Things went, as far as I'm concerned, FANTASTICALLY at Momocon. Didn't completely sell out of anything, but did a decent dent in the Tower Vaults. In the final stages of stocking up on a lion's share of what sold for the next two shows, Bold Matsuri, in Jacksonville FL, and Infinity Con, over in Tallahassee FL. Those two have a week between, but are back to back in my eyes. Here's hoping they go well too.

Computer is still in it's death-throws, but I'm slowly trying to get stuff done with it before it either completely dies or I am able to replace the parts. Hoping between these two and a few other things, I'll be able to start nabbing the parts I need.

One other thing that kinda threw me off the last few days was the sudden passing of CreatureUnknown. Admittedly, I only conversed with them a few times online within the last year or so despite watching his gallery for far, far longer, but it still impacted me quite a bit. I absolutely loved his game development projects, his art and stories, and general spark of life he gave off and it is truly cruel that they are no longer with us. My condolences with their family and roommate, Lexal. I wish things go well for Lexal and all those who were far closer to CreatureUnknown.

Just wanted to get everything that has been rushing through my head the past few days off my chest.

Bold City con was, regrettably, a bust, I do not blame the people behind the show. From what I'd gathered, they got screwed fairly badly as well. Not going to dwell on the negatives though and look at the silver linings. Like, I now have a 6ft table, made a bunch of cool contacts, learned a bunch of stuff, came up with a nice setup that I'm finally fully happy with this time around, found an absolutely fantastic book series that I MUST FIND AND READ MORE FROM THE WRITER (E.S. Barrison's world set within the Effluvium is FANTASTIC. Give The Mist Keeper's Apprentice a read when you can if you want to start from the beginning.) and I have less to prep for my next show.

Speaking of, I'm currently in the middle of casting some dice and reprinting some stock for MomoCon now which will be May 25-28th off in Atlanta, GA. Again, no idea how this one will go, however, especially after a good few words of encouragement from my neighbors of how hard it is to just get into it and how well they've done there previously.... Well... It's kinda hard to temper yourself to expect a complete failure when it feels like you've been accepted into a highly selective club. I'll probably be entering it quite hopeful, but trying to tamp it back to be a pessimistic optimist. Expecting the worst every time really does help my self-esteem when things go better in any way possible. Either way, we'll see how that one'll go.

Next up after that is a surprise acceptance/last minute application, Bold Matsuri which will have me back up in Jacksonville. This one I've been to before and it wasn't that bad. Had some sales while I was helping my friend's booth, so here's hoping that it'll go well. That'll be toward the end of June too, on the 24th and 25th. It'll be potentially kinda crazy as a little over a week after that will be InfinityCon in Tallahassee on the 8th and 9th. Here's hoping things go well for both shows.

Either way, that's the long and short of what is on my horizons shows wise. I'll probably post some pics of some of the raw dice and some of the printed boxes soon. Waiting on some to print, some for the glue to finish drying, and others are just in the cue.

Now on to how things could be worse. The only major complaint I have at the moment concerns cash and my computer. It's been some time (literally 11+ years), but my computer is finally on it's way out fully and I do not have the money for a complete rebuild. The blue screens and crashes I've been experiencing have been going on on and off since around June last year, but have only gotten more frequent in the last two months. The good news here is that I've tracked down and have figured out what is causing the problems. Bad news is it's a combination of the RAM, the CPU, and the motherboard. Something isn't communicating properly across all three and it's been wicked trying to diagnose it. Best I can tell, it is something wrong with specifically either the CPU or the motherboard as random sections of the RAM become inconsistently unavailable/unviewable/unreadable. When that happens, I get either get a hard shutdown with audio glitches and everything freezing for a moment before the screens go black or a bluescreen with a WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR that points to a different sections of my RAM. The RAM itself has been triple-checked against two other computers and is definitely not the issue, leaving it to be either the CPU or the motherboard.

In either case, the fix is replacement, which is kinda.... expensive. While I would love to replace with the exact same parts, my motherboard model hasn't been made for at least 7+ years now and my CPU was the last Intel of it's generation for that socket when the computer was built around 2009/2010. Good news is I've found both used, but price wise, not worth it. I could build two completely new, moderate spec, computers for that price and still have enough for a cheap laptop. I wish I was joking, but around that time, I had pumped around 3k into the computer and apparently, it was money well spent as I got over 10 years out of the machine with only a few harddrive near-death swaps needed around late 2019.

