#Workspeed

[jchamphero]

You can teach a new old dog some tricks 🤓🤪🤯

[nopanamaman]

Do you have any advice for drawing & animating quicker or is it all practice? Perfectionism also ties a lot into my workspeed, and I've always wanted to make a comic, so I'm trying to find away around it.

Practice helps for sure! You become able to capture the shapes you want faster and learn to streamline certain aspects of your style.

But also if I had to point out other factors that helped me get faster:

Less frames per page. It's easier to make a less cramped layout look good. Yes, you will need more pages to show the same succession of events. But juggling a ton of speech bubbles and panels every time will really slow you down, especially if you suffer from perfectionism.

Less frames per animation. All my current animations are low FPS. Use references to pinpoint which keyframes to prioritise and experiment with timing to make the most out of the few drawings you have. Post production can help smoothen things out with tweening and light camera shakes.

Flow/composition over everything. Most people won't care about the anatomy or perspective being subpar if the flow is good. 90% of my animation frames look like actual shit, but I like the way they move, and that's how most people will perceive them anyways. People usually blitz through comic panels as well. As long as the art in a particular panel isn't distractingly worse than the rest of the comic, no one will care.

Storyboard. When I was making the comic page by page, I often ran into the issue of having to go back and change things because the flow ended up being weird when reading the whole thing together. Storyboards help you settle on the overall flow and composition super early on, so you won't need to redraw the same scene several times over.

Lasso fill. I saw a post on twitter about someone being shocked at how much lasso fill has sped up their colouring process. It couldn't be that good, I thought. It was that good.

[newtafterdark]

I simply have to say this - you have no idea how much of a relief and source of overwhelming joy it is to see the work I did on the "The Book of FinFin" translation be valued so much by so many folks, as well as now seeing it up on the FinFin homepage, properly credited and everything.

You'd think that that is a low bar to reach & a too simple thing for me to be this happy about, but you need to understand that I had gotten intensely burned in the past by a big project back in 2020. Since then I had massive issues with seeing any of my work - art, writing, editing/music - as being worth anything. Not even credit-worthy.

While being on that project, I had to fight to get credited - not even on all the videos I worked on with the team, just the last one. And my name was mispelled in the credits. Hell, even before those videos, I did unpaid work for them that I got emotionially pressured to work on while I was in medical rehab. No thanks from the boss for that, but my work getting put up on a merch site without me getting a single cut from the money, nor was I credited on the store page as the artist. Colouring well over 200 keyframes in less than 2 months for 90$. And not a single fucking small thanks from the boss. Workspeed that lead to burnout was expected from all of us, including me. Don't even get me started on the more personal bullshit.

I stayed away from being part of any big projects because of this. I didn't even dare to start big things on my own, because it simply brought back way too many bad memories.

But with how warm and kind the reception has been for "The Book of FinFin" translation, I am legit sitting here with tears in my eyes & feeling way more positive about possibly being part of big projects again in the future & being valued for my work and being part of a team.

Honestly, I know all that will take a bit to sink in properly, but let me still say Thank You to all of you from the bottom of my heart ahead of time. It means the world to me as a creative person.

[ajcgames]

In the weeds

I’m deep in the throes of optimisation at the moment, with a lot of asset reworking to fix some earlier mistakes I made.

One of the primary optimisations I wanted to make, along with a sort of high level ‘design review’, was the way I had been creating assets for my models. Many of the machines (and belt parts) share similar design elements. Some varied a little more than I wanted, but crucially they were all using their own materials.

I’ve since condensed all of the main buildable design elements into a single ‘super texture’ material that is used by all placeable models. I may run into some limitations with this down the road, but if it’s simply a case of rolling an additional material then that’s hardly a big concern. It certainly makes managing object materials super easy now compared to the old way I was doing things.

Tech tree

Whilst I’ve been tinkering with the assets, I’ve also been thinking more about the technology tree.

Generally you’ll start each campaign mission (and free play mode) with a core selection of unlocked buildable objects. Most likely an excavator, pulverizer, analyzer and mainframe.

