#trying to understand 3d figures a bit better

[thenegoteator]

lighting practice :D

[quibbs126]

And this here is today’s attempts at drawing Transformers, specifically TF One

I had this idea when I started today, since I knew the faces and noses were giving me trouble yesterday, to try this paintbrush style. The logic in my brain was that the movie was made in 3D, so logistically a more lineless style should work better, right?

I do admit, I think that the lineless style works far better in terms of the eyes and noses being the right shape, but I also admit my lines are probably a bit too soft and I may need to darken them. As well as get something good for the actual thin lines, since the paint brush on its own feels too thick, even at the lowest size

And you know what, since we’re here, does anyone have any Procreate brushes they can suggest for this sort of style? Right now I’m just using Flat Brush, but I wonder if I should use something else

Anyways, so this canvas was supposed to be more D-16, but partway through I figured I should try someone else to draw as well, so I decided Orion, so we could have the yaoi

Honestly my big problem with Pax here is that I don’t have a good comprehensive reference for him, while I can get by just fine with D-16. These were about the best I could get, and that last one I only got because these other two weren’t cutting it

I need high quality references of these characters, or at least specifically their faces. And I’m gonna need even more if I plan to draw Megatron and Optimus as well

But yeah, Orion’s here, and I was also having trouble getting the correct colors for him, because I’m stupid and used to flat colors. D was pretty easy considering he’s just greys, and a yellow tinted grey works just fine there as a grey (though I do admit I’m struggling with his eye color), but I feel like blue tinted Orion looks too blue by comparison. But I don’t know how to give him his proper face coloring without it being the same shade as D-16

I feel like my words aren’t making sense. But just get that Orion colors are a struggle. And still are, because I still don’t think that other grey is the right color

Also Orion has a significantly more complicated helmet than D, so that’s fun

I really wasn’t planning on Orion taking up so much of the space, but I needed to actually practice how he looked so that I could draw him easier. I had numerous attempts at D-16 prior, I could sort of understand his look, but I was flailing in the dark on Orion and needed the practice

I think another problem is that I don’t make him wide enough. But sue me, my character designs usually don’t have their bodies that wide/their heads that small. I’m working on it

I capped off this canvas by just deciding to make a small doodle of Orion kissing D, since why not and also I was too lazy to think of anything else to add

Where do we go from here? I have no clue, but hopefully it’ll go good

[jianghushenanigans]

In defence of Shan Gudao

I can hear what you’re thinking. ���Shan Gudao??? What the fuck is wrong with you???”

In my defence. Well. People defend the actions of villains who have done much worse with less valid motivations.

Look at him. He's crying. (Granted he's about to throw his son in a murder pit but still.)

TO CLARIFY I am not denying that Shan Gudao did things that are bad. He’s in general not a great guy. I’m just saying that a lot of what he does is reasonably understandable given everything that happens to him. This is very tongue-in-cheek and should only be taken as seriously as you want to. But also I’d kill for more fics/meta/etc that dealt with Shan Gudao as a 3D character with complex motivations (Which he can be!!!!! If you try hard enough!!!!!)

Warning: here be spoilers. (Obviously)

Things that Shan Gudao does that are Not Good: abandoning his preganant not-girlfriend; bullying a disabled child; joining the evil foreigners; not dying even when he said he did; killing his shifu; and throwing his son in a murder pit.

Abandoning his not-girlfriend and unborn child

To begin: casual sex is not a crime. Sleeping with the girl who won’t stop following you around and is clearly has a crush on you a bit of a dick move, but the first thing Shan Gudao actually says to He Xiaolan, as per the flash back, is something along the lines of ‘you’re bad at martial arts and should go home’. He’s not her keeper, he’s not her babysitter, he’s not her lover. She falls in love with him – because she’s into negging, apparently – but they don’t actually have any sort of two-sided relationship going on at any point.

(And honestly who can blame her for falling in love. The man looks like this. He should never have grown that moustache.)

He Xiaolan returned to Tianji Manor ‘heartbroken and pregnant’. But, notably, she didn’t actually tell Shan Gudao about Fang Duobing. He didn’t know his son even existed. This screams, ‘he finally agreed to sleep with her after she kept following him around, and when he still didn’t return her feelings after that she realised it was over and finally gave up’. He didn’t abandon her: she left him. If she left him because he didn’t return her feelings, this… isn’t really his fault? The most he could be blamed for is not communicating his feelings but honestly we don’t get to see much of them at all and what we do hear about them suggests that He Xiaolan was the one doing the chasing and he wasn’t encouraging her.

Sidebar: I’m aro + ace and the idea of blaming Shan Gudao for not returning He Xiaolan’s feelings makes me feel kinda ill. To clarify I am not blaming He Xiaolan in this situation either. It’s fucky for everyone involved.

Also, Shan Gudao did not grow up with healthy relationships to model. We don’t know much about his upbringing other than that he was living on the streets until he was around 12 or 15 or however the timeline works when Qi Mushan found Li Xiangyi, and even if we did know about that, he doesn’t remember it. The only ‘romantic’ relationship he has actually ever seen is whatever the hell was going on between Qi Mushan and Qin Po. He might not have even recognised that He Xiaolan actually had romantic feelings about him, because his only example was a couple who used their two disciples as a way of fighting each other.

And finally regarding this point: eight years after Fang Duobing is born, when Shan Gudao finds out that he does in fact have a son, he wants to take him with him. This is not the move of someone who willingly abandoned his pregnant not-girlfriend. Obviously he does change his mind when he actually meets Fang Duobing, which leads us to…

Bullying his disabled eight year old son

Yeah this one’s pretty indefensible, other than the fact that Shan Gudao never had a father/uncle/shifu/parental figure who ever said anything nice to him either so he didn’t really know any better. This is a reason but not a justification. Stop being an arsehole to the child.

Joining Feng Qing and the Nanyin rebels and attempting to take the throne

Picture, for a moment, that you woke up with no memories in some guy’s house, and he says he’s your shifu now, and this 5 year old who says you’re his older brother. And then your shifu begins training you and it’s not only immediately obvious that this 5 year old is better than you at martial arts, but also your shifu does not like you and does not want you in his house and only took you in because of this child who he thinks is the best thing that ever happened to him. And you grow up and this child continues to show you up in every way and gets lots of praise for it and your shifu thinks you’re such a burden to train he gives you to his wife so they can use the children as a way to compete with each other.

And then you leave home and some guy sees this token which is literally the only thing you own that you had with you when you woke up with no memories, and says ‘You’re important. You’re the person we’ve been looking for all this time. We want you with us. You deserve the world’.

Like, I’m sorry. Who wouldn’t say yes in this situation? Shan Gudao, neglected and ignored and alone in the jianghu, was ripe to be groomed for this sort of thing. Why wouldn’t he get swept up in the daze of finally being someone that mattered to someone other than a child?

As far as literally everyone other than his shifu and shiniang are aware, Feng Qing is telling him the truth. But because they didn’t bother to tell even Li Xiangyi about this, let alone the other boy they didn’t even want, there was literally no way anyone could have known any better.