So, new parts then.... which is better price wise, but I am still looking at a $1500+ fix due to some required specs around Sata ports (need 6-8 for my 4 harddrives, optical drive, and a few other peripherals), Multi-GPU PCI-E support (my SLI-linked EVGA 970s are still working with no issues), and general updates to hardware based on stability and seeming ruggedness/long-term stoutness. Primary replacements will be CPU, CPU Cooler (going with a fan again, never did water-cooling), Motherboard, and RAM. Most is self-explanatory save for probably the RAM. While I love the sticks I have, it is DDR3 and almost nothing uses that anymore.

All this is to say, if anyone wants a dicebox, custom or otherwise, now is an absolutely FANTASTIC time to order as I absolutely refuse at the moment to ask for donations. I know things are hard-enough for everyone out there, and ultimately, I am bringing in a little bit of money here and there from these shows, which are my only income at the moment. Online sales have been just about non-existent so far, save for one or two every so often. I'd just like to take care of this problem ASAP as, while my main computer does still *mostly* work with at least 1-2 crashes per day, I know the longer I keep pushing it in this state, the sooner I will have issues with other components and my workflow has started slowing down significantly when files and folders get corrupted from starting a save just before a crash happens.

Again, if ANYONE wants a dicebox, custom or otherwise, I will gladly take any orders or commissions. Otherwise, I hope to see some of y'all at any of the shows I have coming up.

as well as clearing out that old journal before it becomes another year before another post.

Either way, Got a new box design finished recently and working on some more new ones. Also prepping for, what some friends have said may be a tad aggressive, convention schedule for this year. Thanks to a few shows recently, I'm starting to feel like I'm on the verge of selling dice boxes becoming successful. Really don't want to jinx myself, and I have a back of the mind feeling that it is still a ways off with the impending recession hanging over everything, but I can't help but hope that things will continue to move in positive direction.

Speaking of the conventions, things went FANTASTIC at Wasabi and Holiday Matsuri. Well enough that I'm trying for a few more this year. Kinda screwed up a bit due to how late I decided to start, but from here forward, I've either gotten into, have applied for, or am planning to do about 1 show per month for the rest of the year. Got shows still floating on whether or not I'm in, but starting in April, I have my first two Artist Alley tables.

April 15-16: Bold City Con: Jacksonville, FL.
May 25-28: MomoCon : Atlanta, GA

Kinda in awe that I got accepted into Momo as that seems to be one of those giant shows on the level of SDCC, NYCC, MegaCon Orlando, and others. Applied to that one on a lark, expecting to be turned down due to their jury process, and received confirmation for that one back in January. I do want to try and plan things out better. I had wanted to try to go to and do my first Furry Con this year, but was too late to apply for FWA and I've already been confirmed for another convention in St Augustine that is going on on the same weekend of Megaplex. Little scared to do any others further out there from where I live at the moment as I am fairly positive I don't have the funds to attempt them yet between hotels, gas, and overall distance. Hopefully I can plan it out a bit better next year.

Gonna try and keep up with show announcements in 2 month or so increments. Should also help get me off my duff a bit and start posting stuff more often. I do have one sizable gap for August right now. Just can't seem to find anything going that month that isn't a one day show that is far enough out that I would need at least a hotel room or two for the whole trip. Right now, the plan for that gap is just restock like crazy. As it stands, I'm already boosting up my minimum print stockpile of some designs from 6 on hand to 12 or 18 and others from 12 on hand to 18 or 24.

Speaking of stockpiling.... I have a weird idea to float by whoever may come across this journal. I'm already open for commissions for custom boxes, and I had a very weird idea the other day for a dice-box YCH. The idea being, in general, on the Tower Vault box and have your character in two different poses, one for the big "closed" panel, another for the smaller "open" panel. Between seeing people posting about custom daki pillow casing with a similar idea, and a few other goofy thoughts running through my head as for some semi-humorous posing (large panel has your character looking up, mouth open to "eat" the dice and the back panel showing their back kinda squatting above the opening where the dice come out? ). No idea how well opening up for a YCH would work to be honest. Really just pitching ideas to see what sticks. Definitely open to suggestions on that front.

To get back on track a bit, wrap this up, and give a TLDR. Doing well over all. Working on getting into shows. Hope to see some of ya at Bold City and MomoCon. Restocking now and making new boxes. Would anyone be interested in a YCH dice box?

Have a good one!

Said I was going to post more then had a *surprisingly* busy year with dice box sales kind of exploding here and there at some shows, working on a few new stable designs, a few custom box orders popping up here and there, and getting started into dice making. My head is kinda spinning thinking of the rollercoaster that has happened since the last journal and all that is not including some of the other things I've been tinkering with...