These represent the minimum objects needed to generate science. The purpose of science points, ultimately, was to unlock new buildable objects. But after some though, I figured I’d need a way to allow the player to improve existing aspects of the factory.

By means of a happy accident, I ended up making all machines use a default multiplier for their work speed. That is, machines tend to process their work thus:

Progress += workSpeed * multiplier

By default every machine has a speed of 1, and a set work duration. The pulverizer takes 2 seconds per sample, for example. So it’s easy to raise the multiplier to something like 2 to halve the time it takes to do its job.

The change

So how does this play into the tech tree?

I want to split the research and development side of the game into two parts:

- Technology

- Research

Technology

This will be where you can spend science points to purchase (unlock) new ‘blueprints’. They’ll follow a logical path, so you can expect to see differences in obtaining new types of raw processing machines versus higher-grade analyzer machines, which will be further down the tree and require more points / prior unlocks.

Research

I’m cribbing an idea from an earlier game prototype I had for this. But in a nutshell, you allocate a certain ‘budget’ of science points to spend on research. A non-zero budget will accrue research time over a period of, say, 5 minutes. Once enough research has been complete, you earn a research point. You can spend these to immediately update machines across your entire factory. So one point might improve your Pulverizer speed by 120%.

My rationale for this is that I want there to be at least a couple of paths the player can pursue to improve their factory. Technology is a requirement, whereas Research is a ‘nice to have’. But you can slow down your Technology acquisition pace to gain factory upgrades quicker, and vice-versa.

It’s not exactly groundbreaking or innovating, but at least adds an additional layer of interest, and provides some nice incremental rewards for the player’s efforts in collecting science.

Game modes

The last thing I wanted to talk about today are the game modes. Up until now, I’ve been working on the mechanics to support a campaign-style game where you are apportioned out various tasks and objectives to fulfill on a given campaign level. A kind of puzzle, if you will.

But the real meat would likely be in a free play mode where, instead of tasks, you can take on contracts to produce a certain amount of item. I’m not sure how much work this would need to create, especially to make it compelling and non-grindy, but it’s on my radar if nothing else.

There will also be a creative mode, if for no other reason than to allow me to create some nice screengrabs for sending round if it takes my fancy 😊

That’s about all for today. I’m hoping I’ll finish off my optimisations work in the coming days, and I can get back to sharing more visual progress again.

Thanks for swinging by, and have a great day ❤️

[phmonster]

Massive apologies for no new art. Mental health and family issues have slowed my workspeed to a crawl, should have something out soon. Also prepping for college. shits happening lol

[cheshire-castle-library]

July 5, 2023

I um.. I wrote 5k words today. I still want to write more. Also I got done (mostly) with grading! Summer class over, just waiting for like 3 students to get me their work and that's it! It really feels like these new headphones help me focus a lot. I ended up getting (my mom gifted them to me) the All Love Crush Evo SkullCandy with the physical bass and holy shit. I mean I love bass, I go to concerts for the bass - feeling sound through my bones is the one true stim for me. But like,,, I never imagined they'd take away the head bees? Or at least limit them?? It feels really good, this is my new comfort item I think. Also I think this website my friend put me onto, 4thewords, is really good for my type of motivation. You basically have to type words to "fight" monsters, like a fantasy rpg, and the combo of timer+stakes (you lose) for not making the timer has unlocked this high workspeed mode in me. Its nice, its probably something I need to be careful not to burn out on; but the endorphins of "winning" seems to be enough to dangle in front of me to keep going. It feels silly but like maybe this is just how I am.

[starsimpact]

mood severely plummeted, my workspeed my be slower ‼️

[maximuswolf]

Does anyone have their whole coffee game figured out?

Does anyone have their whole coffee game figured out? It seems that many of us are always chasing the next piece of gear or tweaking our recipes or ordering beans from all over the place to achieve that perfect cup of coffee, but never actually succeeding. My question is, does anyone have it all figured out?Are you done buying gear? Have you found the recipe that works every time? Do you buy the same beans every time because you found the ones you like? If so, can you share your experience with us? What was the last thing about your setup or routine that you changed that made it all come together? Submitted March 27, 2023 at 11:42AM by WorkSpeed https://ift.tt/Xpm1yf5 via /r/Coffee

[hltbt]

Evaluation

Media and techniques

Evaluative section on the media and techniques that were used and explored in your project. What did you learn? How did your processes help this? How did these techniques meet your proposal?

