set to multiply so that the colors from underneath this sketch show through. Also here I made an adjustment layer specifically the color adjustment layer so you can make those by right clicking a layer going to new correction layer and here you have all the different adjustment layers that you can make. These are not layers that you can paint on but layers that will change the look of the existing painting. Using the color balance layer I added more blues and more magentas to my rough colored sketch so it works better with the environment that I'm going for here. And then it's painting time. Enjoy the time lapse! This part is where I consider the rough sketch to end and the polishing part to start. I make a mask on the sketch lines layer and use the airbrush to softly fade out some parts that I felt were too strong. Then I just merge the entire character sew the lines and the colors into one layer and started working on top of that. This part where I'm starting to polish the drawing is so much fun for me. I recently moved to this kind of workflow because the traditional way of going from sketch to line art to flat colors to shading with tons of layers felt too restricting and slow. This method is more difficult because you're basically doing everything at the same time but I find it a lot more fun. So from this point I kept going for another hour and a half due to my perfectionist self being hard to satisfy with something rough and painfully like this and looking back at it now I really should have just stopped right here. The progress after this point doesn't really improve the art anymore. I do still like the final results of course but I'm not gonna have you sit through that part where I'm just nitpicking and making it worse so I'll skip straight to the end to show you guys the way I did the final adjustments to finish this drawing. So here we are at the finished drawing. Let me explain all these layers that have appeared here. These are mostly adjustment layers. Whenever I'm done rendering the character I usually pile these on to fine tune the finished look of the drawing. I mentioned it before but you can make adjustment layers by right clicking on a layer going to new correction layer and then picking the one you want from this menu. So the first one I have here is a tone curve. With the tone curve you can specifically increase or decrease specific parts of your drawings values.  So I've just made the dark parts a little darker to create more contrast in the drawing as you can see. The next one is a gradient map. I like to use gradient maps sometimes to unify the colors a bit more so these are some gradients that I've downloaded from the clip studio assets page and yeah I just try some random gradients most of the time and then go through these until I find one that looks nice or interesting and then decrease the opacity of that layer so the effect is not as strong. So what I've done after these two layers is flattened the entire drawing onto one layer because I wanted to use blur tool selectively on the entire drawing and I've also used the mesh transformation tool to tweak some parts of the drawing a bit. If I felt like anything was out of place I would fix it with that. So the way you do that is go here to edit to transform and mesh transformation then you get this grid and you probably want to increase the amount of these squares that you can drag so here from the tool properties I put the maximum amount of vertical and horizontal points and then using this you can drag any of the points to move your drawing around. I have a shortcut for it in my quick access menu because it's a lot easier to just click this button here than to find it in the menu every time. Here is just my signature and next this lighting layer is just here to make things lighter as the name implies. It's a bit hard to explain so I'll just show you so let's make a new lighting layer and turn the old one off. So I'm going to pick this magenta color from next to the jaw and as you can see it's only painting in this color on top of the colors that are darker so it's not affecting any colors that are lighter than the one I picked and then lastly I've added another tonker to make everything just a little brighter.  Thank you for watching my tutorial if there's any videos you'd like me to make let me know in the comments. I hope you have a great day and have fun creating art!