But, I digress. I said I'd start posting again, and then did nothing for about a year save add a few pieces to my favorites. Again, I'm sorry about that.

Posted a few of the stable designs that I've been printing up here to my gallery just to show how they are and, on the off chance anyone may be interested in one or know someone who may be interested in one. Since my last journal, I've been sharing space with my friend at their vendor table, and some shows have been great! So well, that I have reservations for later this year to *ATTEMPT* my first two artist alley tables, more about that later. As a whole, it's been paying my bills and doing well, however, we did just hit a fairly rough patch. Most of the last few have been a good deal slower then either of us had expected and, as I'm also printing extra for the AA tables later this year, I'm running low on both cash and filament at the same time.

Long story short, if anyone is in the market for a case for their dice, are interested in some hand-made dice, or knows someone who might, I would be EXTREMELY grateful for any help.

Now, on to the big bit. I have reserved artist alley tables later this year for Wasabi Con at Jacksonville, FL in October and Holiday Matsuri over at Orlando in December. Managed to snag and pay for both a while ago. The Wasabi Con table will be my first solo table, and Holiday Matsuri table will be shared with another artist/vending buddy I've made since starting doing conventions. While I've been helping my friend run her booth, and selling my stuff on the side, I am nervous as anything over doing this solo. I have no idea how this is going to go and still in a bit of shock of trying to sign up and being accepted at all. Never thought this would be how things would be flowing, but, well... here goes nothing.

Hope y'all are doing well and thank you for taking the time to thumb through this journal.

Heh. Hioh all, or at least those who might still be around here.

Was browsing and looking about at some stuff and figured I'd actually blow some dust off of the gallery and say...

well...

I'm sorry.

Things kinda broke down for me mentally and physically for a long while due to a number of factors which started a nasty feedback loop for me. Not going to go into it, but I did want to say I'd like to start up actually doing various bits of art again. I'm hoping to brush off some dust and use what I recall and break out of the paralyzing rust/imposter feedback loop I've been in.

That isn't to say I haven't been creating anything. I've been actively working on some simplified vector designs for one avenue that I've taken to start bringing in money. I've actually started working on and selling some 3d printed table top game dice boxes. Still in the process of getting it all set up to sell online as I don't have pictures of all the box designs I have done and I'd like to get an Etsy storefront up as well, however they are available now. If ye be interested in one, you can check them out by clicking here or you can contact me directly either on here or on twitter or instagram if you are interested in something more custom. I have some masters on their way sometime this month so I may have some dice and a few other ideas up for sale soon as well.

Speaking of, I've been on twitter for a LONG while now and been quasi more active on there. Granted, I still have the habit of keeping my mouth shut in on both unless I feel I do have something I can actually add to them, but it is probably worth mentioning them regardless. I do plan to be more active on here for various reasons, but, well, we'll see how long that'll stick.

Also, for those interested in a summarized "where the hell have you been?", I quit Amazon a few years back after getting fed up with an absolute niagra falls worth of bullshit they crammed my way. Did some odd-jobs for a bit then worked with a former co-worker from amazon that I was friends with for a while, but that dried up about a month ago and I currently do not have a *steady* paycheck. I do however have an unstable bit of cashflow coming in from helping a few friends who do conventions selling a LOT of stuff as a vendor for a living and the occasional sale of the aforementioned dice boxes. It's actually thanks to those freind's encouragement that I've finally started doodling again, with a potential idea of offering prints, pins, dice, and the dice-boxes at an artist alley at some point in the future.

With that said however, I am rather done with long-term plans with heavy regimentation like any of the things attempts I've done in years past. Found that having some regimentation was nice and kept me on track, like posting the occasional journal or two to let fly with updates to void, but having constant long term stuff with weekly journals just burned everything I had going and got me into a cycle of not wanting to touch anything and some mega imposter vibes whenever anything started having issues and updates slowed. Looking back at how the hamster in my head treated everything and seeing all I had started then stopped, well, gave a good deal of perspective recently....

Either way...

For those wanting the long story short, I'm doing better, lost my job, gonna start posting again soon, and started selling some stuff I make. How's things with you?

Survived Irma. Jose is guaranteed to miss us at this point. Not too concerned with Lee given it's current track. Maria on the other hand....

We'll see...