And the truth is, the descendant of Consort Xuan/Nanyin heir did have a right to the throne by blood in a way that the present Emperor of Da Xi very much did not. And how would Nanyin get the throne back if not by a coup? If the heroes had been the ‘true heirs’ to a throne then the coup would have been presented as a good thing to do. But I digress.

Joining Feng Qing and attempting to claim the throne he was led to believe was rightfully his actually makes sense given everything we know about Shan Gudao. They gave him a family and a home in a way that the dysfunctional shit going on on Yunyin Mountain never managed to provide.

Faking his own death

Technically not really a crime. Yeah Li Xiangyi got a bit sad about it but then we wouldn’t have got to see Cheng Yi weeping as he cradled his shixiong’s corpse in his arms. So really, we should all be thanking Shan Gudao for his totally normal and rational plans.

Killing his shifu

This is, technically, the worst crime that Shan Gudao actually commits. This being said. Looking at it from Shan Gudao’s point of view, Qi Mushan deserved it actually. I have already ranted about the fucked up way Qi Mushan and Qin Po raised their disciples and especially Shan Gudao and there’s no need to rehash all of it. But there are always a few extra things I have to say about Shan Gudao and his fuck-ass shifu.

At the end when Shan Gudao is, unsurprisingly, having a massive breakdown about how everything he has been told and made part of his personality for the past twenty years has all be a lie, Li Lianhua says ‘no one was ever competing with you’. And to an extent this is true. Li Xiangyi was not competing with him, from his point of view: they were just training together. But Qi Mushan and Qin Po were competing with each other using him. For Li Xiangyi, the younger child, the always-victor, this had the effect of bolstering his pride and arrogance, but being young (and proud and arrogant) he wouldn’t necessarily have noticed anything else about it. For Shan Gudao, who was forced to always compete with this child he could never beat, who was the tool that meant Qin Po would never be able to win? No wonder this fucked him up immensely.

When Qin Po finally decides to bother telling Li Lianhua about his heritage, she looks at Shan Gudao and LAUGHS at him and says ‘do you really think you were a nobleman from Nanyin? You were just a little beggar Qi Mushan and I took from a group of beggars’. Like wow, I can’t believe you have delusions of grandeur despite the fact that everyone in a position to know anything about you either refused to tell you anything or genuinely believed what they told you to be true. You pathetic beggar child. You should have known your place.

He should have killed her also xoxox

Throwing Fang Duobing into his torture-dungeon-pit-thing

This was also reasonably uncalled for. He’s not a particularly great dad. Do we blame this on the fact that Fang Duobing, like everyone else, chose Li Xiangyi over Shan Gudao? (If so that’s definitely on Shan Gudao, no wonder he didn’t pick you, stop bullying children) Or do we blame this, once again, on his shifu and shiniang using him as a tool to fight each other with? I will choose the latter for the sake of making a point.

ONE FINAL NOTE

Shan Gudao was looking after Li Xiangxian and Li Xiangyi on the streets. This child in episode 30, who is buying food for Li Xiangyi,

is the same as this child in episode 39, who is Shan Gudao.

He’s not someone who was inherently incredibly selfish. He wouldn’t have wasted his own resources on taking care of an unrelated child otherwise. He got an illness that gave him a brain injury bad enough that he forgot his entire past, and then was raised in competition with Li Xiangyi, however much Li Xiangyi was unaware of it.

In conclusion: everything is Qi Mushan’s fault. Thank you for coming to my TED talk

[atoriv-art]

Hihi!! So so sooo sorry if this is a random question, but ur art style is so insanely inpirijg and beautiful to me, so do u have any tips on how u learnt? Like any specific stuff u tried to learn first, specific websites u used, etc? If ur not comfortable with answering this im so sorryy😓😓 YOUR ART IS GORGOUS!!

i don't mind answering, dw!

my learning process is very random to be honest, i usually get a little obsessed with trying to learn one particular thing and end up focusing on that for a bit. the most recent one was trying to learn how to draw better clothing folds :P

the general journey i took isn't really much different from what looks to be what most people do tbh, you can never go wrong with figure drawing (there's many people who can explain it better than me but it's just drawing from reference — preferably in-person, but i've never done that LOL — in short amounts of time trying to get the key elements down. the big website for this that i know of is [line of action])

i also use [these] [websites] for references, i think it's important to know at least the gist of how the human body actually works, how the muscles stretch etc, but you will affix all of that information in your brain much faster if you actually see them in action. for proportions and such i think 3D models are completely fine (and i use them. so much) but when it comes to drawings muscles or fat you will have a much easier time if you've actually seen how they work and look. it'll make you better at shading them too!

there's a bunch of resources for anatomy but my favorites are the [anatomy for sculptors] book (they post tidbits of it on social media, they're geared towards 3D artists but that's just a plus for me imo because you can understand the form you're trying to achieve much better) and the famous morpho: fat and skin folds book (i don't have a link but just like. google it it's the first one that pops up)

i alsoo tried studying color theory a lot but honestly it's rare that i find something i like enough to share KSJDKSJ once you get past the basic "what is an analogous, complimentary, tertiary palette" stuff it gets a little harder to find meaningful stuff online, but if i were to offer any advice it'd be to study light-dark values bc a lot of the time the hue doesn't matter, it's the contrast that does

relatedly (at least for me), for composition i'm still getting the hang of it (orz) but what has worked the best for me so far is this [youtube channel], he's a traditional landscape painter and yet i still find his insight very useful :P i also really like his book on composition but i dunno how available it is.. but essentially any source on composition will just tell you it's an arranging of shapes, the tricky part is how to construct those shapes (via color, contrast, etc) and how to make them convey what you want them to convey.

speaking more broadly and not just what websites/books i use, what i like to do is to save any and all images that look appealing to me, even if i don't feel like doing anything with them at the moment... i do this with pictures, paintings, literally any image that i like lmao pinterest is an easy place to do this in but you could do it wherever, i also have a pureref file full of just Cool Images That I See Online. whenever i feel like i'm stuck i look at the things that inspire me and usually i get the spark to try to do something

i also do this with poses i find in the websites i mentioned earlier, makes it way easier to find a reference for what i want ^^

you'll notice my "style" sometimes fluctuates a lot and it's usually because i saw one particular artist / style of illustration that really inspired me and i wanted to try something similar KSJDKSJ for example the more painterly stuff i've been posted is heavily inspired by aleksander rostov's art for disco elysium!

also i would feel like a liar if i didn't mention this. using "cheats" is completely fine LMAO it's very common that i do some more complicated angles / structures / lighting in 3D with blender to heavily reference them afterwards 😅 i also like environment texturing so in a few cases for my backgrounds i'm painting over a render i made. but you don't have to go that far LOL i'm just saying there's nothing wrong with stuff like that so long as you're not stealing from someone else.

and if you struggle with motivation for studies i'll just say, you can cheat a little and make the studies about something you actually like LMAO like when i was trying to get better at clothing folds i just drew a bunch of naruto characters and paid more attention to the clothing. it's silly but it works :)