with a speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty high old silver, the Lone Ranger. With his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, the masked rider of the planes led the fight for law and order in the early western United States. The stories of his strength and courage, his daring and resourcefulness have come down to us through the generations, and nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse, Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again. The furious beat of a horse's hoofs echoed in the shadowy night. Dan Reed quickly reigned in his all-white cold at the edge of the trail and gave the oncoming horseman the ride away.  Golly, something must be wrong. Sure isn't a hurry, huh, Victor? Come on, boy, let's travel. We've got to meet the Lone Ranger. Come on, Victor! A short time later, the black stallion and his tense young rider raced to a halt before the porch of a ranch house. The youth leaped to the ground.  I thought perhaps Father had sent you with the other men to herd steers. Wait a minute. Tim, what's happened? You look so, so strange. Amy, I can't explain, but I've got to go away. Go away? But why? Where? I don't understand. Honey, believe me, I'd tell you the reason if I could, but I, I can't. How long will you be gone? I don't know. Maybe a month, maybe forever. Oh, Tim, you can't mean that. We, we were going to be married. We can't be married, Amy. We can't ever be married. Tim! It's better this way. I'm no good for you.  You don't have to run away just because you've stopped loving me, Tim. You can keep on working for Father just as if nothing had happened. Oh, Amy, Amy, do you think I could ever stop loving you? Don't you understand, dear? I, I don't want to go. I've got to. Then what is it? You can tell me. Tim, you're in trouble.  What is it, darling? What's happened? Please, Amy, don't question me anymore. Have you... is the sheriff after you? What makes you say that? I never saw you wear two guns before. Well, I, I...  Stay here. We'll see it through together. Amy, I can't. Somebody's coming. No, Tim, not your guns. Well, if you two ain't together again, you're as kitten so seeing one of you without the others is rare as snow in July. Hello, Dad. Evening, Mr. Thatcher. Hey, what's eating you two this time? Make it up your mind is when you're fixing to get hitched? I, we, well, not exactly, Dad. You see, Tim... Yeah, glad to look at you. You're blushing like a bride already. The god of honey don't tell me this young maverick ain't even proposed yet. Well, you see, sir, I... If it's me you're worried about, Jim, forget it. You've been one of my hands for only six months, but I knew you were coming the minute I laid eyes on you. I've got great plans for you as soon as you and Amy make up your minds. I reckon I'll be going. No, Tim, no. Yeah, what's your hurry, young fella? Evening is young. Run over and warm yourself with the fire. Can't be chilly out here. We're coming, Dad. How are things in town? Kind of exciting, Amy. There's a rumor going around that that young bandit killer, the cactus kid, is in these bars. The cactus kid? Amy, you don't think... Yep, of course we can't be sure, because nobody in these diggers knows what the critter looks like, but the marshal's coming over from Crown Point. He can identify the kid on the side. When is the marshal coming? Tonight, Tim. As a matter of fact, he ought to be here. In a minute. Here? Yep. We're holding kind of a meeting here, and we'll discuss with what the cactus kid's done and how we can recognize him. Well, what has he done, Dad? What hasn't he done is more like it. Low down, coyotes, robbed, and killed folks in three counties. Even hanging is too good for him. Oh, no. Amy, you mustn't believe him. He dropped out his side about six months ago. I reckon the law was too hard on his trail, and he wanted to wait till it changed quite a down. I see. Mr. Thatcher, I've got to go. I can't stay here any longer. Who in tarnation can that be? They won't get me. Thatcher! That's it. Wonder what got him all stood up. Tim, quick. You're going to escape by the black door. Amy, you mustn't believe me. I'm not... Please, go. Go quickly. Boss, you're very compassionate. He's been a murderer. A murderer? All silence possible, but killed. Somebody shot him and set his house on fire. It's blazing now. The boys are getting ready to fight it. Well, go with you. Who do you suppose done it, sir? Ain't but one hombre in these parts who could have done it and asked Cactus' kid. Oh, that's not true. I... What's that, Miss Amy? Nothing, Seth. I... Come on, Tim. We've got some firefighting to do. I can't, Mr. Thatcher. I've tried to tell you... Here's the boys with the horses. You know time to talk now, Tim. Climb onto that black ear, isn't it? Let's ride. But, Mr. Thatcher... That red-haired boy for the last time saved it. That fire won't wait. I'm going with you. You stay here, Amy. The Cactus' kid's lurking around that house. I'll be done quickly. I don't care. I'm going. I've got to. All right. Join it with all this play. We'll never get there in time to stop the fire. Amy. Oh, Tim. All