Things went well for the most part. No damage to the house aside from a neighbor's fence falling in our back yard, some branches on the tree out front being knocked off, and my car needing a new paint job as the clear coat is now flaking away. I could not tell you how many trees did fall completely in my area though. There were a TON roads made completely impassible for a while and we lost power till Friday. Things are getting back to normal though. Slowly, but steadily. Still have a few gas stations in my area that are having issues keeping fuel and there are still a few stores closed, but most everything in my area is open. Either way, things did go fairly well. Could have been better, but quite happy it did not go worse. Work does rather suck at the moment as a TON of backlogged orders have been going through and 2 semi-support facilities aren't taking their normal volume, however given the info I've been seeing, it should only last like that for another week or two and then we'll be back to normal dispatch for a while.

Had plenty of time to think about some things and came to a conclusion. I think I mentioned a while back that I'd gone to Mega Con for the second time earlier this year. Thanks to that, and the 3d printer I picked up earlier around my birthday, I want to try something I've seen alot of people doing. I'd like to try my hand at doing a cos-play for next year's Mega Con. I plan to try to keep a record of my experiments and progress mostly on my tumblr, but I do plan to put some pictures of my progress up on DA and FA as well. We will see how it goes. Certainly be a bit of a trip as I plan to go as a being/creature from one of my favorite movies, The Dark Crystal, an UrRu. I do not plan to any one specific one, and instead just kind of make my own.

Should be a fun project and something I probably should have started earlier, but I was kind of at a loss as to what I wanted to do. Thanks to the power outage, I had a ton of time to figure out where to start while sweating it out. My plan is to start with the UrRu mask/head as it will probably take the longest to put together. It will not be a regular mask, but an animatronic head with a camera within hooked into a monitor so I can see hopefully more clearly then with some weird access or mesh screen. Still need to figure out how to do all that, but just before the hurricane, I picked up an Arduino kit (got really interested in what they can do after putting together the 3d printer) I would have done more by this point, but I had no access to the collective subconscious of the internet to consult thanks to Irma. Did spend some time going off of memory of god knows how many specials on Henson's workshop I've seen in the past and started coming up with bracket designs and a few other things to put together the eyes and potentially some eye blinks.

Just realized how far all over the place this journal is getting. Gonna cut it off here for now. We will just have to see how things are going to go. If anyone has an suggestions they can throw my way for Arduinos, servos, or general cosplay tips, I would be quite happy with any info anyone can give me. As it stands, I already know I need to figure out a way to get the Arduino mega I got to work with at least 9, if not more, servo motors as well as a good way to get the whole head and neck rig attached to a backpack, as well as find a decent pack I can use along with a good power source and..... There I go again, going ahead of the small step I want to do first, which is just the eye movement. Two servos and a few custom brackets shouldn't be THAT hard to set up. Right?

Heh, here goes nothing :P

I've battened down, got supplies, and have prepared as well as I could have. Let's see what Irma does. Sounds like, given the last few updates, that I'll be on the wind-heavy side of the storm. Just figured I'd post a message up wishing everyone in Florida luck as we enter this storm.

Here Goes Nothing....

Between the last week of May and now, I've had a bit of a rather expensive few weeks in a row. Finally through most of the rather worst bits and right now finally going to be fully saving up again.

Took my first actual vacation since joining Amazon on the last week of May, spending the week in Orlando with some friends, heading over to Disney for the front half of the week then the back half over at MegaCon. Had some headaches, and some worries over that as we decided to rent a car this time and had some jerkoff try and cut us off, swiping our front passenger side bumper. So far though, both Hertz (not certain if I will EVER rent from them again) and our insurance haven't bugged us over anything since getting in all the info so I assume things are good, so I assume everything is good so far. MegaCon was fun, and a little crazy. Between it and Disney though, it was a semi-expensive week.

June had a few unexpected, but should have seen coming expenses, such as car tags and an oil change scheduled for July 3rd. The oil change came with what I was hoping would be a quick fix. The AC in our car had been a bit slow during the day time. Thinking it was just something simple, like needing a Freon recharge, I was asked them to take a look into the AC at the same time as the oil change. Turns out, it was the AC Condenser and the AC manifold that was leaking a decent bit of fluid preventing the whole system from working during the hottest parts of the day. Good news is that it now has a lifetime of the car warranty. Bad news is that between vacation week and now, I'm down about 4k+ out of the 7k I had in my savings.