[sexhaver]

ive been playing Cassette Beasts for a minute and it never stops being funny to me how flagrant they are about making this "Pokemon but with features you didn't know Pokemon has always needed". off the top of my head:

super effective/NVE hits have added benefits/debuffs beyond just doubling/halving the damage (hitting Electric types with Ground reduces their evasion and speed, hitting Steel types with Poison gives them poison-coated spikes that do contact damage, etc)

legally-distinct-Pokemon will learn new moves while in your party without having to battle, and you can then straight up steal these moves from them and put them on a not-Pokemon you actually care about using, which gives an actual incentive to hunt down and raise otherwise fringe not-mons beyond completing the not-Pokedex

we all played the Pokemon Infinite Fusion fangame right? we know how fusions work? okay so this game has them as temporary per-battle things instead of permanent ones, which is only marginally less cool while being infinitely easier to balance around

attempting to catch something shows you the percentage chance of success so you know whether you just got unlucky or if you should save your Pokeballs-i-mean-blank-cassette-tapes

leveling up is tied to your not-trainer instead of your not-pokemon, so you don't end up in the classic trap where your starter is way overleveled and everything else is underleveled and then you hit a fight your starter can't solo and have to spend an hour grinding to get the weaker not-mons up to par (funnily enough most Pokemon Nuzlocke romhacks have already figured this out and give you infinite rare candies with the only restriction being that you can't level past the next gym leader's ace pokemon, because Pokemon fans have realized that grinding is the worst part of the game way before Game Freak has)

moves, not-Pokeballs, not-PokeCenter visits, and healing items are all bought using entirely separate currencies which stops you from trivially breaking the economy in half

the soundtrack, fittingly, is pretty good! the vocals were a bit much for my taste but there's an option in the settings menu to straight up turn them off (letting the BGM play on its own), which i've never seen in any other game and really appreciate

downsides:

on a game design level, i understand why can i only carry a max of 5 not-Potions and 1 not-Revive at a time - it's to put a limit on how far away from fast travel points i can get by just running away from everything and healing off damage. on a gameplay level, however, this feels pretty bad

the pixel art style is trying to look as much like Pokemon as possible without actually being Pokemon so the overworld sprites look more like beta stuff from Pokemon that they cut for looking too weird. i have yet to find a haircut that doesn't look bad

this is super petty of me but something about the bloom and lighting of the 3d environments combined with pixelated 2d sprites that still cast shadows makes me painfully aware im playing a video game. it's like they were going for the same aesthetic as Octopath Traveler but fell just barely short. i can't think of a better way to articulate this feeling but if you know you know

it does that really obnoxious half-assed style of voice acting where plot-relevant characters will sometimes (maybe every third or fourth textbox) speak the first two or three words of dialogue before trailing off. mashing through textboxes (as one does) means constantly getting jumpscared by "hmm"s and "haha!"s "okay then!"s

i get that they wanted to make the player feel involved in the story, and it has a pretty decent hook so far, but oh my god. the amount of dialogue "choices" that just transparently do not matter. you know how people memed on Fallout 3 and 4's dialogue choices all leading to the same outcome, to the extent that you were basically choosing between "yes" and "yes (rude)"? and you know how Bethesda would at least attempt to justify how both options led to you accepting the quest anyways, even if it was really dumb? Cassette Beasts has streamlined this process even further by making the options in most of their binary decisions so identical that they don't even require different followup dailogue before rejoining into the main conversation thread. a solid 2/3rds of the dialogue options in this game so far feel like checks that you're still awake. i know this is a minor issue because people aren't playing Pokemon-likes for the engaging "choices matter" approach to storytelling, and i did ignore it at first, but it's so pervasive that you really can't ignore it

[canmom]

can an LLM write a demo?

ongoing LLM probing efforts: I tried giving them a challenge to "write code for a 4k demo to render an ocean scene".

note, in demoscene parlance, a '4k demo' refers to a demo that fits in 4 kilobytes, not one that renders to a 4k monitor. this is a stupidly difficult high-context problem and I didn't expect to really get perfect output. well, shocker, the output was largely not all that impressive in human terms.

Here's the best result I was able to get after a fairly extended dialogue with DeepSeek R1 70b, a 300kb demo using opengl:

many wave, very ocean

I'm kind of wondering why I did this at this point, but I think the main reason was that I started to buy a bit of the hype and wanted to reassure myself that LLMs are still a bit daft?

first I tried two LLMs on lmarena.ai but the site bugged out when I rated them rather than tell me which bots I was talking to.

Both generated what looked like a valid OpenGL program (though I did not attempt to compile either), however, looking closer the output was flawed in various ways. The left one decided to do some limited raytracing in the fragment shader rather than displace a mesh. It claimed to be using Gerstner waves, which would be cool, but a closer look at the output showed it was actually just sines. I'm also not sure quite what it thinks it's doing with the projection - it just seems to take the fragment position as if it were the 3D position.

The second AI does better, generating a plausible-looking vertex and fragment shader file with sine-based vertex displacement. There are some oddities, though, like the fact that it doesn't actually use the generated vertex and fragment shaders as external files, writing them out again as strings in the actual program. Overall, I could believe that if I compiled this it would look like a basic sinusoidal ocean with Phong shading. Old-school but reasonable. Unfortunately I closed the tab so I can't actually test it anymore.

Curious about what might be going on inside these models, I tried asking DeepSeek R1:14b the same challenge. Predictably this smaller model did worse. Its chain of thought prompting gave it a pretty coherent description of how you would write a demo like this, but also revealed some interesting confusions, for example multiple times referring to 'example code' that didn't exist, or quoting things I didn't say ('the user mentioned OpenGL and Vulkan').

When it came to output, though, it only gave me a list of steps to follow and omitted actual code:

There is no 'detailed response provided'.

After issuing some clarifications, DeepSeek R1:14b came up with the idea of creating a text-based demo instead, and generated some plausible-looking code in C++. I figured I might actually compile this, but it used a header file conio.h without explanation. Asking it to clarify led to it figuring out this is an old Windows header, replace it with standard library code, and actually spontaneously add a conditional compilation check for a Windows/Linux difference.

I tried compiling the provided code and ran into some missing libraries. A little coaxing gave a lot of blather to tell me 'you need to #include <cmath>'. A little more coaxing got it to tell me what compiler flags would be needed.

Thus I can present to you Deepseek R1:14b's demo:

Beautiful. Sure to win first place. The 'press q to quit' thing doesn't work. And the compiled binary definitely doesn't fit in 4kb (though it might if I stripped it etc.). But... it tried?

For fairness sake, I'll flood my RAM to try the 70b version as well. To its credit, its 'think' block immediately understands what a '4k demo' is supposed to be. Unfortunately it then goes off the rails and decides to do it in pygame, which is... babe you ain't gonna make a 4k demo in pygame lmao. As the output continued, it forgot that 4k referred to binary size rather than resolution, resolving to test the pygame program which is... not something an LLM can do.

Curiously (and this is something I have noticed a couple of times with DeepSeek), the 'actual' answer after the <think> block basically ignored all that Python stuff and wrote me a basic 'hello triangle' OpenGL program in C. So what was the point of all that thinking? Apparently when it maps from the 'think' LLM path to the 'final output' LLM path, DeepSeek can just... ignore what it was thinking about? The shaders it generated were pretty limited, it basically generates one big triangle over the screen with a scrolling sine wave on it, but I decided to see if it would compile anyway.

