saturdayxiii

[saturdayxiii]

Like all white people, I've desired more control. So I've migrated this blog over to github. New content continues there. See you there.

[saturdayxiii]

I don't know why robovoice stories appeal to me. I think the lack of inflection helps get across the actual quality of the writing. But I'm probably making that up because these newer videos obviously have artificial inflection coded in.

There's always a mix bag of quality for youtube green-text story tellers, but I really like how chass has branched out into other areas of the internet. I guess 4chan ran out of stories. Makes sense.

I enjoyed this story in particular for being such a macho ghost story. Our lead character, Private Monkey, regularly acts in defiance of the supernatural, like an action hero, but the story still floats spooky. It's a very appealing juxtaposition, and much refreshing after countless leads running and cowering whenever the unexpected happens. Leave that to me, as I listen to this while under my heated blankey.

I'm curious how part two is going to go. Part one here feels pretty stand alone and satisfying.

[saturdayxiii]

I'm like: It's Wednesday. I'm late for uploading my weekly portraits update. But actually it's Friday.

I'm very happy to be getting more consistent. I kind of have a process: get the shape of the face right, eyes halfway, nose halfway, mouth, watch the width! watch the width! Obviously, I'm still not very accurate with the process. I'm constantly having problems with width vs height of the head, then either too little forehead or too little chin, but I'm happy to be where I am.

I've only got 2 more pages left in my sketchbook. I think I'll do another week, then hopefully try something else. I want to do daily urban sketchings, but one of the hardest parts of this project was picking out which headshot I wanted to draw. Finding interesting buildings is going to be much harder for me.

oh well, we'll see

[saturdayxiii]

I've always been a critical person and I've been trying to be less so, but I've got about 30 years of experience to walk back on. I've been lucky enough to float around friend circles of a number of very, umm, un-critical (?) people, and I get to learn bits and pieces from them. Part of the problem is I've always thought it to be smart to be critical, but clearly that's not entirely true and I'm not as smart as I thought I was.

Harsh reviews of bad media have fallen out of fashion lately, and despite my internal claims to being an independent thinker, I'm still right there with the mainstream trends. I'm loving modern reviews that are like "x is terrible, but I like it because..."

Minimme is excellent at this. Their videos are more specifically about shining light on underrated or relatively unknown games, but the games are usually in that category because they've been panned by audiences for some reason. This makes the reviews very complete and balanced feeling. Not necessarily because they are balanced, but because the biases are clear.

Minimme is very clear why Alone in the Dark is a bad game, but is very objective about that, and about what the game has done well. They do this from both a personal perspective and by comparing to other relative games. It makes it very understandable what kind of audience the game is for. So not only is it a great review, but the air of appreciation is infectious. I, for one, do not want to play the game, but dang, some of those features are downright inspiring. Maybe I could try it? Well, at the very least I'll try hunting down a Lets Play.

I'm loving the good vibes that are bringing about encouragement. That's what I want in my life on a personal level. I wanna see the critical aspects of things, but I want to be more upfront and excited about the positives. Everything just kind of dies when the focus is on the critical. Even if you get decent advice with the critique, it's not encouraging to try again unless you've got some clear positives to build off of. I want to learn to be more positive.

As Minimme says, "Get yourself in a forgiving mood."

[saturdayxiii]

May walks us through the grim themes of Tideland so we don't have to.

This movie is sitting unwatched within my hoard, and this video was a rollercoaster. I was set on deleting my copy through most of it, but the longer it went on, the more intricate and personal things got. Tideland has lots to say about personal, social, and natural situations, and May captured and reflected all the best parts perfectly. I thought about this movie, myself, my relationships, and the greater world that contains us all. I'd call that a perfect review.

[saturdayxiii]

SuperGreatFriend recently attempted to play Michigan: Report from Hell. Despite all the deserved flack this game gets, it's still amazing how it is never not entertaining. No matter who plays it, or how apathetically. The game is a comedy force.

I'm sharing iconoclast187's playthrough because I favor his knowledgeable explanations of what's actually going on.

This movie version is also good.

Neither is complete though. 100% playthroughs are not possible, and it's a shame to miss any of it.

[saturdayxiii]

I've been hanging around some ps1 communities, and no one talks about Sentient, but I still think about it regularly.

SuperGreatFriend's playthrough is probably the most complete source of information out there for this game. Reminds me of when everyone needed to use MikeNnemonic's LSD playthrough to research that game... SGF got, I believe, 11 of the possible endings in the game, and there are still questions left unanswered. This game probably deserves to be right up there with Martian Gothic, and Echo Night for ps1 story gems.

Depending on your attention span, you might want to start on video 5 or 6. There's a lot of false starts that are inevitable with a game this cryptic.

[saturdayxiii]

Yesterday I caught a Sonic Advance race on GamesDoneQuick. It reminded me how under appreciated Sonic Advance 2 is, despite seemingly everyone in the chat reassuring each other on how amazing it is.