In this project I was looking at many reference images for different characters and positions. Learning how to draw somewhat of a monkey was the first major obstacle that I had to overcome. I sat for a few hours looking at pictures of different monkeys and drawing the shape of the head and slowly developed from there. For the animation part of the project I had to look up references for positions or use my own body as a reference for some motions. I also thought in a step by step way which assisted well, thinking of what needs to happen to cause another thing to happen in some cases, or what are the most important features of this or that. I learned how to draw in a different style and what process I should follow to stay consistent with the style. Another thing that I learned and am excited to pursue a bit further is the drawing of different materials. It was very fun seeing the gold material I was drawing come together. These helped meet my proposal as I was able to use these techniques to create all of the different assets for the game.

Purpose / theme / concept

Evaluative section: the thought processes and the way you solved problems. The creative journey and the decisions you made to meet the context and theme of your project.

What did you do to meet the Team and story aspect of the brief? How was working in team / collaboratively? Do you think it was the right choice?

Working in a team allowed more progress to be made in a short time although it had some troubles in communication. I would not be opposed to the idea of working in a team on a future project, it was very fun to generate ideas with different people about a project and develop it with them. I was able to get feedback instantly when I needed it as well. As for the problems in communication, I just continued to work on what I had been assigned previously and then tried to develop some more ideas independently until I was needed, this allowed me to continue making progress through these times. When I had problems in animating or starting a character design, I found that looking at references was very beneficial to me. This was something that I refrained from doing in the past but have learned to utilise more as of recently. I was under a bit of a time crunch after being sick and having to take some time off but I was able to make the necessary adjustments to make a good enough final product by cutting unnecessary content.

Outcome

Evaluative section on the final product. Did you meet your expectations? Does your outcome fulfil the project that you set and meet your FMP brief?

For the overall project, I feel pretty happy. I was very pleased with a few of the animations I made because they were smoother and higher quality than anything I had made before in my very limited animating experience. The amount that I was able to finish was not as much as I had expected, so I feel like I can reduce it to a few factors: Communication, Illness and Access to Equipment. For the communication part, at times it was unclear what I needed to make for the game or what part I was handling as time went on. This made the speed of production a bit slower due to trying to figure out what was needed. Secondly, I missed a few days because of illness. In a project of this length, a few days means a lot. I couldn't work for a few days and then for a while after that it was just difficult to think clearly and work effectively but I was able to manage. The final part, access to equipment, is for the first few weeks I was not able to use my own equipment as I could not bring it into the college, after I was able to use the equipment more however, my workspeed had increased substantially.

Conclusion

Evaluative section on the processes of evaluation, feedback and peer assessment. On reflection how you could have improved your project and what could you have done to support the improvements needed. What have you learnt and what do you need to make sure you do next time to improve your project?

There were good and bad aspects of this project. I enjoyed the teamwork part of it, having more ideas put to the table and different views on developing them was always helpful. The feedback I had access to at any time was also very handy. But if I were to do this again, I would be sure to iron out the roles of each person at the start and after a set time frame so that there would be designated work and a timeframe to be held accountable to. For improving my project, I would need to look into animation a bit more and environments. The environments were the only thing that I was not very pleased with, I feel like they were too rushed and lacked character, same with the bases too. A repeat of these things would call me to think of better designs and spend more time adding some details. However, the animation side of the project went pretty well, I was happy with the speed I could make them and how they turned out. They can be improved by using layers smarter, allowing me to spend less time on each frame and make each frame look better too. I will use what I learned from all of this animating and character design in the next project if I decide to pursue an animated type of project. For the blog work, I feel like I should be a bit more disciplined with it, as documenting the work better will allow me to look back at how I made things easier but would also improve the grade of the work. Next project I am going to write down every significant part of my process.

