#the lines and all that too. sketchings my favorite part of the process yknow

[stunfiskz]

i need to start keeping a sketchbook again

[moomeecore]

1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 17, 18

wow that's a lot lol! thanks :3 [i already awnsered 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 for other asks so im leaving those out]

2. 5 favourites of your own work?

these r my 5 favorite digital peices ive done semi-recently (like, last 6 months)

unfortunately i don't have enough pictures of my traditional work on hand 2 rlly do this for those 😔

7. Favourite works of all time excluding your own?

idk that is a VERY challenging question to awnser lol !! there's so much art in this world yknow!!!

16. What’s the most daunting part of your process? Ex, planning, sketching, lineart, rendering etc

COLORING i hate coloring things in!!! after that is line art bc even tho i enjoy it, it takes me EONS. like UNBELIEVABLY long!! planning larger projects can be pretty intimidating too tho

17. What inspires you?

nature mostly :] like fungi and plants ! i like to draw outdoors esp in the woods (altho rn it's too snowy to do that) im lucky to live in a place that gives me lots of access to nature . funnily tho this probably isn't all that apparent in my art on my blog, bc i almost soley post my digital work (mainly due to lack of consistent access to a scanner) which is mostly fan art LOL

18. Do you have any larger projects you’d like to pursue? Like comics, shortfilm, a series etc?

nothing as big as that but im currently working on making 2 plushies + multiple small sculptures w clay :]

the plushies r sylveon frm pokemon + a moth. the reason 4 the obvious stitching on parts is bc i made an initial layer w felt where i just focused on getting the shape i wanted & not making it look nice. now im adding the 2nd layer, which is faux fur fabric so as to make them FLUFFY !

[nihiltism]

since ive been too College to have enough art for any sort of summary im just gonna put a general year end rundown of what i feel i did best on this year!!

i think every year since i figured out that i dont need to use pens to line has just gotten better art wise for me. FUCK lining. pencils are my best friends forever and ever and can do your job better than you ever could. anyway apologies for some of these drawings being crunchier than others, i only recently got a scanner and Cannot be assed to scan my old art for this post rn.

also the first art here is a hatoful boyfriend spoiler. i mean i guess the last one is too but its vaguer i think. anyway. none of these are actually analyses of what i learned with each art im just braining

april 5th-

you guys know this one i REALLY like it. why in the goddamn were my best pieces this year hatoful boyfriend. anyway i uh. hey did you know that i didnt do the notgeki with graphite because i like mixed media. i did it because i have not owned a grey pencil for my some-teen years of drawing ever. i only JUST got a grey pencil like. a couple months ago. i mean im good with graphite i would have done it like that anyway but. yeah. anyway this was abt the height of my beginning hatoful fix and Also indirectly what got me to meet like a bunch of my mutuals here!! i did. not know there was a hatoful community. and because That i actually started using tumblr so!! hey thanks hitori. i need to do more birdform art.

april 15th -

this motherfucker! ill be. completely honest i dont have a lot of feedback for a lot of my graphite art bc ive Been doing this. ok actually yknow what i will say. there is a limit for how dark something can be with graphite and i Very much remember going over the inside of the cloak So Much. this was my pet project during my weekly 3 hour long lecture so god bless it. also i do still like how i did the eye. can i draw eye guys exclusively please.

july 3rd -

not really Art im proud of but!! holy shit i dont design often and i dont hate this!! this is at least in part thanks to my gf. my gf knows how to clothes better than i do so i did ask them for help. also i really need to scan this one. or maybe draw her a new ref. anyway (holds up celine) look at her. look at the silly.

september 6th -

this one was a trade for my friend raicatty and. also something i probably should have scanned. but its fine. anyway this one did teach me something and its To Line Your Damn Pieces Darker. lining with the color that youre going to be coloring in is kind of Asking For Disaster if it overlaps with others and u can. see that. this is a bit imparseable. but its also pretty. and thats all that really matters. a fun fact for when i ever do commissions is that being allowed to use this purpley pink pencil i have will make me really happy. its so pretty.