Maybe "under appreciated" is the wrong term, perhaps its too accepted. Not controversial enough. Sonic is a huge brand, so even though the Advance games are an offshoot, there is still a huge amount of people who have played them, and I'm under the impression that the majority have enjoyed it. But when people speculate, albeit less so since Sonic Mania, how Sonic games haven't really improved since the Genesis days, Sonic Advance is still regularly overlooked.

I'd love to see the Advance games picked apart, or over glamorized, as much as the other Sonic titles. Actually that goes for most of the Sonic portable titles, or at least including the Rush series. There's just so much there that was brought to the franchise that just seems like it's fenced off in its own fractioned fandom.

Anyway, here's an old vid by the Geek Critique which I don't agree with, but he makes a lot of great points that I think apply better to gaming in general. I'd argue that being a good Sonic game is a bit different than being a good general game, but hairs would need to be split.

[saturdayxiii]

Quick week.  Some things feel better, other things feel drastically worse.  Big focus on head shapes, I think.  Seems to mean I lost focus on feature proportions.

[saturdayxiii]

I’ve been enjoying Noah Caldwell-Gervais’s Thorough Look series for insightful and indepth retrospectives of many story driven game series.  This God of War one was especially fun because the style of gameplay bled right into Noah’s writing style.  I’ve never been interested in GoW, and now I know for sure that I should never play it, but I’ve got a new appreciation for it now and am totally going to look up some long plays.

[saturdayxiii]

Another week of progress.  Kind of peaking, unfortunately.

[saturdayxiii]

I really enjoy when insightful videos about the original Blair Witch Project are randomly recommended to me.

This one gets rather exhaustive on how imagery in the initial scenes reinforce the theme of the film.  It honestly gets rather listy, and suggests that the film was much more controlled and intentional than was let on.  Which I think is a valid insight, but not the extent of which is implied in this video.  I really like what it means for themes and how it relates to author intention.  

I believe the film creators when they say that it was a frantic week of filming.  I don’t believe they had the time and energy to pay attention to every detail, especially when most of the camera work was handled by the actors themselves, who I do believe were kept in the dark about much of the film.  

I think this shows how ingrained the base theme and backstory was, and how they were able to pass on this intention to the crew, allowing them to subliminally capture images that reinforced the themes.  Like how they didn’t necessarily need to actually recommend that interviewees dress in black, because the theme of found footage already favored high contrast visuals.  They likely didn’t need to choose and place specific Halloween decorations, because it’s a natural decision to set a creepy movie around Halloween and filming on location means many places already had decor set up.  Not saying it was coincidence that they circled an interviewee with flying witches, or had  a black cat appear on Heather’s shoulder, but I don’t think it was meticulously planned.  

Having clear themes and intentions decided in the beginning of production allowed for creative supporting opportunities to naturally occur.

I’d be interested in taking an exhaustive look at one of the many films of the 2010 era that clearly had a poor time reinforcing theme, and see what can be gleamed of the clarity and intention put forth by their creators.

[saturdayxiii]

I’m happy to add Kvass to my collection of circulating fermented drinks.  It’s bread soda.  Flavoured with honey and mint.

I used the recipe from Domestic Dreamboat, but essentially it’s just soak plain, stale, toasted bread in hot water for a while.  Filter out the bread, then add honey, sugar, mint, and a bit of sourdough starter (I’m sure you could use regular yeast from a package too).  When it bubbles, strain and bottle.  It’ll carbonate and get less sweet over time.  If you make it again, you don’t need new yeast, just use the sediment from the bottles.

[saturdayxiii]

Here’s a week of progress.  Drawing at least one quick portrait every day.  I’ve gotten more used to my tool of choice.  Now if only I could be a better artist.

I am feeling a little more controlled.  Feeling more successful in small areas.  I’ll keep it up and see what happens.

I really think I’m on to something with these small 20 minute projects.  At least if I can actually get a sense of some consistency across them.  Normally my art projects take 4-6 hours easily, but I think there’s too many elements in one piece for me to absorb much growth.  Then I also do them a lot less often because they take so much effort.  We’ll see if I can stick to this, and maybe I can even apply it to other creative areas I want to do more of.

[saturdayxiii]

I've been thinking about 3d modeling a lot lately. I decided to try and do Sickly Wizard's awesome environment tutorial for ps1 graphics ( https://youtu.be/NcmO6Sxmq14 ). Seems very approachable. Of course the 15 minute tutorial took me 10 hours to do. Further exasperated by the fact that it took days for me to think of a scene I even wanted to model. I didn't even technically finish the tutorial because I didn't do any of the vertex lighting stuff. I really wanted to be done, and this is a start I guess. I'll do something different next time... With a lot less polygons. I need to choose better textures, it's so easy to want to focus on a feature in the texture, but those identifiable features are what kill the repeatability. I also can't seem to stop over working my models. Way too much rounding on the boulders, yet but enough on the walls and ceiling. Hopefully I'll have some other models to actually populate a scene with next time. Plants and rocks type stuff. Now that I've got some exposure to the method, hopefully I can scale back my goals a bit more.

