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A tale of two years
a year ago
Alright.....not really sure how this will go, but I'm gonna do this off the cuff and let it rip. Been a while since I dropped a wall of text here, but you guys are about a year and a half overdue for an update, so lets get schwifty with it.
I'm going to try something I haven't done before and just.....try to write in the voice I speak in. I had a conversation with Warfare and the crew the other day about written voice versus spoken voice, and how I kinda write in a COMPLETELY different style than I speak, and I hate it. Long story short, my internal editor is too powerful. Gets me triple proofreading and quadruple guessing every word that goes on the page. So I got the editor tied to a chair this time. Maybe spellcheck tho. Don't wanna be too much of a mess you know?
So here we go....the last two years, where I've been, and where I'm at.
Last time I wrote a journal I was dealing with a big loss. One of the most important people in my life, and one of my strongest advocates when my jacked up neurology shits the bed. Fortunately, my mother had her shit together, and left me with a roof over my head, enough funds to get me through the dark times and keep the house afloat, and a strong support network to help me through the transition. It sucked, and I'm a different person because of it, but I was able to get to the light at the end of the tunnel and escape the abyss. Unfortunately....it took a while.
2022 was an absolute disaster of a year. While I was picking up the pieces, the job I work at full time had allowed conditions to completely deteriorate during Covid, and made every effort to avoid fixing shit when the world got back at it. Thankfully it's a union gig, so I had some manner of support and agency, but it was a long year of conflict, anger, insane situations, and lies from management and administration. Things came to a head at the end of the year when we made some big, BIG pushes to force considerable changes, and as part of the push, I manage to get myself moved to another spot on the crew that involved less socialization and multitasking, and more single minded focus and physical activity.
Physically and mentally, I had a lot of health issues and psychological work to do to pull myself back together. I was effectively unable to sleep, socialize, and function. I ended up having to face my over reliance on THC as something of an antidepressant, busted my ass to get myself back on an exercise grind, and did lots of tinkering on my diet. The work situation kept me in something of a perma-trauma state, so it was a rough grind, but we got there. Ended up sussing out a gluten sensititivity through the whole ordeal, so there was a silver lining in that now I don't feel the low level of fatigue, itchiness, and nausea that I've been battling for the last decade or so. Also really zeroed in on some strategies to sort out sleep issues I've had since before I can remember.
As far as art....I was completely fucked on ability to focus and learn. I kinda spent the year occasionally taking stabs at sorting out the clusterfuck of corrective flexes I had to make to get Mia's expression range to actually work in SFM (she's got somewhere around 650+ total flexes, jesus fuck), but for all intents and purposes it was a lost year for progress on learning character design and creation.
So that was 2022. Rough times. How about 2023? Aside from some fluctuations here and there, 2023 was a complete turnaround from the state I had been stuck in for the last year. In fact....looking back, 2023 was something of a turning point in my life. One of the best years in a long time, and one where I managed to rebuild my mental, physical, and financial situation.
The change in pace at work proved to be exactly what I needed to turn this ship around and start cruising back to port. I'm a person with very short social batteries and a need to wear myself out physically, so the shift actually helped the recovery instead of stalling it. We're still in the process of a union push to repair relations with administration, but we managed to win some big victories and dismantle some long standing facilities issues. We even got ourselves a complete renovation of our workplace, so for all intents and purposes, things are looking up over there.
On the personal side, 2023 was a year of intensive growth under the radar. I managed to cut my reliance on THC for sleep management, though I did end up experimenting for a little while to see if I could get an idea of what my thresholds really are, and what constitutes a healthy usage pattern in a therapeutic sense without nuking my motivation (been thinking about talking to a doctor about medical use in the future, since most pharmaceutical alternatives fuck up my body). I also "hit the books" as it were, pushing to rewire my philosophy on life, the world we live in, and how to adapt to the wild shit that's going on in the transition we're making into a way too ridiculously online society. I think part of the reason I even started my profile in this community was to escape from some of the social dynamics of the internet that have been coarsening, and I managed to re-asses and rewire my understanding of all of that in a way that no longer requires me to feel like I live in a shitty hellworld full of insane people. Not that there's any lack of insanity out there these days but.....I understand it more, and judge people for it far, far less. You can't live your life hating the world and expecting it to not affect your health, ya know?
And as for art, well......I haven't posted very much, but the amount of work I'm doing to learn and grow have been starting to bear fruit. I have a goddamn solid update for Vega coming down the pipe that's a bit roadblocked by some rigging problems at the moment, but should be ready to rock prettty soon. Dropping SFM has allowed me to fully embrace custom rigging with Rigify, and to really push my understanding of high>low poly baking and texture painting. There's still a lot to do and learn, but I'm hoping that by the end of the year I'll be able to speed up these workflows and start delivering some interesting models for y'all.