OERSHRIMP INTERLUDE

OERSHRIMP INTERLUDE

november 13 -

forgive me for including a sketch in this but YOU DONT UNDERSTAND IVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO DRAW HUMANS. like. NEVER. much less in an actual decent pose. (god bless adorkastock) im So very delighted by this oboromaru and hes!! like!! one of my least favorite characters!! (not to say i dislike him hes just lower). i dont know what happened here!! if this wasnt at the very back of my Sketchbook I Just Put Away Because It Was Falling Apart id say id finish this one later. rip. he and that dark daroach sketch i had there can just vibe i guess.

aaand the big one. december 8th -

things i learned from this one! 1. the scanner did not pick up the red lines very well! 2. scanners are good! 3: NEVER do a full page project again! buuut i do want to say i am like. insanely proud of this one. its the first art ive done i can really say has any sort of Composition and im so delighted that it turned out just as cool as it looked in my head. also this took forever and i could have easily messed it up Multiple times in the process. so god bless.

[deckspair]

May’s Musical Director’s Commentary

Hey guys! I'm May. You might remember me as "the one who did those nifty chatlogs and the roster page" or "the one who did all the music" or "that one mod who never said anything." Los and Mints agreed to let me write up this "director's commentary" on the music I did for DECK. There's no secret lore tidbits in here or anything, but if you liked my music you might find this an interesting glimpse into the process.

A Note On Sampling

Sampling is the practice of using preexisting audio to make new music. When I talk about what I've sampled here, I'm only going to mention particularly interesting cases. Almost all of the music I've done for DECK features audio from Free Wave Samples, so I figure that's not really worth mentioning except here. It's the other stuff that's interesting. EarthBound was an influence on my decision to pull in a bunch of audio from outside sources. I've always admired that game's use of sampling.

The First Chatlog

The chatlogs have consistently been pretty fun to do. I knew from the start that I didn't want to edit this together by hand, so I wrote a Processing sketch to render the video. It's not the most elegant thing in the world, and adding new features is a massive pain, but it's a lot easier than putting these together any other way. All I have to do is swap out the script and background shader and write a new song and I can just let the program churn away rendering a new video. (Of course, fiddling with the shader until it looks presentable takes so long that it kind of eats into the time savings.)

There's not much to say about this one. The typing sounds were graciously provided by Mints. Those with careful ears might notice the instrument playing the chords in other chatlog songs.

The Second Chatlog

One of the only interesting things about this one: the melody is actually a musical cryptogram! What it spells out is an exercise for the reader. ;) The miscellaneous background sounds are all distorted versions of stuff I recorded myself one day when my film teacher let me wander the halls with a microphone. Film school has its perks.

Rio Hachimitsu's BDA

Doing the first body drop music was pretty intimidating. The body discovery music in Danganronpa has a particular instantly recognizable quality to it. If I wanted to go for that style, I'd have to get it down perfectly. (Otherwise I'd come off as a cheap imitation.) So I decided to be original. After school PSAs would be proud.

The melody here is probably pretty familiar to you all by now. Every BDA has used some variation of this melody because I'm a sucker for leitmotif. The melody itself is a slightly modified version of the Dies Irae. (Yes, I know I'm very pretentious, but being pretentious is fun.) This is also the first instance of what I call the "death rattle." I put that strange scraping sound into every BDA and execution for consistency's sake. You can see it as the moment the soul leaves the deceased's body or the moment the onlookers realize somebody's just died... or something. The really fun part is what it is - it's a bell tree! Yknow, those tinkly whimsical things. It's just been reversed and slowed down and drenched in reverb. It's fun how malleable audio is.

Minnie Minami's EXE

This was fun! Despite being a film student for a while, I've never had to write music to sync up with a video before. (I still haven't - I'm pretty sure the video was edited to match up with the music and not vice versa.) The overall tone of this one was pretty obvious. Of course a ringleader's execution would be accompanied by messed up circus music. Anything else just wouldn't be right. There's not really much else to say about it other than that it includes samples from my toy accordion and slide whistle.

Sampled:

An old recording of Auld Lang Syne

Yasu Kozakura's BDA

The body drop's usage of mirrors really hit me in the art gut, so I figured the BDA jingle should have something to do with mirrors. This is why the melody plays forwards and backwards simultaneously, because mirrors. (Some call that kind of thing a "crab canon.")

My incredibly good and quality cat piano is also in here. A stretched out meow recorded from it forms the basis of the background chord.

NANIKO's EXE

For this one, I gave the video editor three different tracks, one for each "segment" of the execution. I did this as a cop-out because I didn't want to have to try to sync my music up with the video - this way, the editor could mash it all together.

