hi! howdy! guess whooo got a job! i kinda feel like three kids in a trench coat sneaking into a horror movie but well i can't help it being my first real job. a tough hit for my hedonism however. 4/4 work week i want you so bad babygirl. at the very least i wish i didn't have to wake up so ungodly early (8 o'clock). there should be night shifts for home office workers, because my peak hours are definitely afternoon-evening.
i'm also rotating a story in my mind that i saw in a dream. it features cordyceps and communing with the machine. in a good way. the technobiogenesis grind never stops, only shifts around.
some stuff for you to check out:
amelie doree's visual novel videos. i wanna chew on those intricate pc-98 pixel art frames like they're polly pocket clothes. been dying to try something similar (but obviously not starting from pixel art. that shit's hard). not for a game, just as art. which is how most pc-98 stuff gets spread across the (western) internet
i've put the executable up! i'm only sharing the link here for now because i want to make a proper introduction, specially when it comes to talking about the process and generators i've used. it's not like you can't share it with your friends, but i wanna keep it slightly contained for now. password is neocities hehe :3
and now, more thesis compositions. the one with the tower is the largest canvas i've painted ever, possibly. not that it's particularly large (30x40cm). anyway, these two plus the ones i posted last month will be part of the class of 2022 exhibit in march. i'm quite happy with how they all turned out. i don't paint in acrylics nearly as much as i'd like to.
this guy gave me some trouble with color mixing, i'm not great at unnatural greens and blues.
the large amount of white made this so hard to color correct. removing the white wall without also fucking up the painting was also a little troublesome. so the end result is a little more yellow-greyish than i'd have liked (in part due to the contrast with the pristine digital #ffffff), but well, best i can do.
media
games
holstin (playtest) (2023): a nice looking demo and pretty interesting in concept and story, but the gameplay is very sluggish (at least for now) so i very nearly gave up tbh. i'll keep an eye on it.
gob (demo) (2022): funky lil point-and-click-without-clicking, controls are kinda obtuse to figure out (the wordless design is still very good though!), but it's just a demo and it's dripping in style (stop motion!!) so all is forgiven.
slave zero x (demo) (2023): this controlled kinda weird for me, but i think it's more likely to be weird controller-computer interfacing on top of it just being a demo. it does feel good to play, but i couldn't even clear the first stage lmao so i won't be getting it on release (but i'll leave it on my steam wishlist anyway) — regadless, it's still worth the hype imo!
titanic II — orchestra for dying at sea (2022): oughh. gorgeous, surreal and thoroughly sincere. one of those indie games that's just a half hour long out of body textural* experience. man i love art and video games. please check this one out. volume warning though.
iketsuki (2019): ok if you know me even a little bit you're probably sick to death of hearing me say i suck shit at platforming. this one wasn't too hard though! really loved it, super stylish, plays pretty well, and i like the (minimalist) story. my favorite little touch was the way textures are tiled in mirrored clusters, forming very pretty patterns where the corners meet. it's overall a very pretty game, i love the chrome fishes too. glad i gave it a go! what can i say, i love virtual post-apocalypses
sol hemochroma (2021): a short vn. not much to say i think.
misericorde (demo) (2023): do you even say you've played a kinetic vn? regardless, cool story, cool art, killer soundtrack. volume one's coming out next month and i'll grab it when i have time
last night in soho (2021): starts off alright but goes downhill HARD after the first hour or so. lame third act. she's a fashion student and no one in the movie even serves. perfect blue still unbeaten.
marte um (2022): noooo my friends made me watch a family drama nooooooooooo. it's what you'd call a Good Movie (nicely shot, tight script, emotional, my friends cried, should probably have been an oscar nominee) but i just really don't like family dramas, i find "beautiful movies" extremely grating. i'm a genre fiction guy, and not much of a family guy. well at least i get to use the "you made me watch a family drama :(" card to win a questionable horror movie night teehee
willy wonka & the chocolate factory (1971): i'd never watched this one, i was a 2005 enjoyer growing up (SAD!). i love how seriously the contest is treated in-universe, it was super fun. gene wilder is great of course. the movie wraps up extremely fast however, it was super weird. in the last twenty minutes or so, you blink and a kid is gone, the part where charlie's told he's won the factory and stuff is literally the final four minutes. the musical parts are also kinda lame (the oompa loompas' are fun but the others are just superfluous. and tbh 2005 has more bops), though i like veruca's song. overall, pretty good
requiem pour un vampire (1971): once again, see the lesbian vampire page for full review. not very good, not very lesbian. wonder what happened to rollin between 1971 and 1982 since la morte vivante is so good?
fascination (1979): see above. boring movie :/
the banshees of inisherin (2022): they made the lighthouse (2019) for men......... pretty funny, and i love it when people are fucked up. i rather expected it to be more of an inevitable tragedy. the best thing about tragedies is to me the inevitability. the way the characters could never do anything different, all the paths predetermined, knowing they could act different and avoid the grief but also that they cannot do so because they're merely narrative tools, MWAH. that's not this movie though. still pretty good!
an ostrich told me the world is fake and i think i believe it (2022): fun lil short! could have leaned a bit more towards the cosmic horror angle mayhaps but it's quite good!
the bare breasted countess (1975): yeah three lesbian vampire movies this month, although this one's barely vampiric. wrote five paragraphs of review though lmao
titane (2021): this movie is exhausting. i didn't like it very much. i think ducournau is probably a good director (i haven't watched raw) but i felt this really lacked both in the body horror department and in making the plot relate to the opening scenes at all. the weird drama we do get could be alright in another movie, it gets the psychological horror feelings, it's tense, but. it's like she had too many ideas and decided to cram them all in the same movie, and so the bulk of it never has anything to do with the fucking car or any biomechanical horror at all! why are we even watching it if not for biomechanical horror!! we could have had biomechanical immaculate conception!!
books and manga
ok so this was a bad month for reading for multiple reasons and i actually haven't finished either of these two, which sucked.
dictionary of the khazars (milorad pavić): tasty tasty tasty. got a surprisingly cheap copy secondhand and when it arrived i saw it's weathered / battered beautifully so that was a bonus. love the style and structure of it, of course, and found the story / stories (as it / they were) really interesting as well!
the castle (franz kafka): friend group book club read that wound up kinda flopping. i'm really enjoying this book! but the buddy read paired with me dual wielding the dictionary (so that i wouldn't plow through the book faster than my friends) slowed me down to a crawl. boo