Most importantly, I managed to connect to so many other artists in this community by hanging out in the discord back channels and VCs. I'm honestly more of a voice-to-voice kinda guy; text interaction isn't really my thing. So having all of these little VC lounges to hang, shoot the shit, build knowledge, collaborate, and mutually support each other has been a godsend. I'll probably make this the last full on journal for a long time, as I'm now more or less a discord creature in this community, but you'll always have access to the fruits of my labor here on the galleries once things pick up a bit.
I want to shout out so many people here, but I just feel like I would forget too many, so for now I'll just say that if you've ever had an extended, positive interaction with me on a VC, you are an awesome person, and thank you so much for helping pull be out of the shit. But I will give a special shout out to Kaitou3d and Warfaremachine, two of my closest collaborators on the 3d production grind. We've been discussing some plans for 2024 that I'm going to keep close to the vest for now, but know that we're cookin' for real, and we're looking to serve the good shit.
For those of you here and there who have tried to message me over the last year or two only to not get a reply, I apologize if you caught me during one of my rough patches. I have some social overload issues that get particularly bad when people try to contact me via any sort of text medium. Like I said before....I have an internal editor that only pops up when I'm talking via text, and it socially drains me way faster than when I'm speaking over a mic. Add neurological reasons for social burnout to the list, and it just creates a dynamic where when someone hits me up on text during an "off" period, I just.....can't. If I'm socially blown out, it needs to be via voice, and it needs to be interfaced through a group that I trust to take the heat off me when my batteries crash. I'll never be able to "unwire" that, but with time I may be able to push my battery capacity to make it a bit easier to interact. But for now, I think I'll keep my non-discord-VC communications to a minimum to preserve the energy levels I need to do the work I want to do.
One last thing........the next "phase" of my work will be major overhauls for 4 characters; Nika, Qhala, Vega, and Mia. instead of just moving on to new characters, I want to dig in and push those four as far as I can. Not just upgrade the body functionality and bump to blender 4, but also create high quality clothes, gear, props, and maybe down the line, environments. These 4 have been a big part of my artistic development over the last 6-7 years, so I'm going to treat this as my "Senior Thesis" to graduate from the doldrums of being an intermediate level 3d artist and push myself to professional grade. After that.....sky's the limit in terms of what I might make. Maybe I'll make more characters. Maybe I'll get wrapped in some bigger project. Or maybe I'll work out some stories to tell with them and actually use their character attributes to create cool art. Maybe I'll do all of that. Or maybe I'll do something I don't expect. Whatever I do, it'll always be focused towards making unique, dope ass characters that don't have to hide the naughty bits to appeal to the masses. I've come to the realization that I'm not one for publicly creating porn, but I'll always do everything I can to facilitate y'all that love to get wild with it.
2024 is going to be an interesting year. Lets roll up our sleeves and get to it. AAD out.
I'm going to try something I haven't done before and just.....try to write in the voice I speak in. I had a conversation with Warfare and the crew the other day about written voice versus spoken voice, and how I kinda write in a COMPLETELY different style than I speak, and I hate it. Long story short, my internal editor is too powerful. Gets me triple proofreading and quadruple guessing every word that goes on the page. So I got the editor tied to a chair this time. Maybe spellcheck tho. Don't wanna be too much of a mess you know?
So here we go....the last two years, where I've been, and where I'm at.
Last time I wrote a journal I was dealing with a big loss. One of the most important people in my life, and one of my strongest advocates when my jacked up neurology shits the bed. Fortunately, my mother had her shit together, and left me with a roof over my head, enough funds to get me through the dark times and keep the house afloat, and a strong support network to help me through the transition. It sucked, and I'm a different person because of it, but I was able to get to the light at the end of the tunnel and escape the abyss. Unfortunately....it took a while.
2022 was an absolute disaster of a year. While I was picking up the pieces, the job I work at full time had allowed conditions to completely deteriorate during Covid, and made every effort to avoid fixing shit when the world got back at it. Thankfully it's a union gig, so I had some manner of support and agency, but it was a long year of conflict, anger, insane situations, and lies from management and administration. Things came to a head at the end of the year when we made some big, BIG pushes to force considerable changes, and as part of the push, I manage to get myself moved to another spot on the crew that involved less socialization and multitasking, and more single minded focus and physical activity.
Physically and mentally, I had a lot of health issues and psychological work to do to pull myself back together. I was effectively unable to sleep, socialize, and function. I ended up having to face my over reliance on THC as something of an antidepressant, busted my ass to get myself back on an exercise grind, and did lots of tinkering on my diet. The work situation kept me in something of a perma-trauma state, so it was a rough grind, but we got there. Ended up sussing out a gluten sensititivity through the whole ordeal, so there was a silver lining in that now I don't feel the low level of fatigue, itchiness, and nausea that I've been battling for the last decade or so. Also really zeroed in on some strategies to sort out sleep issues I've had since before I can remember.
As far as art....I was completely fucked on ability to focus and learn. I kinda spent the year occasionally taking stabs at sorting out the clusterfuck of corrective flexes I had to make to get Mia's expression range to actually work in SFM (she's got somewhere around 650+ total flexes, jesus fuck), but for all intents and purposes it was a lost year for progress on learning character design and creation.
