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Transitions
6 years ago
Hey, how's it goin'? I haven't been drawing much lately, but I wanted to make a little noise here and let y'all know I'm still alive and stuff, although a great number of things are in transition.
First and foremost, and I mentioned this in the last pic I posted, I have a new job! It's another web-development gig, and I'm very happy with it, but it's the first job I've had in a LONG long time where I have to actually... show up. My previous job (which I held for the better part of a decade) allowed me to work from home most days, and I guess I got pretty used to that. So even though my commute is relatively short, I haven't found that balance yet where I can come home and have any creative energy left over to draw smut with.
And because I'm employed again, I figured it's a good time to finally upgrade the monitor on my drawing rig. I had an old UXGA monitor that had been slowly developing a dark spot that I've been itching to replace, so I made the jump to a 4K monitor. It's bigger and has a slightly different aspect ratio, so I haven't yet fully adjusted to how the ol' Wacom maps to it. More practice is needed!
The jump to 4K is also putting the last nail in Photoshop's coffin for me. The old version I have (CS5) was made before high-density displays were a thing, so now the buttons are microscopic and it's pretty much unusable. Plus, there is just no way I'm gonna buy a Photoshop subscription, and no fucking way I'm gonna let the Adobe Cloud handle my smutty art files. Anyway, since Clip Studio is so nicely handling all my drawing and design needs, the only thing I'd been regularly using Photoshop for anymore was doing the thumbnails for my website, using a batch action thingy. So yeah, the last picture I've drawn hasn't appeared yet over at the ol' Smut Emporium... which is yet another thing that's in transition!
Which means yes, I've been working on updating my personal site again. I know personal web galleries for furry artists aren't really so much of a thing anymore, but as a professional web developer it remains a point of pride for me. At first this was going to be a pretty simple facelift, but it's turned into a full redesign, and getting all the details right is taking a while. But I have bought a very nice actual domain name (nanimoo.se, but don't bother looking, there's nothing there yet) and continue to put in work on the redesign when I can. I'll let y'all know when it's done!
Well, that's what's going on with me these days. Love and filthy thoughts to all watchers out there!
First and foremost, and I mentioned this in the last pic I posted, I have a new job! It's another web-development gig, and I'm very happy with it, but it's the first job I've had in a LONG long time where I have to actually... show up. My previous job (which I held for the better part of a decade) allowed me to work from home most days, and I guess I got pretty used to that. So even though my commute is relatively short, I haven't found that balance yet where I can come home and have any creative energy left over to draw smut with.
And because I'm employed again, I figured it's a good time to finally upgrade the monitor on my drawing rig. I had an old UXGA monitor that had been slowly developing a dark spot that I've been itching to replace, so I made the jump to a 4K monitor. It's bigger and has a slightly different aspect ratio, so I haven't yet fully adjusted to how the ol' Wacom maps to it. More practice is needed!
The jump to 4K is also putting the last nail in Photoshop's coffin for me. The old version I have (CS5) was made before high-density displays were a thing, so now the buttons are microscopic and it's pretty much unusable. Plus, there is just no way I'm gonna buy a Photoshop subscription, and no fucking way I'm gonna let the Adobe Cloud handle my smutty art files. Anyway, since Clip Studio is so nicely handling all my drawing and design needs, the only thing I'd been regularly using Photoshop for anymore was doing the thumbnails for my website, using a batch action thingy. So yeah, the last picture I've drawn hasn't appeared yet over at the ol' Smut Emporium... which is yet another thing that's in transition!
Which means yes, I've been working on updating my personal site again. I know personal web galleries for furry artists aren't really so much of a thing anymore, but as a professional web developer it remains a point of pride for me. At first this was going to be a pretty simple facelift, but it's turned into a full redesign, and getting all the details right is taking a while. But I have bought a very nice actual domain name (nanimoo.se, but don't bother looking, there's nothing there yet) and continue to put in work on the redesign when I can. I'll let y'all know when it's done!
Well, that's what's going on with me these days. Love and filthy thoughts to all watchers out there!
Actually, it was kinda neat to see that the healthcare offered through my new employer includes transgender services. Not that I have any serious urge to try on a vagina for size, but it's nice to see a little bit of a progressive attitude in that area.
There is a node.js component that runs on my dev computer to help with authoring. I already have it put up an interface when I add art that lets me write the description and add content tags, and then it'll do all the thumbnailing for me. I'm also playing around with auto-converting my huge PNGs to much more manageable WebP files, for browsers that support it. I hope to also have it automate my release process where possible, like scaling images down to screen rez and adding my logo to the corner.
Mobile support is a big part of the design this time, too. The art gallery itself will be one of those pages that inserts more content as you scroll down, which just feels amazingly natural to do on a touchscreen.
I'm thinking with mine, instead of copping out and going with a Rails app in a Docker container, I'm going to go outside of my comfort zone and have React frontends (so I can have SFW/NSFW segregation as necessary, as well as a developer blog, all in different subdomains because I'm silly like that) with an ExpressJS backend for administration/thumbnailing/etc. I figure it'll be a great way to actually properly *learn* NodeJS.
Node in general is pretty neat tho.
I've been iffy to upgrade my monitor for that very reason. Even if my work involves sprites, my program is literally from the year 2000 XD
Anyway, good to read from ya, Dirty Thought's back at ya
Oof, yeah, I figured you'd adjust to a 4K monitor. ^^; It does throw you in a loop... Even down to a change in software. I'm prolly making a switch to open-source, lol
And yeah, I'm just done with Adobe Photoshop. I haven't used it at all in about a year now, and I don't miss it.