right, boys. Let's ride. Meanwhile, three figures, Captain and Roy, watched a red glare spread against the night sky. They were the Lone Ranger, Tonto, and Dan. Fire, Tonto. Maybe seven, eight miles from here. Golly, maybe it's a prairie fire. No, Dan. A prairie fire spreads fast. This one is concentrated in one spot. We go. Maybe help put it out. Bobby. Here's a little bit. Come, Scouts. Come on, Victor. We're going to ride. There's nothing more we can do, boys. That house is too far going to save it. And old Silas Constable's gone with it, thanks to the Cactus' kid. Yes, I guess you're right, Seth. Old Silas kept a lot of cash in that house. He wouldn't trust the bank with a dime. Kid must have heard about it and murdered them so as to make a rich haul. Dad, how can you say that? Oh, son, raise your namey. What's wrong with saying it? All right, Amy. It was the Cactus' kid. Tim, you don't mean... Oh, good, Marshal. Hello, Patcher. Thought I'd find you here. Yeah, Dimash. The boy's me with this remark.  He shouldn't be surprised. He's a mighty... Hey, wait up there. You're not taking me. Out of my way, Patcher. Wait! Tim! Grab him, Patcher. Got it, Marshal. We won't... Make another wrong move, kid, and I'll let you have it through the heart instead of the hand. Kid, you... You don't mean Tim is the Cactus' kid? That's just what I mean, Patcher. I reckon because nobody means parts knew what he looked like, he thought he could pull the wool over your eyes. Come on. Find him out of his car. I'd better take my guns, Mr. Patcher. I'd guess I'd slap the leather if you hadn't been standing in front of the Marshal. I couldn't shoot Amy's father. Tim... Hey, you two-faced snake. Passing yourself off on me and my daughter is an honest, enterprising man. All you wanted was to use my ranch for a hideout till he could risk robbing and kill another decent folk. You don't understand that. You're coming with me, kid. About time you saw the inside of a jail. Amy. Golly, they've captured the Cactus' kid. They're heading for town. Ah. Then not notice us on fringe of crowds. Are we gonna follow him? No, Dan. Marshal Brand is capable of taking care of the kid. All right. Oh, Silver, oh boy. Oh, thank you, oh boy. What's your fee? Is that you, big fella? For this match. May have been one of those used to start the fire. Ah. That's strange. Match broken. Yes. Here's another one. Breaking matches seems to be a habit with a Cactus' kid. Yeah. Hey, but it couldn't have been a kid who started this fire. Why not, Dan? Because I saw him about an hour before the fire. Riding in the opposite direction. Are you sure? Maybe you make a mistake, Dan. Pretty hard to see horsemen in dark. I took special notice of this one though. Because he was riding so hard, he almost ran Victor and me down. And I got a good look at him when he went by. That's a yard. Yes. Dan is right. The real murderer of Silas Constable is still at large. Gosh. And the ranchers believe the kid did it. There's something strange about the kid. Did you notice the way he behaved when he was caught? The real killer would have opened fire on the Marshal whether Thatcher was in the way or not. That's right. I wonder. What do you think? Is that a big fella? The Marshal's from Crown Point. You keep the kid prisoner in the local jail overnight and start back with him in the morning. It's too late to start back tonight. Come on, Silver. Get him out of the scoundrel. Come on, Victor. Where are we going? We're going to visit the jail faster, Silver. Get him out of the scoundrel. Come on, Victor. Stand here, Dan, for you can keep a lookout in all directions. Yes, sir. You'll know what to do if you need to warn us. Come along, Donald. Uh-huh. Lift your hands. Mask. An engine. Keep your gun in leather and you won't be hurt. I'll borrow these cell keys. What are you aiming to do? Visit your prisoner. Keep him covered, Donald. Ah, me watch him. Kid. Well, who's that? Boy. Perhaps you'll know more if I light this match. Well, are you masked? I want to talk to you. Eh, you must have another name besides the cactus kid. What is it? It's Tim. Tim Craig. You'll notice that I've left your cell door open, Tim. You're free to go. What do you mean? Well, the services of the cactus kid could be very valuable to certain parties on the outside. You mean outlaws? That's what you are. You want me to join you again? If you remain a prisoner, you'll hang. I... The door is still open, Tim. You're free to leave whenever you want. I... No. No, I'm not going. I won't join your gang. That doesn't sound like an outlaw. What if I did escape? They'd only catch me again. Let them do what they like with me. Even hang before all I care. What's that? I've got to go now, Tim. I don't give up. I'm going to help you while I can. I don't understand. You don't talk like an outlaw. Who are you? What is it, Donald? An inch more up come. Can't be angry at a kid for a fire murder. Maybe hang him. We've got to stop them. Come on. Hey, wait up there. Look at that, man. Look at that again. And an engine. Hey, that's not all right. It's part of the captain's kid. What are we waiting for? Let's get them boys. Come on. The curtain falls on the first act of our Lone Ranger story. Before the next exciting scenes, please permit us to pause for just a few moments to continue our story. As the lynch mob swept toward them, the Lone Ranger called to his nephew, concealed in a clump of trees.  