I tried asking it for advice on setting up GLFW and GLEW with MinGW and its answer was mostly quite good... but garbled some details (suggesting inconsistent places in where to put the libraries), which luckily I know enough to be able to spot. In the end we get this as the resulting demo:

I've lowered my expectations a lot by this point, but I will give DeepSeek a lot of credit for helping me get a working MinGW/OpenGL build environment. Given that it's a long time since I've fucked about with C/C++, and there's nothing so nice as cargo in this ecosystem, it was a lot faster than figuring it out from the docs.

The executable was more like 400kb than 4kb, so I thought I'd see if I could coax DeepSeek R1-70b to make it smaller. The chain of thought generated here was a genuinely solid discussion of sizecoding techniques, but the real proof would be whether DeepSeek could apply the ideas it pulled out concretely. In the end it gave me a list of ideas to try, including a couple of compiler flags - with this I shaved off 100kb, but it's still far too large.

(Ironically it suggested using "minimalistic frameworks often found in demoscene communities".)

I think I've spent as much time investigating this as I want to. Overall, DeepSeek R1 70b did a pretty good job of understanding what I wanted and generating relevant output, and tbh I could definitely imagine a LLM being useful if I needed to quickly reference info while writing a demo, but evaluated on the original question of 'can this LLM write a 4k demo depicting an ocean scene', the answer is a pretty emphatic no.

Running this on my computer, this took ages to generate the full output token by token - the full interaction ended up taking a couple of hours. But if I did this from scratch, having to look up docs and everything with zero experience with the APIs, I think it would probably take me about the same time to get a working OpenGL program.

Could the 'full size' models do better? Quite probably, but I ain't spending money on this shit.

[patheticpoems]

hi love, i’m not trying to be annoying, i never send questions, but i do have a few doubts and even though i tried to “figure it out” on my own, i was honest with myself and thought maybe a little help wouldn’t hurt — and i really adore you!

i’m really good at manifesting in general, but now i’m having complications. it used to be easy for me to not be affected by the 3D, but now that it’s something more emotional and important to me, sometimes i feel very secure, and then i feel worried and a little anxious. i keep telling myself that it doesn’t matter, that nothing is big or small, and that it’s already mine. it’s easier when i feel good, but when i don’t and the anxiety kicks in, i feel like maybe i’m ruining it, maybe i still have some association with the law of attraction? like when i don’t feel good, i think i’m blocking myself.

also, i assumed that circumstances don’t matter, but i noticed that they did affect me after all.

this all started because a couple of months ago i lost my grandma, and my world turned upside down. because of that, my bf and i broke up. i really love him, and although i felt guilty for a while for causing it, i forgave myself because i was going through a hard time, and it was understandable…

i realized that even though i can manifest, i was limiting myself. i saw clearly that my desires and what i want are much bigger than i used to think. i really do want a lot, and it’s finally time to live the life of my dreams. so the only lingering guilt i have is that despite being good at manifesting, my self-concept and my confidence in the law dropped after everything that happened — and i feel a bit ashamed of being in this position. it was hard, and it still is, but it’s not an excuse, especially when what i want is the life of my dreams — which is so much more than i once believed possible.

i miss my boyfriend, and it’s been a few months. so even when i assume that everything will be fine, and if i really love him and he’s just a reflection of me, there are still thoughts or memories that make me worry, like if things will go well, or if he’s talking to someone else — and if we’ll get back to the relationship we had, which was really stable, and that i want to be even better. everything went to hell, so it’s still hard to let go of that negative, distant version of him, especially when i was grieving. when i meditate and visualize, i truly feel like this is what i want. but it’s not just him — he’s important to me, yes — but going back to the topic of the life i dream of: i want a better appearance even though i’m very pretty, i want money, the clothes, to have whatever i want and not settle for less. it’s a lot, i even realized i really want to be a model and live that kind of lifestyle, and i’m finally owning that.

i’m sorry if this is redundant… i’m trying to keep it short, i don’t usually send questions so i don’t know if it’s too much, especially since i finally allowed myself to believe it’s okay to be in this position and ask for a bit of help. i love reading, i enjoy neville, but honestly, if i already had everything i wanted, i wouldn’t be reading it so much or scrolling through tumblr when i’m panicking.

it hasn’t been easy to come back to all of this after living my life happily, but at least it showed me that i truly aspire to more. if it’s just about assuming, i feel conflicted — like, should i act or behave in a certain way? i should also mention that since march i went through a lot, like forcing myself to meditate when i only like doing it sometimes, doing sats when i actually don’t enjoy it, and affirming only when it feels natural. i’ve had enough of doing things i don’t want to do just because i think i’m trying to “get” something when deep down, i wouldn’t be doing any of it if i already had it.

but i’m confused about all of this, i don’t know what to do now and i don’t want things separately, or to get one thing and then the next and then the next. thank you so much if you read all of this, your blog is such a big help. <3 thank you…

none of this is redundant. you're very aware of your behaviours and how you react to them which I applaud you for and it is a really good thing that you actually look at yourself critically. listen, it is okay if you aren't feeling positive, I'm sure you know that from what you mentioned about it maybe being something you still hold onto from loa, but remind yourself that your emotions don't manifest. if you are emotional, be emotional, handle whatever it is you're feeling. If you want to cry, cry. If you're having anxiety then do whatever methods work to help you calm down. You could never block yourself, ever. You could never ruin anything, understand that.

Do you correct your thoughts with regards to your boyfriend? If so, that's what matters, but remember if you have him why would the idea of him talking to someone else even exist. And as for assuming it doesn't mean you have to behave a certain way. Assuming is knowing. Your behaviour doesn't dictate your assumption, your awareness does. If you want to be a model then assume it. You're a model. There. Doesn't feel much different, does it?

Sweetheart, you've done this before, you know you're capable and you know you want more for yourself. Your circumstances made things difficult for you, that is okay, but tell me, why would that suddenly change the power you have? Everything stems from you, everything is based upon your perception. If you want something it is already here because you are a part of everything. Your boyfriend is yours. I need you to understand that despite what your mind will have you think and how it'll make you stress over nonsensical jargon, that if you assume he is in love with you and wants you back then that is fact. There isn't a debate here, this is not a discussion, this is a fact, your mind is just trying to worry you because it believes that these negative things are 'logical'.

And I assure you, you don't need to wait, you don't need to wait on things to come one by one, bit by bit like some investment, it can come all at once, because it is already here, just accept it. Live in the end. Experience fulfillment. There is nothing left to do, creation is finished. You're determined I can see that but the only real advice you need is to be reminded that you've been manifesting and you know how good you are at this, what you need you need to realise is there are no exceptions, it doesn't get harder because it's personal. If you're doing a performance but your parents or whoever is there and you get nervous it doesn't suddenly mean you are a bad performer, it just means you're feeling emotions, you still are great at what you do.