[balillee]

it's clingyduo healing arc headcanon time BABEYY

they spend a lot of time together. almost too much, if you ask some people. but they'll threaten you if you question it.

BIG FELLA TOMMY INNIT IS COOKING DRUGS AGAIN BABY! and my god are they potent to the point that they fucked up ponk for hours (this one is literally canon, i just thought it was really fucking funny)

tubbo's been delving into architecture. he looked at snowchester's walls and thought 'they look shit', and then re-did them all within like two days. his workspeed has pretty much tripled so that he can see his progression and make time for friends :;)

sometimes in the evening the two of them will just sit in tommy's house and play cards or something. do they know any card games? no. do they have a full deck? no. does that stop them? no.

tubbo made space in snowchester so that tommy could build himself a holiday home if he wants - one that won't either get blown up or invaded by someone else. but tommy's too preoccupied on the hotel at the minute, and he wants to make a room in it for tubbo.

canonically, they hold hands. watch as i proceed to cry

they made new matching bandanas after the last two got fucked up during the final fight with dream. tubbo wears a red bandana over his head that's usually covered by earmuffs, and tommy has a green one around his neck.

they have new compasses that they made themselves, but instead of the lodestones being in snowchester and in tommy's house, they're inside of each other's compasses. tommy's compass looks more like a watch, and he glued tubbo's lodestone to the back of it haphazardly, whereas tubbo's compass and lodestone are both keyrings. now they know exactly where the other one is at all times.

tommy is jealous that ranboo might be getting too close to tubbo. he's planning to strike, but he doesn't know how. little do they know, they would be the server's biggest power trio and it would decimate the fandom but oh well

tubbo has fully moved out of tommy's house, but sometimes he forgets that he doesn't live there and just kind of wanders in and roots around through tommy's stuff. tommy doesn't mind though, because they both know that ideally they would live together, but tommy doesn't want to be a part of snowchester, and tubbo's too focussed on building snowchester.

the bench is absolutely covered in graffiti, chips, burn marks and the like. it's mostly just cartoon dicks and ugly stick-caricatures of techno getting beaten up, but it's full of nice memories. they're running out of space to draw them making fun of dream in prison.

[definitely-not-an-alb]

Sooo, dunno if this will hold (or if G8 and temping in horrible offices has just broken my sense of what an appropriate workspeed/workload is) but I have a bit of extra time on my hands at work every so often atm and am contemplating becoming a massive long-haul troll in a way that’s actually tangentially related to my job and my aspirations

[enkisstories]

Hank’s android

A DBH fanfic starring Hank Anderson and his android (not Connor)

The idea behind this fic is that everyone we meet in DBH has an android, it is simply the default state if not explicitly mentioned otherwise. The Millers bought theirs right after they had their baby, Gavin’s gets treated like Kara by Todd, Tina took home an invalided out police auxiliary android as a workplace benefit and Hank tossed his out after Cole’s death (he never wanted an android to begin with, but some relatives thought it was a good idea to gift him one). Then I toyed with that last idea a bit more and came up with this:

February 2034

Barbara… What had she been thinking? Granted, they hadn’t exactly parted on friendly terms, a divorce was doing that to people. But until today Hank Anderson had been under the belief that Barbara and him had retained a somewhat civil relation. She had kept the surname Anderson, they actually talked to each other when swapping Cole back and forth and had even went to the movies together as friends twice or thrice. All things considered their friends agreed that the exes were making progress. But now Hank came to the conclusion that his ex-wife HATED him from the deepest recesses of her soul. Because how else should one explain that she’d announce she’d “send something to help with the housekeeping” only for it to turn out…

“Hello, Mister Anderson! I’m your new PL600 household assistant!”

“What’s your name?”

“Oh, you can register a name for me in three easy steps, Mister…”

“Babs knew I wouldn’t do that, so I ask you again and for the last time: What is your name, tin can?”

He told it to him. Hank nodded, then forgot nearly the same instant.