They can't see you. We'll join you later at camp. Yeah, but what about you? Come on, puddle the horses. Let's get them down. Here, Silver. Hey, big fella. I'm not too fast, puddle. I've got to let them keep us in sight. Trail them up. Come on, Silver.  Pull them to this clump of trees, puddle. Hold, Silver. Hold, boy. Hold. All right, big fella. Do you want them to trail us here? Them right past. I think we're still right ahead. Yes. It'll be some time before they learn the truth. Too late for them to carry out their plan to storm the jail. Now, what do you find out from Cactus Kid? I'm convinced he isn't a Cactus Kid, Tonto. He's simply posing as a killer. Oh, why? I don't know. Oh, we catch real killer. That's the second thing we've got to do, Tonto. The first is to convince Marshall Brant that his prisoner is innocent. Come on, Silver. Get him up to the couch. Late that night, Marshall Brant climbed the creaking stairs at the town's only hotel to his room. Night's work. Yes, sir, mighty good night's work. It's taken me a long time to catch up with a Cactus Kid, but I've done it. Now, if I can only make him tell me where he hid the cash he stole from old Silas Constable. Get me a good night's sleep and start for Crown Point with him at summer. I left a lamp burning in my room when I went out. Eight months since enlightened again, I can find the bunk in the dark. Brant. What's with Sam here? Who's there? Show yourself, Prado, I'll grill you. There's no need for gunplay. That voice seems like I heard it before. You have. We've met before. I could just remember the way till I liked this lamp. The ration I should have known. I came to the window. I'll leave the same way. But first, I have a favor to ask of you. Ask away. I haven't forgotten our first meeting. You turned the Shelley gang over to me single-handed and rid off without even waiting for the reward. I've been hoping for a chance to repay you. Oh, you can, Brant. By keeping your prisoner jail where he is for a few days. A cactus kid? I don't believe he is the cactus kid. He don't believe... Leaping horned toads, of course he's the cactus kid. I've seen that hombre before. At any rate, he didn't set fire to the house. I don't savvy. What do you want from me? Your promise to keep the prisoner where he is till I've had a chance to prove his innocence. I can tell you now you're letting yourself in for a wild goose chase. I'll take that chance. But I owe you a favor. So you have my word. Good. You'll see me again shortly. With the real cactus kid in tow, eh? I hope so, Marshal. Adios. Early the next day, Amy Thatcher was saddling her mare in the corral when she heard her father's voice. They really needed me, right? They really, really. Well, I... I've got several errands to do, Dad. Oh, uh, one of them wouldn't be dropping in to see the cactus kid of the jail, would it? Dad, I wish you wouldn't call Tim by that horrible name. There's his head in it. Likely it's not Tim, ain't his real name at all. I... I still can't believe it. All right. I know just how you feel, Amy. I took a fancy to the youngster myself. But he's a killer. He's got to pay for it. But he didn't look like a killer last night when he let the Marshal take him prisoner without even drawing his gun. You heard him tell why? It was because I was standing between him and the Marshal. Yes, he said he couldn't shoot my father. He let himself be taken and stabbed. Uh, it wouldn't have made no difference if he had open fire. The boys would have nabbed him before he could get away. Dad, do you... do you think they'll hang him? Why shouldn't they hang him? He murdered poor old Santa's customer, didn't he? No, he didn't. He... he couldn't have. Why not? Because he was with me when the fire started. Oh, that just proves how smart he is. What do you mean? Well, he shot and killed Silas, and likely fixed things so the fire wouldn't break out until after he'd been here a time. But how could he do that? Easy. Just set a candle burner on some shaven. They wouldn't catch till the candle burner down low. I... I still don't believe Tim did it. Well, don't make no difference whether you're doing that. Just don't go near that jail. Steady, boy. Sorry, Dad, but I... I guess I'll have to disappoint you. I'm not only going near the jail, but in it. Get up, Prince. Whoa, Prince, whoa, whoa, boy, whoa. This is a surprise. Ain't often a jail gets a visit from a pretty girl. Marshall, I... I've got to see Tim. Who? The man you called the... the cactus kid. Well, I don't know what he means. Mighty irregular for me to let a killer like the kid have visitors. Please, Marshall, I... I simply must see him. Well, I reckon it won't do no harm to let you talk to him through the bars of his cell. Just keep going straight ahead. Oh, thank you. Amy. Tim. Oh, Tim. Oh, gosh, it's good to see you. And you. Tim, tell me it isn't true. Last night, I prayed I'd wake up and learn it was all a horrible dream. Only it were. Tim, you've got to help me. I keep telling myself, but I've got to hear it from you.  