[foxwitchaine]

Which is your most hated character in Miraculous Ladybug?

I wouldn't say hate so much as strongly dislike, as it takes a lot for me to outright loathe a fictional character. More often than not, I have better things to spend my energy on than hating a fictional character.

But if I were to answer that, five take the top spot:

1.) Lila Rossi

I know. Surprising, isn't it. Well, it's all fun and games until you actually meet one in real life. And it's frustrating as hell getting those with the wool over their eyes to listen until it's too late. I have to emphasize that it wasn't originally part of the plan to redeem her in the early drafts. It was thanks to Rafe that I even considered doing a Lila redemption.

Lila had a lot of potential in the early seasons. Of course, that was before she was turned into a one-dimensional villain with little in the way of making her interesting. It says something that I got the feeling the showrunners were trying to make her hateable without actually putting in the effort while reading the Chameleon transcripts. (I had to stop reading to settle my blood pressure)

All in all, Lila is just a symptom of a bigger underlying issue regarding the show's writing. I personally think she has a very nice design, but it looks better in 2D than 3D.

2.) Gabriel Agreste

He's a severely underwhelming main villain. At the start, he had potential. But as the series drags on, it's become painfully clear that the showrunners don't actually know how to make a compelling main villain. He was surprisingly much more intimidating and better-designed in the pilot PV.

Gabriel also lacks the charisma you would find with iconic main villains such as Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, the rogues gallery in the first Powerpuff Girls, Batman's rogues gallery, and so on. I could make a whole post about how to write Gabriel better, but I don't feel like resurrecting a dead horse.

3.) Adrien Agreste

The poster boy for wasted potential. When Rafe and I first started watching Miraculous Ladybug, Season 2 hadn't been released yet. He was nice, if a bit bland. Could have used some flavorblasting in both design and personality (he's a fashion model, for crying out loud. Where's his fabulous wardrobe?)

And then all the red flags in Seasons 3-5 started popping up.

As it stands, he's nothing more than a plot device to humiliate poor Marinette. And a mouthpiece for the writers' very skewed morality. We weren't going to redeem him at first, but then it occurred to me a fantastic way to strike a devastating blow against Gabriel. I won't say anything more since they're spoilers.

4.) Alya Césaire

Ohhhh boy. Where do I even begin with this one? Disregarding the racism allegations towards the writers regarding her character, Alya is just an awful best friend, plain and simple. While it's true that she's a go-getter who isn't afraid to go for what she wants, that same trait has pretty much been solidified into a toxic trait courtesy of her refusal to question Lila later in the show. Even after Marinette broke down in front of her and confessed her secret identity in Gang of Secrets.

I will forever hate that episode just for how entitled everyone was about Marinette's secrets.

When Rafe and I were brainstorming who to use as our civilian antagonist to fill in for Lila, it was rather telling that Alya was among our first choices. It wasn't our intention for her to fall as hard as she did in The Wolves in the Woods, but honestly? It was inevitable.

5.) Caline Bustier

She's a non-authority figure who coddles the troublemakers in her class. I'm restraining myself at the moment because I've had teachers just like her in real life. Who look good on paper and are the sweetest people on the outside. But their inability to discipline a class regardless of behavior does a lot more damage in the long run than many would care to admit.

Bustier is a character who I could have grown to understand if the writers handled her better. The biggest brat of the school is the daughter of the city mayor. That right there is a beautiful setup for interesting conflict. We could have gotten a plot where we had a good, caring teacher trapped in a terrible situation by her superiors. Which is unfortunately something that can and does happen in real life. Instead, we got an airhead who can't for the life of her understand this simple thing called nuance.

I find it very telling the fandom prefers Mendeleiev over her.

Honorable Mentions:

Principal Damocles: Too much of a spineless noncharacter to really care about

Tom and Sabine: I try to understand the parents' side of things given parenting is far from an easy task

Bustier's class: A mixed bag here, since I don't think they're necessarily bad kids

Mayor Bourgeois: Again, another mixed bag here since he's another spineless "parent"

Zoé Lee: Too much of a blank slate to have an opinion on

Félix Fathom: What kind of a name is that?

Master Fu: He was done so dirty in his backstory

Chloé Bourgeois: Another with wasted potential

[nhaneh]

@lynxden assuming you meant cpu and not gpu then yes xD

it's basically some of the most memorable and fun moments I've had learning programming has been about doing things the Hard Way™ - doing things manually tends to require you to spend more time thinking about what the computer's actually doing to accomplish the things you ask it to do, which is inevitably a lot more work and often nowhere near as efficient or capable because it's pretty unlikely that you just happen to be smarter than the entire R&D teams they have at Nvidia or Unreal or wherever - but it does force you to learn stuff, at least on a temporary basis.

I mean look, when I first learned how to do proper programming that wasn't just faffing around in Qbasic or whatever, it was on Turbo Pascal in DOS some 25-odd years ago, and I'm kind of forever grateful that when it came to doing graphics, instead of just having us use the built in Borland Graphics API, the teacher taught us how to enter VGA mode 0x13 via direct DOS interrupts, and then how to draw graphics by writing directly to the part of memory that held the screen for that mode.

I still remember the address being 0xA000.

So when I decided I really should take another stab at trying to figure out how the hells matrices work for 2D and 3D transformations a few weeks back, I thought hey why not try doing all of this directly using the Win32 GDI API, BitBlt:ing a framebuffer into the graphics because then I'll also have to re-learn a bunch of stuff that I've more or less forgotten over the years. Plus, there's a part of me that kind of wants to try to take some time to learn at least a little more about software reverse engineering - see if I could ever get to a point where I might be able to look into whether some examples of old games or software that doesn't work so well anymore could be updated to work a bit better.

So, step by step I'm gradually working my way towards a software triangle rasteriser to see about poking around with all of that and I dunno maybe I'll make something small and simple out of it like maybe some vampire survivors-alike or something like the original after burner or maybe even descent or something, who knows.

For now it's mostly a whole lot of googling around, trying to wrap my brain around stuff that feels like I used to find it easier to understand than I do now, and basically just reminding myself why I liked doing some of this stuff, haha.

[cbedfordart]

Hey! Question from one wannabe game design graduate who is also an artist and wants to make their own (very simple) little game one day - how is it like working on a game set to release one day? Did u feel discouraged learning a new skill (?) after already being a pro artist? Was the game a random idea or have you guys been planning this since a long time? Btw super excited for Sorry We're Closed and I'm obsessed with the retro look and artstyle <33

Firstly THAnk you so much for being into Sorry We're Closed - it's my lil bby pride and joy so I'm glad someone out there in the wider world is looking forward to it! I'll try and answer your questions in order and not ramble too much! I'm a little older now, and gotten to that point where deadlines aren't so scary anymore. There's a point in which you learn to live with what you can make, rather than trying to make something that's not what's within your ability (which is why we always want more time to get better while we work). But after a while you just realise its better for the idea to be out there in the world where other people can see what you were trying to do! Admittedly i will do a lot of hours sometimes if i REALLY want something to be a certain level or if I'm particularly stuck on something , but a deadline keeps me realistic. It allows for the thing to be good and exist, rather than perfect and existing only in my mind. Learning a new skill was actually extremely exciting. I wanted to absorb everything like a sponge. I hadn't done any 3d modelling before 2020 seriously (i tried zbrush once in like 2015 and i kept crashing my computer lol). I just wanted to keep going because it was so fun seeing my creations come to life! I always dreamed of designing game characters and it was literally happening before my eyes. Also, the indiedev community is extremely kind, helpful and resourceful. There's lots of free knowledge out there, and people who are willing to talk to you and help you figure things out! Being trained as an artist honestly only helped the modelling endeavour. Having an understanding of anatomy helped my understand how I wanted to approach the form of my models - what needed to be shaped and what I could get away with painting on.

