march 2022

hello how are you how the hell is it nearly april already! march means 2 years of plague and i'm not taking that well at all but on the bright side classes (in person no less) are back. well kinda just barely, because they delayed it by two weeks. whatever. it means my thesis is upon me, which i'm very excited about. it's still a little hazy in my mind but getting sharper. i kinda wanna try the Q/E camera controls from atlas gate, that felt good to play. i also think it'd be fun to have like. a secret area you access by just walking through a wall, though i also wanted to not have walls and make it outdoors. well, this way i could do both — you start inside and can leave.

but i also like the idea of storytelling from the edges and making a game manual instead of a "game". it has the added bonus of being a way smaller file size that can exist physically. however since i'd have to have some 3D renders in there it wouldn't be that much of a time saver — the only difference between that and a realized game would be the controls, which i can copy from my previous gallery. the manual would probably be better off as a companion, especially since there's a dissonance between the esoteric angle i'm adopting for my art and the desire to make AI and GANs transparently human-made. a tricky spot to navigate, this one, but i think i can separate theory and practice — my art doesn't have to be a teaching tool, it can just be art, especially as it can't be separated from the veiled and occluded trans stuff. the text of the thesis will do the theory talking.

oh and new on the site: a little writing on minimalist web design. i'm calling these shorter one-off musing writing things marrow and they'll go on my artlog index. i also did a little css tweaking. i've learned flexbox! also added some gradient spice as you can see here.

also, i've done progress on the dataplankton zine finally, decided to go for a webzine format so it'll be up on the site once i get the art done! hopefully in the first half of april?

tech talk

just wanted to mention i found out the name for the whole "we have to use up every last drop of performance from the new generation of tech -> oh no it runs like shit -> we need better tech!" bullshit: wirth's law. fucked up that it's been going on since like. forever.

also, kinda unrelated (?) but i found out elden ring's supposedly "running ps4 software in the ps5 so it seems faster" which. is really strange to me? it's the same game, in the same console (just one generation ahead), so like... isn't it the same as saying making the game for the ps5 would make it perform worse? idk. it's the exact same game regardless of platform, you know? i don't even have a point here, i just thought it was a really weird thing to say.

AI art

AI generated gif, shifting robe-like purple shapes with a halo.

sketchy painting of a faceless knight with a large red halo holding a red flaming sword against a red background of spikes. two amorphous shapes float in the sky.

wip / abandonware. there isn't much to it. again indexed for neocities, original on tumblr.

monochrome AI generated gif. pulsating geometry.

other art

digital portrait of a light gray wolf with blue eyes, against a blue background.

commission for Denali1050 over on FR, tried something a little different with the rendering. original on tumblr, you know the drill by now.

pen sketches of multiple abstract shapes with radiolarian elements

sketches during ceramics class :) these radiolarian skeleton-like shapes (well, they're dataplankton too i think) are my go-to doodle at the moment, followed by weird dogs, which are a classic.

oh and i also made a little ascii angel inspired by cinni's incredible ascii work. it was a pretty fun experiment :)

                   _.-._
                  / .-. \
                 / /   \ \
                 ||     ||
 ________        .>     <.        ________
 \  ...  \____  //       \\  ____/  ...  /
  \____   ... \//         \\/ ...   ____/
       \______||           ||______/
              ||           ||
              \\           //
               \\         //
                \\       //
                 \\     //
                  ||   ||
                  \\   //
                   \\ //
                    \v/

media

anime and series

rose of versailles (1979): i started it ages back and just... stopped for some reason (tbf the first ten or so episodes are just petty drama and not that interesting — too much antoinette). oscar my most beloved of all!! also yeah it's kinda wild when there's shit like anime robespierre lmao. it gets really fucking good towards the end
soul eater (2008): yeah idk. watched some eps, it's fun it's shonen and that's enough
our flag means death (2022): oh you bet i watched the gay pirate show. it's nice, i wish s1 wasn't so short though! also i think it's kinda funny how stede is exactly the kind of role i associate with martin freeman, it's a bit uncanny to see another actor
what we do in the shadows (2019-): can you believe i hadn't finished s3 yet? i get lazy with serials. yeah pretty good, the finale was truly something. i'd seen out of context stuff about it and wow they weren't lying
twin peaks s3 (2017): looooooong overdue given i watched twin peaks in 2018 — i just couldn't possibly see what s3 could even be. it's uh. different. a lot more dream-like than the first two seasons, so i'm not sure if i recommend it (unlike s1-2 which are pretty... "vanilla", as far as lynch goes). anyway, still unfinished so i'll talk more about it next month

games

yeah yeah elden ring, we've all played it. i was pretty harsh to it in the beginning because limgrave is a very dull area and i dislike open world to begin with, but it's actually very good — the non-limgrave areas are great and they went all out on the bosses' designs! i also think it's fun just how much you can skip, speedruns will be fun to watch! all in all i think it's a good open world game for open world haters like me, but it has that issue where the end gets rather limp. i think it's because i want to tie up loose ends before finishing the game, and the final area becomes a bit of an "oh yeah gotta do that" because i ran out of side things i wanna do. idk, is it fair to criticize the game for the way i played it? although — isn't this what open world design encourages? the final boss is impeccable though, so i'll end on that note
turgor pressure: amazing little underwater horror vignette
roadkill agora: kinda eerie, really nice!
echostasis (prologue): the most stylish game i've ever seen in my life. i love how it doesn't try to emulate a specific aesthetic, and you can clearly see it's made in modern hard/software (the water and lighting in particular) while also having the crt monitor look and the low poly models. stunning and the story is very compelling, i'm excited for the full release
pathologic: not finished yet (it's not really the kind of game you play fast), but it's a very neat game. it's not exactly my style but it's quite good, i absolutely love the whole meta "this is a play and we are the actors" stuff, and i love the janky graphics obv

books (18/50)

the long earth (terry pratchett + stephen baxter): very good, very fun. might not bother with the sequels though (there's a lot)
the death of jane lawrence (caitlin starling): pretty weak, i don't recommend it
transgender warriors (leslie feinberg): great little book. it's cozy and hopeful. the archive.org epub isn't very good but it's the only one available anywhere so... make do or do without
macbeth (william shakespeare): yeah
you look like a thing and i love you (janelle shane): just light reading
city of illusions (ursula k le guin): my fav of the three hainish novels!
the portrait of dorian grey (oscar wilde): i've been meaning to re-read this forever (i read it for 8th grade english), not much to say about it tbh
blackmail, my love (katie gilmartin): it's just not good. the miss fischer tv series is better gay murder mystery simply because it's actually, you know, murder mystery
acceptance (jeff vandermeer): it's southern reach re-read time hell yeah! i looove acceptance, but annihilation is still my fav of the three
the tombs of atuan (ursula k le guin): yeah i found it at an used bookshop (these are hard to come by here, i don't think they got many editions), so i'm rereading it :D

manga

witch hat atelier (kamome shirahama): it's super cute i love it. the more good stories about young witches / wizards i read and watch the less i understand why people still latch on to a certain book series
dai dark (q-hayashida): i started reading it a while back and just forgot to keep reading lmao. i love q's stuff, her style is incredible, and dai dark has a lot of colored pages. just *chef's kiss*

that's all folks! see ya!

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