Oh, Amy, what difference does it make now what I am and what I'm not? They think I'm the kid, let them. You said you loved me. Oh, I do. Then if you're innocent, why won't you fight to prove it and live for me? Fight? Yes. Maybe you're right. He said he'd help me. Who? Tim, what are you talking about? Last night, a mask man visited me here in my cell. A mask man? You mean an outlaw? Well, that's what I thought at first. But he didn't talk like an outlaw. And he wore silver-mounted six guns. Silver-mounted? Yes, sir. I have a message for you. Why, it's a boy standing outside your window. What is it, sir? Who sent it? You know when you open it. How do yours? Tim, what does it say? It says, don't give up. Well, that's what the mask man said last night. Look, something fell out of the envelope. Yes, sir. Why, it's a bullet. A silver bullet. Masked in a silver bullet? Tim, do you know what that means? Well, you've been talking to the Lone Ranger. A few days later, the Lone Ranger and Tonto reigned in their weary horses before the hitch rail of a disruptive cafe in a neighborhood town. In their quest for the cactus kid that explored the woods and valleys nearby towns without success. Unless their efforts were rewarded soon, Tim Craig seemed doomed to hang. This looks like our last resort, Tonto. The cactus kid is around here. He's taking good care to hide his tracks. Uh, what make you think him may be in cafe? Well, it's a hangout for outlaws and gunmen. Maybe the type of place it would attract him. Tim, not say him, not cactus kid. He's shielding someone, Tonto. Not here, cafe. We'll look around, see if we can find anyone who's... What you see? I can't believe it, and yet... Me not savvy. Over by the bar, Tonto. It's Tim. He must have escaped from the jail. Now me see him. That's plenty strange. Yes, I... What you think? I wonder. It's possible. It's possible that he isn't Tim Kimosabi. There's one way to find out. Come on. Did you see that? He looked directly at me and didn't recognize me. That man were Tim. He'd remember me from my visit to the jail. Him not Tim. What makes you so sure? Let me find this in floor beside him. Broken match. Ah, same as match can be used to set fire to house. That's why Tim wouldn't deny that he was a cactus kid, Tonto. He couldn't bring himself to expose the real killer as his twin brother. What we do? Listen carefully. I have a plan. The Lone Ranger, Tonto, Dan, and Marshall Brant are paired at the jail nearby from the concealment of a clump of trees. I don't know. It all seems mighty fanciful to me. If you say it's true. It is true. Tonight you'll have the proof. Ah, golly, I wish he'd hurry up. Seems like we've been waiting for him forever. Maybe he won't get here. He's as smart as he seems to be. He'll come. I thought I made sure he overheard us talking in the cafe. Ah, we make him think we outlaw and make plan to break Tim from jail at midnight. What makes you think that we'll lure the cactus kid into coming to kill Tim? Tim died. Everyone would believe the cactus kid was dead. The real kid would be free of the law. Regan, you're right. Anyway, nothing can happen to Tim. Long as he's being held in custody outside the jail. What is it, Tonto? He sees shadow in moonlight, creeped out of jail. The cactus kid. Quiet then. He wants to have sharp eyes, engine. I can't see a thing in this dark. You'll not see it now. Look. A flame. He set fire to the jail. Come on, Tonto. As the lone ranger and Tonto race toward the cactus kid, flames leap high up the flimsy wooden walls of the jail. It's the jail. The cactus kid's in there. Now get the prisoner out.  That's the jail. The prisoner will be burned up in there. Where's the marshal? I'll take it easy. Everything's going to be all right. Well, it's started, Marshal. Cactus kid set it afire. I knew it. That proves the kid's guilty. He'd rather burn than stay in trial. He'd have no chance to fight that fire. That wood is dry as tender. The flame's got too good a start. Well, see if the kid's in there. Of course he's inside. Where else would he be?  This is no place for a woman, is it? Dad, I've got to know it. Is Tim in there? Yes, Amy is. Now listen to me, all of you. The cactus kid is not in that jail. Where in town good is he? Here he comes. That man's bringing him. Here's your man, Marshal.  I saw him like the jail with my own eyes. Tim? No, Amy, this isn't Tim. It's Tim's brother. You mean that they're twins? Yes, that's why Tim kept silent. He couldn't betray his own brother. Amy, Amy! Tim, I'm here. Amy, I'm free. We're free to be made and live the life we've always wanted. Darling, I'm so glad I fell in love with the right twin. I'm still with you! It is a copyrighted feature of the Lone Ranger Incorporated.


So interview 2022 was a blast. Thank you for joining the geospatial community. Thank you for being part of interview. We say bye for now from Essen with these pictures and impressions, but we also say see you again in Berlin 2023. Yeah, bye! Tschüss, ciao!