So my knight is about 934 verts/1,861 tris (sort of like a ps2 character) but painting can give some fun depth. I've found this method to be really tricky though as it's highly prone to unflattering angles - but thats partly cause I'm still learning and relying too much on my skills as a 2d artist I guess. This model I made a bit later on, the Sorry We're Closed models I made were far earlier before i really knew what i was doing so they rely even more on my painting skills

but I felt it was okay since we were going for a nostalgic game feel which means some funny deformities like this

but it's whatever, i think it's kind of cute lol. We started planning the game in 2020 as well, literally after I saw my partner Tom make a character model move around in Unity (it looked pretty terrible) so i said I'll make models and he would code. Then I came up with a story, and from there we came up with how the game itself would play. Game design itself is something we were both lacking and real experience in so that has been the biggest wall to climb so far but its been a really fun and rewarding journey so far. Anyway sorry for the ramble!! I really hope you get a shot at working on a project you really love and want to pour everything into!

[redteablogger]

Art rant advice repost

im deciding to post how I do some breakdowns and some art critiques I've done in the past. feel free to reach out to me if you want me to talk about how to understand the subject you're trying to draw I also have a discord server with a bunch of art resources I might also try to start streaming about it if people would be interested in talking about developing art skills with me. This post is otherwise going to be not to the point because I'm sad today and saying things about art tends to make me feel better.

this is a basic breakdown on how to relate a bit of average proportions to anatomy without getting too bogged down in the details. I think most people's place to start is anatomy and overlook the importance the rythym of form (like underlying 3d structure or the balance/weight of a figure), if it isn't anatomy it's often the proportions and learning proportions makes people think there's only one way to properly draw humans when that is very rarely the case. While anatomy isn't the...worst place to start I wouldn't really recommend it when it's seeing the details before the foundation. Like thinking about the interior decorating before the walls of the house have even been erected. Like interior decorating without a house it's especially difficult when you don't know what the space is supposed to be or where anything fits, and the end result isn't gonna come out the way you imagined because the couch you wanted to put in the space can't really fit when you didn't know where the doors or windows were supposed to be when you picked it out. That's like putting all the work into drawing the face and then the rest of the body looks weirdly less detailed or awkward because the face was your sole focus and you ran out of energy to put as much thought into the rest of it. I know it. I can tell when that's the case. It's practically always on the face or the clothes or a torso with arms not properly attached to it. I see it! AND I KNOW YOU'RE DRAWING IT A PART AT A TIME INSTEAD OF SEEING IT HOLISTICALLY!

Breakdowns that give you a sense of volume, ignoring the details like clothes hair and specific facial features can be a really helpful tool to understanding what is actually important to getting a peice to look right without commiting too much effort into it. Also seeing stuff like it's 3d can begin to give you an idea how light behaves on it because it looking at your subject like an object than simply lines on a 2d page.

some extra examples of figure breakdowns it's good to do it on references and it's good to try to imagine it like this so you can pose characters with dimension even if not all the limbs are visible and visually proportionate because of the viewer's relationship to the subject...or in a simpler scarier term the PERSPECTIVE.

understanding perspective is one of the biggest reasons why you can't rely on proportions to inform you on how to make the cool kind of art you wanna make. What I often see with it is that people jump straight into perspective thinking that it's just about making hands or feet really big and the rest of the far away stuff small for no reason while still having a weak understanding of the logic of why "close thing big, far thing small". They wonder why their art looks kind of weird and janky struggling with one of the most obtuse and difficult thing without asking the easier more relevant questions. What do I think is the easier more relevant questions to figure out first? What is the question so many artists starting off fail to answer?

~drumroll~ What are you trying to draw? That's the golden question and so many artists can't fuckin answer it. Hell even I struggle to answer it sometimes and when I do those are the art peices that end up being the biggest pain in the arse. How does one figure out the answer to it? well you draw a lot of trash really quickly and put something together when you find something interesting in the shit sketch bin and then expand on it until you like it AND THEN you move on to really rendering it, this is what a lot of people will call thumbnailing OR you find references and mash it together until you get the vibe of what you're going for. Really good artists will do both. This stage can be super fun but it's not necessarily making the prettiest looking art ever out the gate. It's a stage I'm stuck on a lot.

Because it's the part of art that I can figure out what I wanna say with a piece and really play around with how the viewer looks at it or how to pose a character without getting bogged down on the details.

I'm an artist with commitment issues to rendering I jump from sketch to sketch because I can't stop comming up with neat lil ideas I get enamored with and it's the reason I can't make anything social media worthy and is why I'm a unknown nobody with the art I make. despite that it's probably why I've been pretty decent in my general development as an artist and I maintain the motivation to keep at it because art to me is just a process of getting the idea down and getting better at getting the point across with it. And really that's the only the point of learning through all specific art skills, it's to be more effective at getting the idea across. Not just for drawing hands "correct" as it is to get the point across that what the view is looking at is a hand. Regardless of if it is funny lil animal crossing ball hands or a monsterous pile of limbs.

anyways this is probably a decent spot to conclude this particular artsy rant. Key takeaways -don't get caught up in the details -focus on the point you want to get across than the quality of art -good lessons to learn first is the foundational stuff like 3d forms and gesture (stuff like anatomy, perspective and proportions are hard without a good understanding of those two) - be ok with sketching a lot of shit really fast it's part of the process - I wanna rant about references in another post -I'll probably rant more about perspective and composition in another post -color too that can be a different different different post. -I'm sad and talking about art makes me feel better it hasn't solved my problem but i feel a little less shitty about it now.

[nikoisme]

Something that I always really like in your art is your use of shapes. They're simplified but still very believable if that makes sense. Do you have any tips on that? Or could you direct me to where you learnt that?

I'm glad you like the shapes! They're one of my favorite things to draw and see in art hahaha. I'm going to explain how I personally do them, so it might vary for others.

So when looking at objects, i do try to break them down in big shapes. I usually hold what i'm drawing as a 3d object in my mind, and then i just try to,,,, rotate it. It gives me a much better sense of how it looks. For example, if i'm drawing a head, i'm drawing it as a box - i can easily rotate a box in my head, so it gives me a stronger idea of how i want to draw it. Also i just try to feel something out. I can feel out the structure of my finger or face just by touching it. This helps me a lot for planes, which comes in handy when i try to render things.