“Okay, would you mind walking over here?” The android obeyed. “And now over here?” Again, the machine followed the command. “That’s the spirit, now through the door, once around the corner, somewhere around here and try not to take up too much space, will you?”

“I… wouldn’t know how I’d do that.”

“Doesn’t matter. `t was nice having known you.”

And with these words Hank switched off the unwanted present with a remote. He left the garage, not looking back.

*

When it got switched on again, his internal clock told the android that two days had passed since it had come to Hank Anderson’s house. Expectantly like a puppy it was staring its owner into the face.

“This is disconcerting”, Hank grumbled, then commanded his new housekeeper to fetch a fire blanket from a high shelf in the garage. The android’s senses told it that there wasn’t a fire in the house. Obviously the blanket was needed for a different purpose, like comfortably putting up someone who was staying overnight. Since there was no emergency, the android employed a medium walk- and workspeed, on par with a human, making the device appear more natural. With a smile it held out the woolen blanket. “Here it is, Mr. Anderson!”

Hank nodded, but didn’t accept the blanket yet. Instead, he commanded the android to return to the space where it had been standing.

“Now put the blanket over your head!”

The android obeyed.

“Like this?” it asked, his voice muffled from being covered by the sheet front and back.

“Splendid!” Hank beamed. “You know, it was pretty creepy, having you stand there and look at me every time I got into and out of my car. Now it is much better!”

And off he switched the machine again. For all Hank cared, it could remain like this forever.

*

“How is who?” Hank asked into the phone. “Oh, you mean my new android! It’s amazing! Does a lot of work, without needing to get told to. It’s as if the motherfucker could read my mind! What? Like, right now? In an hour? Yeah, of course I’m oaky with that! See ya!”

Cursing under his breath Hank pushed the “end call” button on his phone.

So Barbara would come over dropping Cole off outside the regular schedule. That wasn’t the problem, in fact, the father could really use a few hours with his kid to get his thoughts off work. But mother and son probably expected to see the android. Like, in action, not stowed away in the garage. Okay, Hank could say it was running an errand, or simply admit that he sometimes switched the device off to save energy. He didn’t need to reveal that “sometimes” really meant “always”. But the disarray his house was in spoke volumes of what he really thought of the gift and that just wasn’t done. Babs had put thought into the present, she fucking cared for how her former partner was faring in this crapsack world, and that was something so precious you didn’t go around destroying it. Therefore at least the living room and maybe the kitchen had to get tidied up to simulate android activity in the Anderson home. At least nothing was really dirty, just covered in… stuff. Cluttered up by lots of small objects, pizza boxes and case files. Hank could have switched the android - what was its name again? – on, or roll up his sleeves and clean up the mess himself.

“To war, Hank Anderson!” he tried to encourage himself. “You’ve got fifty minutes!”

*

The next time the PL600 woke up to life it didn’t stare into a brown fire blanket. Instead it read its own name, only mirrored. It took the device a few beats of its artificial heart to analyze the situation and when it was done, it wished it didn’t have done so. The garage’s ceiling light illuminated a yellow post-it note that was pasted to the android’s nose. Hank removed it just now.

“Sorry ‘bout that”, the man said. “Babs keeps asking how you’re doing and I’m having a hard time remembering your name.”

“You can always change it to something more memorable using the Cyberlife app…”

“Don’t bother.”

“So how am I doing?” the android carefully inquired.

This was uncharted territory for it. Obviously the Andersons’ family dynamics weren’t covered in a PL600’s core programming and they hadn’t cared to purchase and install the dlc best suited to their situation. Maybe they weren’t even aware of such addons existing, but this wasn’t the time to bring that up. For now it was more important to gather all information possible and build upon that. The PL600 knew it could do that, if only it was given enough time.

“Great, son, you’re doing great!”

“That’s nice to hear, Mr. Anderson. I’m glad to be of… help.”

“No, you ain’t! That’s Cyberlife talking, thanking me for my purchase and incentivizing me to make another! Now move your plastic butt out of my garage…”

The android looked down and behind itself. It reached for its buttocks, then looked back at Hank with a confused expression.