[saturdayxiii]

I don't have tik tok, but this is my weird cocktail recipe that I've been enjoying lately.  It stems from my old, better tasting favorite of chocolate milk and sambuca.

[saturdayxiii]

Yesterday at work, I had an inspiration to do a quick portrait from a photo reference, so I did.  I used a black, fat, chisel marker on a panel of cardboard and it took about 5 minutes.  The results weren’t great, but if you looked at the reference I think you could tell what I was going for.  I was encouraged by this.  I love the idea of being able to do portraits or capture images in the moment and bust out  a recreation in a few minutes.  So I decided to do some more practicing when I got home that evening.

Why did it go so horribly?

These pictures are my practice and while the one I half-assed at work wasn’t great, these ones are off the chart bad.  I don’t know what exactly I need to fix in my approach to even get on the right path, but needed to post my thoughts about the experience.  Maybe in hopes that that will be the trigger that helps me get better and leave these scraps behind, even though I don’t know how to improve even if I could be confident that I’d properly assessed my weaknesses.  I mean, that’s why I did these sketches, because I thought I knew what areas to focus on, and it took me a huge step backwards.

What irritates me the most, is how none of the sketches even have the aura of their subjects.  There’s a hint here or there, but nothing like “yah, the art’s not tight, but that is definitely that person”, and that’s really what I want to accomplish the most.

Here’s my individual notes:

1. I started digital because I really love the idea of having my one device that I take with me everywhere and do everything with.  I’ve been pushing myself to prioritize digital art for about 6 years now, even though I was always familiar with digital coloring/touch ups, but the weaknesses really glare here.  Accuracy is huge, as it’s next to impossible to get the lines that I want digitally.  It’s always sketch, undo, sketch, undo, sketch, undo, and then when I get sick of that it’s sketch sketch sketch, new layer, slow trace, undo, slow trace.  A lot of people understand this to be the nature of digital art, and I don’t 100% buy into that, but none the less it’s what I’m contending with.  I didn’t really concentrate on going slow, and I think that’s something I really need to consciously aim for, but right here that defeats the purpose of doing fast portraits.  I want to feel good and natural when drawing, so I decided to switch back to analogue art.

2. No. Stop.  No matter what, I have a ridiculous number of false starts.  Just trying to coordinate my brain with the medium I guess.  Warm up exercises would probably help, but it also seems like a waste of resources if I happen to get lucky and make something reasonable on my first try.

3.  Skew.  I always skew.  I’m well aware of my inability to do symmetry, and I try really hard to correct this when drawing.  I’ve been addressing this for years, and it hasn’t gotten any better.  This handicap is laid bare when I can’t start with a rough sketch.  I am trying to measure and compare proportions, but they still skew as I go.  I guess I really need to get my hand off the page, stop and check my work.  But when I don’t have an initial sketch, and that’s the point of this exercise, what am I checking?  The lines that don’t exist are in my head, and they don’t end up on the paper in the same spots. I have to work with the mistakes I’ve made no matter what.

4.  The features in this one are just so off.  I can’t even.  I had been marking points where I thought stuff should go, before drawing lines to connect them.  Not only is everything still completely inaccurate, but the picture just looks so dead.  It’s a corpse of a face that no one’s ever seen before.

5.  So I bailed on pre mapping and went the n00b route of starting with individual features.  Of course the eyes are where I feel most comfortable. I probably am most happy with this portrait, but it’s such a step back from every tutorial that I’ve been getting help from these days.  I wish this was my starting point of my drawing exercise.  I might be able to continue from this approach, but I need to get comfortable with a better starting point as this brings the usual issue of not being able to keep my drawing on the page. I know Davinci started with the ear, but that’s a little too around the bend for me. Maybe I can try starting from the cheek to the forehead or something to help me work on features while still having a better overview of my total size... maybe.

6.  This one is wrong, but like the last one it doesn’t upset me.  It was especially frustrating as I had the hair framing the face, then in full awareness but no ability to stop I watched myself draw the right eye too close to the hair, then the left eye too far away, despite having some pretty easy markers to work with.  Speaking of markers, I switched to a traditional sharpie pen for this one.  I had been using a dip pen.  I think I need to hunt down a chisel tip marker like at work as that seems to be best of both worlds.  Especially as my medium at work was pretty large, maybe about the size of legal paper, while everything I worked with at home was no larger than 6 inches.

Hopefully this word vomit cleanses me, or something.  Though why would it?  I don’t think my art has improved for the last 15 years.  I have a couple helpful techniques for digital art, but nothing that applies in this exercise.  I can’t even pin point anything I did right in these sketches.  Like, nothing that’s says “that’s good, keep doing that.”  It’s just, throw it all away and start at square zero again.  At least I got some new teases, like, maybe try a chisel marker on a full canvas, find a way to fake a sketch that will let me test proportions before final lines, and looking at the thumbnails of my work is even helping me pick out better shapes in my subjects that I wish I noticed the first time.

*sigh*, maybe at some decade in my life I’ll be able to do consistent work of an adequate quality, or at least perhaps the false hope will keep me from falling into complete anhedonia.  Maybe.