Instead of looking at objects as a bunch of different, smaller lines, i try to break them down into bigger lines that kind of define a shape. For example, if i'm drawing a face, i'm not going to draw each individual slope or curve of a line. While it would look fine, i would have no idea what i'm trying to draw. I'm drawing lines, which are 2d, instead of shapes, which are 3d.

Here's a very rough example

(the angles are a bit different but you get the idea)

With the first one i tried to draw each little curve of the face, but in the other i just broke it down into big lines/shapes. While both look okay, the second one is much quicker to do and a bit more shaped. I want each line to count. So i have one line for the cheekbone, one for the jaw, etc. Also, most of my sketches are just a bunch of boxes, so i have shapes as a fundemental. Of course you can use any other shape, but i personally use boxes because they're the easiest for me to work with.

Then the one that definitely helped out the most was doing a shit ton of figure studies. Instead of focusing on the muscles and the details, my goal is to get the overall form down. For some reason i am horrible at drawing in large scale, so the figures are really small. And I just hold the fact that i want each line to count, breaking things into big shapes/lines and just rotating things in 3d in mind as i go.

These are super rough, and i can definitely spot some mistakes - but the idea is there. Almost each big muscle is a single line. If i have a good sense of the fundamentals, then i can build up on the rest of it.

What helps a lot is of course, practice. I have pages upon pages upon pages of just random poses and heads and other objects in slightly different angles. So something is bound to stick. Also getting a good sense of the fundamentals, aka anatomy. Skulls, muscles, facial planes, bones, you know the stuff. If you understand the fundamental rules, you can break them and adjust them however you like because you know how things are supposed to connect to make sense. Sinix on youtube has some really really great videos on the fundamentals of anatomy and how you can break things down into shapes! Also you can find those 3d references where you can rotate the thing you want to draw.

Also just do whatever shapes you like best! I personally prefer boxes (or squares and rectangled for that matter), i find they suit what i want best. The heads i draw are boxes, the fingers, the hands, the eyes - hell i will break a round object into boxes if i so desire.

Most of this is internalized at this point and became muscle memory, and honestly i never really paid it much attention. So apologies if this doesn't make much sense hahaha! Shapes in general are something i love seeing in art, so i probably absorbed some other things through osmosis (aka i just,, stare at things a lot. I will see a fucking lamppost and go "wow those are some really good shapes you have there" and in my mind i'm already breaking it down like "this is a cylinder, one big line for this side, a box there, some slopes and curves on the other side" so i can reference it from memory later). I mostly fouced on the human figure here, as that's something i draw the most - but this counts for literally any object! I could do figure studies of a chair, why not. My process is the same.

[zero-up]

The first art of John Beastars

To all two people who are actually following me: this is what I've been working on for like a month now. I have vastly underestimated how hard 3D modeling was, which is why I'm only showing the head model, and why decided to trace over it Instead of painting A texture. I honestly just need A break from it right now. Super happy with how the ears turned out though! I actually have a bit figured out about this character. Bio: John is the biological child of Haru and Louis in an AU where Haru got pregnant sometime before her kidnapping by the Shishigumi. Louis' aloof stoicism, combined with Haru's blunt honesty has resulted in A creature that is far more fierce and savage that anything A carnivore could spawn. Was a bit bratty as A kid (and will continue to be so as A teenager, lol). He was initially antagonistic towards his father in law, Legushi, even once culling him A cuck (to which Legushi had to look up the meaning of), but learn to appreciate him as he grew older. He was ashamed of his antlers when they first grew, trying his best to file them down, but encouragement from Haru, was quickly able to accept them. He doesn't have any extravagant goals or ambitions, simply wishing to live A quiet, peaceful life where he can spent quality time with his friends and family. While Louis can't let it slip that he has an illegitimate child due to the reputation destruction, he still tries his best to stay in his son's life, visiting Haru and Legushi at least once a month, and participates in events involving John and his legal family whenever there's an excuse. He is incredibly grateful Legushi for being A positive father figure in his son's life. (I, for one, cannot imagine Legushi as anything other than A doting father.) Louis wishes he could be more involved with his son, as to give him a better childhood than what he had. John is a member of the gardening club in Cherryton, not just because he has a great foulness for plants from his mother, but also because he knew from his mother's testimony that he would likely be the only member, would get the alone time he so desperately needs. And he was and he was correct: he was the only member of the somehow still existing club. Well... Except for A reserved but playful female reindeer in the same year as him, but she seems understanding of his needs for occasional isolation. (He also has a massive tsundare crush on her, FYI.) He has A close relationship with his two younger half siblings (who I'll we reveal more about whenever I get around to it): Kaguya (Haru X Legushi), and [currently unnamed] (Louis X Juno). (I'll probably name the Louis/Juno daughter after one of the daughters of Harris/Juno from Greek/Roman mythology.) I am currently anime only, and as of writing this: only the first half of "final season" is out, so a lot of this is based on assumptions as to where the plot is going that may turn out to be wrong in the future. But this is also technically an AU, so I can hand wave a lot of it as "butterfly effect from Haru geting knocked up", or whatever. Point is: please no spoilers for whatever's going to happen in the second half of final season. Thanks!

Posted using PostyBirb

[mrslittletall]

Yesterday I finished the final DLC case of the second Ace Attorney trilogy and now that I finished all of it... what can I say? I can understand why people say the story of the games is a bit of a mess. Because it is. They clearly start it with trying to have a new main character, Apollo, but make the final case all about Phoenix' story and then in the next game they kinda fridge the new assistant, Trucy, in favour of Athena. I don't even think Athena is a bad character, but wow, I felt so sorry for Trucy. But I also feel sorry for Apollo and Athena, because in the end, they decided to make Phoenix the main character again. His story was told in my book. I heard the sales were bad because Phoenix' name wasn't in Apollo Justice (even though he plays a major role in this one) and yeah... Apollo's backstories as well... is... nobody ever going to tell him and Trucy they are siblings?! Will you just keep that a secret forever and ever and ever? Anyway, okay, the story is a bit of a mess, but still enjoyable. Especially the final cases had me on the edge of my seat and I liked quite a bit of character development of the new characters. The music was fantastic as well, as always. I never thought that I would get a new favourite Objection theme, but Apollo's blows it out of the water. Especially the piano version that acts as his character theme in Dual Destinies. The cases were really really fun. I actually think they were better structured than some cases in the first trilogy. Yeah, they might have been a bit more streamlined, but to be honest, in the first game of the first trilogy you always were moving around until you found the event that nobody pointed out would happen. The characters telling you where you should move next just erased annoyance and frustration. And I sometimes still was stumped in the cases and was like "Okay... I have no clue what the evidence is you want me to present" and sometimes I was like a step too far and was like "But this evidence woooorks! Oh, you haven't figured out the context yes, right? How do I get them theeere, I know the murdered and how they did iiiit." Well, whatever ^^ I had my fun with it. I also played the two DLC cases. I have to admit though, the last DLC case felt like a bonus "Phoenix and Maya vs. Edgeworth" again. Like fanservice ^^ A bit sad that I barely saw ship tease between Phoenix and Egeworth anymore though. Where has it gooone? Oh, also, the 3D models... the ones in Dual Destinies were so rough, Trucy looked so uncanny, but I really liked them in Spirit of Justice. Still, the hand drawn models were kinda iconic, so I was a bit sad to see them gone. Overall, good games, I enjoyed them. I get the criticism, but they are not awful. They are perfectly servicable and enjoyable.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-12-02

It's beginning to look a lot like December the second

Listening:

Got the soundtrack to Paradise Killer at last, which is all hits all the time. Hard to beat the first track for an introduction

Winter is better with hilariously out of place pop jazz.