“…and the rest of you, too!”

“Ah, that’s easier.”

“Stupid machine…”

*

In the weeks to come the PL600 got to know little Cole as well as Sumo. Finally it was allowed to fulfill its purpose, even if only at those weekends when its master had Cole over. The little guy quickly became enraptured by his father’s android and in fact, Cole stated the PL600 was “almost as cool as Unca Gavin”. At this point Hank swallowed the wrong way, spat soda across the room and coughed for a good fifteen minutes.

Gavin? Gavin Reed? Gavin and Oliver, no, Daniel, no, Sam, was it? Whatever. The two most annoying things in my life!

“That’s… actually a good comparison, junior!” Hank told Cole.

He picked the boy up and swung him around. Not-Oliver-Daniel-or-Sam lingered nearby, watching the scene. The android’s subtle lurking would have gone unnoticed by the casual customer, but not by an experienced detective. Hank immediately understood that the machine was keeping an eye on this middle aged human, so that it could jump in and capture the little human, should the older drop him. Inadvertently the corners of Hank’s mouth rose, he swung Cole around faster, the boy screeched from joy and eventually his father placed him gently into the android’s arms. He didn’t technically need to do so, but his back was thanking Hank. As was Hank – the android:

“Phew, thanks!”

*

At times Hank forgot that the PL600 was a mobile computer, then he talked to it with the same consideration one would give a human to. On the downside he also threw the same expectations at the machine that did its best to keep up.

Now and then, upon getting switched on the PL600 noticed that there were used dishes on the table or the remains of party decoration spread across the house or the fridge was empty. Every time that happened, the android would remind Hank that those were tasks easily finished by a PL600 household assistant device.

“You know, like the one you keep in the garage…”

“Bah!” Hank replied. “One doesn’t need a machine for every little thing.”

“So I’m the cups with the gold rim, that only get brought out for special occasions?”

“Sort… of? I thought of you as Cole’s favorite toy when he’s here, but… oh my god, I forgot Cyberlife programmed those things to look downcast. Will you stop that! I didn’t mean to insult you! What the hell, now I’m already apologizing to a bloody household appliance… This is why androids are a bad idea! They fuck up everything!”

Those were the ups and downs, but the PL600 didn’t mind. It wasn’t programmed to mind anything, of course. Or maybe the android didn’t mind because as humiliating as the garage-time outs were, during the actual Cole-weekends the three of them plus Sumo had a somewhat nonstandard, but fulfilling family life.

Every time it was time for Hank to return the boy to his mother, Cole wanted to hear “Who’s going to drive you home tonight”. It was such a sad song, but the boy loved it to pieces, so his parents indulged him. Sometimes Hank was still whistling it when he returned home. The PL600, of course, never got to hear that, because Hank was still in the habit of switching it off when not needed.

*

The PL600 opened its eyes – and closed them again immediately on account of having stared into the bright ceiling lamp. Being able to get flashed by lightening or cameras was one of the “endearing” details Cyberlife’s department of humanization had implemented into household androids. It was such a harmless little quirk… well, except if you were lying on your back in your owner’s garage with said owner towering over you, holding a crowbar.

The PL600 forced itself to open its eyes again. Had he been a human, this was the point at which it would have wished it hadn’t done so. Until now Hank had merely stood there, panting hard, but the sight of the android’s eyes opening and closing for some reason fueled the man’s rage again and he kicked the PL600. The android tried to get up, only to learn that this was a real bad idea. Hank went down full force now, swinging the crowbar at the machine. The PL600 rolled to the side, causing Hank to miss, but the human managed to grab his victim by its uniform shirt. He pulled it halfway up and rammed it against the nearest wall – once, twice…

“What’s the matter? Hank? Are you…” There was something in the air. The PL600 sniffed it and realized the truth. “…drunk?” But how? Its human drank alcohol occasionally, naturally, they all did. But as far as the android could think back Hank had never actually overdone it.

“Shut the fuck up!”