So that was 2022. Rough times. How about 2023? Aside from some fluctuations here and there, 2023 was a complete turnaround from the state I had been stuck in for the last year. In fact....looking back, 2023 was something of a turning point in my life. One of the best years in a long time, and one where I managed to rebuild my mental, physical, and financial situation.
The change in pace at work proved to be exactly what I needed to turn this ship around and start cruising back to port. I'm a person with very short social batteries and a need to wear myself out physically, so the shift actually helped the recovery instead of stalling it. We're still in the process of a union push to repair relations with administration, but we managed to win some big victories and dismantle some long standing facilities issues. We even got ourselves a complete renovation of our workplace, so for all intents and purposes, things are looking up over there.
On the personal side, 2023 was a year of intensive growth under the radar. I managed to cut my reliance on THC for sleep management, though I did end up experimenting for a little while to see if I could get an idea of what my thresholds really are, and what constitutes a healthy usage pattern in a therapeutic sense without nuking my motivation (been thinking about talking to a doctor about medical use in the future, since most pharmaceutical alternatives fuck up my body). I also "hit the books" as it were, pushing to rewire my philosophy on life, the world we live in, and how to adapt to the wild shit that's going on in the transition we're making into a way too ridiculously online society. I think part of the reason I even started my profile in this community was to escape from some of the social dynamics of the internet that have been coarsening, and I managed to re-asses and rewire my understanding of all of that in a way that no longer requires me to feel like I live in a shitty hellworld full of insane people. Not that there's any lack of insanity out there these days but.....I understand it more, and judge people for it far, far less. You can't live your life hating the world and expecting it to not affect your health, ya know?
And as for art, well......I haven't posted very much, but the amount of work I'm doing to learn and grow have been starting to bear fruit. I have a goddamn solid update for Vega coming down the pipe that's a bit roadblocked by some rigging problems at the moment, but should be ready to rock prettty soon. Dropping SFM has allowed me to fully embrace custom rigging with Rigify, and to really push my understanding of high>low poly baking and texture painting. There's still a lot to do and learn, but I'm hoping that by the end of the year I'll be able to speed up these workflows and start delivering some interesting models for y'all.
Most importantly, I managed to connect to so many other artists in this community by hanging out in the discord back channels and VCs. I'm honestly more of a voice-to-voice kinda guy; text interaction isn't really my thing. So having all of these little VC lounges to hang, shoot the shit, build knowledge, collaborate, and mutually support each other has been a godsend. I'll probably make this the last full on journal for a long time, as I'm now more or less a discord creature in this community, but you'll always have access to the fruits of my labor here on the galleries once things pick up a bit.
I want to shout out so many people here, but I just feel like I would forget too many, so for now I'll just say that if you've ever had an extended, positive interaction with me on a VC, you are an awesome person, and thank you so much for helping pull be out of the shit. But I will give a special shout out to Kaitou3d and Warfaremachine, two of my closest collaborators on the 3d production grind. We've been discussing some plans for 2024 that I'm going to keep close to the vest for now, but know that we're cookin' for real, and we're looking to serve the good shit.
For those of you here and there who have tried to message me over the last year or two only to not get a reply, I apologize if you caught me during one of my rough patches. I have some social overload issues that get particularly bad when people try to contact me via any sort of text medium. Like I said before....I have an internal editor that only pops up when I'm talking via text, and it socially drains me way faster than when I'm speaking over a mic. Add neurological reasons for social burnout to the list, and it just creates a dynamic where when someone hits me up on text during an "off" period, I just.....can't. If I'm socially blown out, it needs to be via voice, and it needs to be interfaced through a group that I trust to take the heat off me when my batteries crash. I'll never be able to "unwire" that, but with time I may be able to push my battery capacity to make it a bit easier to interact. But for now, I think I'll keep my non-discord-VC communications to a minimum to preserve the energy levels I need to do the work I want to do.
One last thing........the next "phase" of my work will be major overhauls for 4 characters; Nika, Qhala, Vega, and Mia. instead of just moving on to new characters, I want to dig in and push those four as far as I can. Not just upgrade the body functionality and bump to blender 4, but also create high quality clothes, gear, props, and maybe down the line, environments. These 4 have been a big part of my artistic development over the last 6-7 years, so I'm going to treat this as my "Senior Thesis" to graduate from the doldrums of being an intermediate level 3d artist and push myself to professional grade. After that.....sky's the limit in terms of what I might make. Maybe I'll make more characters. Maybe I'll get wrapped in some bigger project. Or maybe I'll work out some stories to tell with them and actually use their character attributes to create cool art. Maybe I'll do all of that. Or maybe I'll do something I don't expect. Whatever I do, it'll always be focused towards making unique, dope ass characters that don't have to hide the naughty bits to appeal to the masses. I've come to the realization that I'm not one for publicly creating porn, but I'll always do everything I can to facilitate y'all that love to get wild with it.
2024 is going to be an interesting year. Lets roll up our sleeves and get to it. AAD out.