I also read the artbook that came with this and it's really funny how much this game was made by like four people. Ruthlessly optimized development process by which we mean every corner that can be cut to make this a manageable workload was.

Reading:

Finished the Book of All Skies, which once again confirms that Gregan can write a good drama based on a semi-fantasy science concept.

One thing I like about Gregan is that his characters often only kind of understand the world they're in, which adds verisimilitude! I also don't know that much. If you asked me to talk about fundamental particles a lá Scale, you'd get a similar kind of "Well the last time I was really into this was six years ago, is it leptons or bosons, well, either way, the one that protons are, so yeah the strong force scales with..." kind of half assed kinda correct partially incomplete explanation.

Working through the ROS2 tutorials and reading a lot of things about robot architecture as a result. Now that I suddenly have 1.5 3D printers I don't need I'm going to be trying to hijack their control boards for Robot Shit.

Got back into The City and The City after putting it down for a while. Love an Okay Detective. Tyador is not an exceptional cop, he is definitely not a good cop, but he is, trying, so hard. Poor little meowmeow candidate.

Hard to imagine a book making a more pointed case about borders. I feel like having now half-assedly followed some Euro politics for a year I get the various weird right wing groups more thoroughly.

Watching:

Watched Miami Vice (2006) because I downloaded it at some point and was like huh sure.

This is a mixed bag. It's shot really well, it manages tone and pacing clearly and cleanly, the vibes are impeccable. The actual plot? Okay! There's gay and there's whatever these two have going on. I have not seen the TV series.

Apparently this is mostly digital? Pretty impressive for 2006, Clone Wars was only 2002, given how dark some scenes are, although I'll say we pick on DP's for lighting all black people like Moonlight these days but it's a damn side better than what we did before! Absolutely crushed skin tones in some of these scenes. A movie with a lot of very poorly lit black people.

Started and then stopped watching The Driver (1978) in Czech. It opens with a solid 15 minute car chase that works pretty well! Got distracted in the middle though.

Playing:

Very busy week here:

Got through a couple loops of Elsinore, the Hamlet time loop game where you play as Ophelia. It's okay! It struggles a bit with managing all the things you can do, and it lacks the best part of Hamlet, which is to say the text, but it's fun to mess with Hamlet and pull on weird threads. What happens if you convince Laertes to hang around. What if you don't let Polonius get killed!

There's an added story running the background that is novel to Hamlet, mostly to help make the Time Loop work out, which is okay except for the fact that it's really easy to figure out.

The game doesn't handle its information the best. Unless someone directly tells you something you often can't act on knowledge you see in the world, nor can you update other people based on things you've witnessed. If you follow an arc that makes Lady Gertrude leap from the battlements to her death, you can see this happen in person! But you have to wait for the body to be found, you can't tell the guards about this. It's a little odd.

Haven't hit an ending yet. Getting there.

Beat World of Goo 2, the 15 years later sequel to World of Goo. A noticeably harder game that is making a lot of references back to World of Goo, some fun new mechanics and generally much more complex levels that you have to make your way through. Also some very fun meta stuff that gets a little Stanley Parable Deluxe about sequels. Worth playing! But play World of Goo first, it'll make more sense, and it still holds up.

Started Cyberpunk 2077 which is... hmm. I chose Corpo because I find the concept of "Corporate ladder climber cast out on their own" to be a really compelling concept, definitely not because that's an anxiety I have. It's not like the medical program my new employer pays for costs more per month than I used to pay for a year of the one I used to have. Haha. Wouldn't that be silly. I love satire.

Anyway kind of miffed that they don't let you do the "build yourself back up" part of the roleplaying, I think it would be fun! I love roleplaying in my roleplaying games, I was looking forward to playing V as desperately holding on to the comforts of corporate life that she can no longer afford. Shame.

The gunfighting is good! One of my favourite parts of Cyberpunk the RPG is Friday Night Firefight, which is a tremendously deadly combat system. The gunplay is a little more gamey in here but you still go down fast and staying in cover and taking every advantage you can get is still important, at least as low level.

Why is there a crafting system. I saw that menu entry and recoiled physically. This is a city I exchange eurodollars for goods and services.

Making:

As mentioned, ROS2 tutorials. Many of my ESP32 projects end up reinventing message passing architectures from scratch so I figured I should just cut out the middleman. I will need to figure out a good source of embedded Linux ROS2 host, but I'm very interested in the MicroROS/ROS2 system.

ROS2 is a very *nixy approach to software, you have a lot of litle daemons and environment management and directory-heavy build system shit going on. I'm running this all in an Ubuntu Distrobox on my Arch system to keep it contained and happy which is working well.

Tools and Equipment:

You ever steam eggs? You should steam eggs. Steaming eggs is a very quick and efficient way to get boiled eggs without having to deal with a large pot of boiling water. It's much more consistent as you increase the number of eggs and you don't get any eggs bumping around in boiling water, so you can do it in very small pots or with a very large number of eggs.

A nice hardboiled egg takes about 12 minutes of steaming, and you can get a softboil out in 10 minutes. I've used bamboo steamer baskets and stainless steel vegetable steamers for this.

[james-narchi]

Final Post

This is my final painting on the right and my collage on the left. The mood that I wanted to do was a moody whimsical, that while the colors are muted giving a slow, dull impression, the colors are also varied enough to make it unserious.

This is my word painting. I had some trouble doing the word painting having to redo my underpainting and my solvent and oil paint mixing together, but other than that I found this project interesting. It definitely doesn't look as 3d as my sketch for it but I learned about the process of oil glazing and the mistakes that could happen and I should avoid when and if I do it again in the future. I thought it was a bit of a nuisance having to apply oil briefly and then waiting for it to dry, but the whole process was still interesting. Seeing the color get strong and mix as you layer oil with it was really nice to see.

This is my updated color wheel and I found how adding the complement to mute colors and blending can add better shading to different parts of my painting as shown in the cylinder.

My abstract painting was quite simple so I didn't need to cut through my masking tape, but I did find the process somewhat nice seeing how square my square was and how nice the shapes came out looking in general. On my still life I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to use medium which is something that I still want to try out later in the future. During that project I also had a very hard time mixing my paint in order to get the color that I wanted, especially since sometimes because of how different the paint looked once it was put down the canvas. Using medium was something that was quite interesting to me and although I didn't understand it much, it's something I look forward to learning in the future.

Overall I really enjoyed the opportunity to be able to participate in this class. I had no prior experience to painting before this semester but I had a great time and discovered that it's something that I want to continue doing in the future. I had a lot of trouble during this semester but I hope the experiences, good and bad, will allow to me grow as an artist for myself.