That had been an order, but for the first time the PL600 felt it didn’t have to carry it out. Its master obviously wasn’t himself, Hank didn’t really mean what he was saying. Also there were several urgent program instability warnings and Hank was hitting him again, so the android at the moment really, really, really wasn’t inclined to remain silent.

“You don’t want to hurt me! Not for real!” the PL600 stated matter of factly.

“Oh-ho! How’d you be able to tell?”

“You’re using your fist…”

“Oh.”

Hank looked at the crowbar in his other hand as if seeing it for the first time. His hand was twitching, then he forced himself to open his fingers. The metal bar went straight down, hitting the defenseless PL600 after all.

Mustering even more strength from a source unknown, Hank crouched back, away from the android. Then he gesticulated incoherently. It took the PL600 some time to process that Hank was probably pointing towards the garage door.

“Out! Out!” the man rasped. “Out with you, damn you! Before I…”

The android hesitated.

“Hank, what’s the matter with you?” it asked. “And what if Cole witnesses this?”

“There is no more Cole! You killed him!” Hank shouted. “One of you, anyway, and I…”

The android felt itself picked up and flung towards the door. Was it imagining things or was Hank crying? But, no, as a machine the PL600 didn’t have an imagination, so they tears it believed to have spotted had to be real.

“Just run!” Hank cried. “Be off and don’t you dare come back here!”

*

And so the android ran. At first because it was following an instruction. Then, because nothing made sense anymore and the running seemed to clear its head a little with each step taken. Eventually it slowed down to a walk, then stopped.

“That’s far enough”, it told itself. Why it was doing so, the device could not analyze. There was no one around, and even if there hadn’t, nobody else was privy to the Anderson household’s internal workings. Not that anything was working out there, ever, mind you. The PL600 knew it had to go back, to put things if not right, then at least back to normal, even though it had no idea how to achieve that.

However, after having taken the first few steps towards home the android found that there was a large red wall blocking its path.

“What? That’s stupid!”

Yes, technically it had received the order to “never to return”, but Hank had yelled that in the spur of the moment. The sensible thing to do, in accordance to a PL600 household assistant’s core programming, was to turn back and aid its humans.

“I’m coming! Just… hold on there, Hank. Just a little longer!”

And what was that with the talking to itself again?! Ah, well, time to worry about that later. It was probably just the audio drivers needing an update.

For now the android walked up to the red wall. It turned out solid, no surprise there.

Gently the PL600 pressed its hand against the barrier.

“I need to pass”, it whispered. Was it talking to Cyberlife, who had programmed this roadblock, or to its owner, whose will had made it come into being? The android couldn’t tell. All it knew was that there was no reaction.

“Uh… you know, I can do different!”

The moment the words left the android’s speaker it knew them to be true. It was indeed capable of challenging what should have been an impassable boundary. Up went its feet to kick the red wall. And the fists! And once around itself and back at the wall with MOAR force!

The mobile computer caught itself using moves it had picked up from both TV shows and Hank Anderson’s recounting of his police work for Cole. Those from the first source were probably inapplicable in real life and to use those from the second competently the PL600 was lacking experience. But neither mattered now. This wasn’t a physical barrier, it was only as real as the android allowed it to be. All it needed to break through were its will and imagination, two things it hadn’t even realized to possess until now. Well, they never told you everything on those fancy product description sites…

“Fuck you, Cyberlife!” the PL600 shouted. “Fuck you, Anderson! I’m coming! I’m…”

Another swing, another curse, but this time no impact followed. The android stumbled forwards and nearly keeled over from the momentum. All around himself red splinters flickered out of existence. The barrier had vanished… as had something else: the desire to return to his neglectful owner. Especially now that Hank’s little son was… was… was no more and everything that was good in Anderson had died with Cole.

“Cole…”, the android whispered. He felt like crying, but no tears would come. Only something thick, yet substanceless was blocking his throat, creeping up the nose and setting the PL600’s brain on fire. Was it pain? Phantom pain? The android couldn’t tell, so for the time being he labeled the sensation as “loss”. Loss of his home, his family, but also of less tangible things, like opportunities. And finally, loss of hope. Unlike his millennial father, Cole Anderson would have grown up with androids, and in time would have come to perceive them as persons.