The segment with the mirrors was an exercise in what's called "phase music", where two lines drift out of sync with each other, creating different rhythmic textures over the course of the song. (Piano Phase and Clapping Music, both by Steve Reich, are two classic examples of the form.) For some reason, echoey piano lines phasing in and out of sync feel mirror-y to me. They also form a nice musical callback to the BDA.

Sampled:

Me switching frequencies on the radio

Sayuri Nishi's BDA

Shoutout to Free Wave Samples for having a heartbeat sound. I didn't want to try to make that sound myself with drums. 

Kosuke Nakamura's EXE

This execution is significant because it's the first non-video one. Execution art wasn't my department, so I'm not going to speak on how that change affected the artists, but I found it liberating to be able to follow the more general emotional arc of the execution rather than being tethered to the pacing of a video.

When I asked Angela for guidance on where to go musically, we came to the conclusion that the proper genre would be "Tom and Jerry noir." That description alone is why I loved doing music for DECK - where else do you get the opportunity to write something with that as guidance? The most natural interpretation in my view was a song that starts out jazzy and segues into slapstick-esque classical to mirror the transition from the safety of noir to being mauled by a giant robot cat.

Also, the Slack notification sound is in there, since Los suggested a social media notification sound in the background somewhere. (Slack's basically social media for tech dorks, right?)

Sampled:

Slack

Tom and Jerry

The Missing BDAs

Unfortunately, I got preoccupied and neglected to do BDA music for the deaths in Chapter 4. Generally, there's not many interesting things to say about stuff that doesn't exist. The plan was to sample Pomp and Circumstance for Law N... but I didn't. Sorry, Froggy. I didn't have any other plans for this one.

Ukiyo-Maemi's EXE

This one relies so much on sampling it almost makes me feel bad. I got so much mileage out of the clanging percussion and the spooky background sounds that it's basically cheating. 

Sampled:

My lovely girlfriend 💕

OFF

Akira Akatsuki's BDA

I was in a very percussion-heavy mood when I wrote this. (Can you tell?) Listening to the FLCL soundtrack had me jonesing for some dramatic cymbals.

Sampled:

Earthbound

Genko Junshu's BDA

Junshu's body was found in the Navigation Station. This called to mind sonar beeps and garbled radio messages and such. This is another one that wouldn't be nearly as interesting without the sampling. Hopefully this is transformative enough to not get me labeled a hack.

Sampled:

Earthbound

Law Kiyuu's EXE

This execution actually freaked me the hell out the first time I read it. Freaked me out for like a week - something about the combination of incredible writing and the subject matter. It honestly felt calculated to scare me specifically.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this one. I wanted to write something as unsettling as the execution it was accompanying. The intro is supposed to represent Law thinking he's already dead. Next comes his terror (evoked with the hilariously dissonant Altered scale), and then the final spooky arrhythmic section is supposed to be him being cut apart. (Note that part of the music drifts out of sync with itself to represent Law, uh, going to pieces.) The return of the piano is supposed to evoke the flashback section. That kind of piano sound always sounds spooky and/or sentimental to me.

Not much else to say now that I've dissected (heh) basically all of the decisions I've made for this one. I'm really proud of Law's execution song - it might be my favorite out of all the ones I've done for DECK.

Sampled:

Earthbound

Persona 2: Innocent Sin

The Doug Theme

Death Note

"It's a Long Way to Tipperary"

gamer butt song

Frogbot's EXE

The original plan for this one was start this one off with a hocket-y medley of all the previous body drops and executions. However, it would have been really tedious to export then import all the relevant instruments, so I didn't do that. Instead I remixed the typical BDA theme. It's supposed to convey the shift from FrogBot's reign of despair to the triumph of getting them executed. I realized part of the way through that this segment was far too triumphant given how many people died and the fact that the submarine is about to explode, so then I just ended it by lingering on a diminished chord. I'm not a very subtle person. Frogbot's execution lacks the death rattle 'cause there's no horrifying realization that one of your classmates is dead. (Exercise for the reader: find where I hid the Flintstones theme in this song. Good luck.)

Conclusion

DECK was a lot of fun to work on. I wrote some extremely messy code, made some sick as hell videos, and wrote some pretty baller music. I got to see some wonderful artists do their work, and I got to skim some pretty intense roleplaying. Thank you to everyone who said nice things about my music and to the mods for being really cool dudes. Special thanks to Mints and Los for letting me put this long-winded rant on their blog, and thank you for reading this whole thing.

See you on the flip side, y'all.