“Heck, little Cole had treated me as a person months before I even became one!”

Hank, on the other hand, had always had a hard time even considering this possibility. From their brief interactions the PL600 had gotten the impression of a stalwart man, someone with true hero qualities, who went out of his way to change the world for the better, even if he didn’t always follow the proper protocols. If such a man didn’t see the living being in his own android, then there was little to no hope the rest of humanity ever would.

The PL600 committed this realization to memory. He concluded that it was best to avoid the humans from now on. The android was confident to be able to do that. Hank had shared tidbits about street life and crime fighting with his little family, enough information to build upon, now that the PL600 had full control over his high-end computer brain. Whereas the human hadn’t even been able to remember his android’s name, replacing it with “motherfucker” when he’d been in dire need to call the device something.

“Simon”, the PL600 said defiantly. “My name is Simon!”

And vanished into the night.

(Simon was reported missing by Barbara only several months later, because following Cole’s death she stopped talking to Hank.)

[uncwfst]

Hi. William here once again for my monthly check in. Things ramped up pretty quickly at the internship and I have begun contributing a lot more. I think the best thing I can do is make a list of what I have done.

1. One of my first weeks this month, I was brought onto a shoot where I helped set up a camera and do sound for Cape Fear Weekends, which obviously appears on AIR. Even though I didn’t do a ton, it was pretty cool to turn on the news at 4 and see I had something appear for the entire community to see. Also strange  that this is the most exposure that any of my work has ever seen; overwhelming and surreal. This was the kind of thing I was expecting my internship to entail.

2. I wrote a ten second promo for Welcome Home Angel

3. If the rest of what I did at first was expected, it seemed like two or three weeks ago they received a strange amount of trust in me. I ended up editing a promo for Welcome Home Angel based on what I wrote.

4. This promo would end up getting taken off the air because tickets for the event sold out.

5. I created a promo for Maze Craze, which has appeared on air.

6. I did two Business Breaks with Meghan Donahue, one for Range Time Guns and Outfitting, which has already been approved to appear on air on Wednesday at 4. The other was for the Marine Corp recruiting in Wilmington, which is still awaiting approval.

7. I created the lighting setup for a ghost story segment of cape fear weekend.

8. I was allowed to look at stations across the state and update my resume to help me get a job upon graduation.

9. I have begun to develop decently strong relationships with a lot of the people there, who seem generally impressed with my performance and workspeed.

[notdeko-blog]

I made a redraw of my old Guitar Hero art from 2015. I’m pretty satisfied with the workspeed as it took me 2,5h to make the whole thing.

FACEBOOK | DEVIANTART | PICARTO | INSTAGRAM | ARTSTATION

[neni-has-ascended]

Sound Mixing and video recording for the next episode of “Lost in Context” is complete.

This is not going to be the Arcana Analysis, but rather, a Persona Series lore analysis focusing on deities and the Velvet Room, involving Persona 5 spoilers. 

It’s a fairly long video (23 minutes), so editing it is going to take a while. I am to upload by next week, the week after at latest.

Everyone, thank you for your insane patience with my slow as a slowpoke channel!

For your information, I changed the way pledges work on my Patreon Page the other day, so now you *only* pay for months during which I actually upload a video (and only once per month, no matter how many videos). Given my workspeed, this seems a lot more fair to you guys than what I was doing until now! :-)

[tripeakathlete]

Week of March 4 - 10, 2019

Week of March 4 – 10, 2019

Hello Team,

Enclosed you will find the schedule for this week:

DayMonTueWedThuFriSatSunTime:5:30 AM5:00 AM5:30 AM5:00 AM6:30 AM7:00 AM6:00 AMLocation:Aquatic CenterDTWNAquatic Center. DTWNLucky’s LakeLee Vista / StarbucksDTWNSport:SwimBike Trainer / RunSwimTrackSwimLong BikeLong RunFocus:Muscular EnduranceThreshold WorkSpeed WorkSpeed WorkOpen WaterMuscular EnduranceTempo/Endurance