Not complaining about it, as quite a bit of it had to be done and had an enjoyable experience overall so far for the most part, but it still hurt a decent bit. Only thing that kinda ticked me off was yesterday. Long story short, had to work last night and yesterday was birthday. Kinda sucked, but meh, could be worse. Had a decent bit of coverage last night, so it went smoother then normal. Did find a nice small early deal as part of prime day on something I was looking for. They had the Prusa I3 3d Printer for just over 200. Normally they are about 3x that around 700 not assembled. Yeah, I know it's kinda hypocritical to complain about expenses, then make a big purchase right at the end, but it is going for a good purpose. a potential way to make some cash outside of Amazon if plans work out the way I hope they do. If things work out in my favor, it may even become a decent means of self-employment, so we'll see. If things go well at work though, a potential promotion is at least in the stars, which could change my part-time to full time along with a small pay-bump and potentially actual medical insurance. Have to wait and see if that will happen though. Tried applying to a bunch of other stuff already and got turned down in the past within amazon, some of which looked like a sure thing, but wound up going nowhere.

Either way, just figured I'd drop an update on how things are going before I went another year without an update. How are things going for y'all? Hopefully things are going well.

It's been about a year since my last post. Just writing this to clear off the old journal and just say I'm still around and have been busy with a bunch of random stuff. Might write more another time.

As I write this, I am watching a... movie... that has been lost within the vault of a particular mouse. The "hidden shame" of the mouse, ne'er to be shown on these shores again. I attended MegaCon recently, and came across a vendor, who came highly recommended from a friend, for having good quality dvds and videos. Among his wares, I saw a couple of dvds that caught my eye in a major way. One being the one I'm writing about now, and another that I plan to write about in the future about.

Before I get into this in detail, I feel like I should preface this with a few things about myself. Thanks to my time in college, I have a decent interest in the history of Animation. I tend to go a ways out of the way occasionally to learn more about the history of the media. Some of the people I hold in high regard include a few people recognize rather readily like Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones while others, such as Ub Iwerks, Lotte Reiniger, and Mary Blair tend to be rather forgotten in the annals of history. Ub being the actual animator and creator of the Mouse along with most of the inner workings that made them as the dominant force in animation, Lotte Reiniger being one if not the first women animators out there and developed her own techniques & equipment in the 1920's and 30's, and Blair being the one who brought a certain... sharp, vibrant style that we all know the House of Mouse for today, not to mention designing a particular ride that has been enjoyed/been the bain of soo many for such a long time due to it's musical accompaniment.

If you haven't guessed yet from that first paragraph and the bit about animation history above, the dvd I found was "The Song of the South". I'm purposefully not using the Mouse's name in this purposely by the way. My reasoning is they have done all they can to bury this film for such a long time, I'd rather not be placed on some blacklist for saying something they don't like about this "black eye" in their history, especially since I'm still looking for a job in the animation field and that name can hold a lot of swing, both positive and negative, regardless of the studio.

In all honesty, I'm shocked that this dvd exists. Not because of it's content, because I've seen far worse stuff out there in terms of racism (at least up to the point I'm at in the film. I'm currently about half-way through at around 45 minutes in and, who knows, maybe the worst bit is still coming?) in more modern works than I have in this film. The reason I'm shocked is because it appears to exist at all. The Mouse has done a lot of animations, movies, and other works over the years, a good body of which has been re-released with little to no edits other then film restoration. There are a few that have seen occasional re-release after heavy editing or review. Then there are the very, very few that never leave the vault in their entirety again, to be lost to all except those who try to search for the whole picture, and this one is the poster-child of that later category. I couldn't even tell you how many times I've had links to this movie vanish from the web. They have been trying so VERY hard to bury this.

And we all know at least a scant few parts of this movie too, regardless of how old/young we may be, assuming you've been around the mouse for at least a couple of years. Between that signature song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bWyhj7siEY ) which I think everyone has probably sung at least ONCE in their lives, or the ride at the parks that remains as time immemorial to the animated segments of the movie, Splash Mountain ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLPnHxqnfUo ), but the rest of the piece has fairly well vanished to the ethers of time. To find a copy, and one that is actually in fairly decent quality, I'm flat out shocked. The sleeve is sketchy as hell looking, with the bleed set way off adding that "this-is-soo-a-knock-off-video" kind of blurryness to it, and the disc itself looks like it was done at home in a lightscribe burner with some generic looking title pic that they failed to realize would have a hole in the middle of of thanks to the disc being, well, a disc. Yet here it is.

I'm sorry if I seem kinda in awe over this, and yes, I do know the controversies around the movie. I know them quite well after doing a decent bit of research over them in for a class. It's just, seeing such a guarded movie that has been purposefully lost in their Vault and knowing the definite weird history of the film, gives it a kind of sense of wonder and awe for me. Should I ever get decent enough internet speeds again, I might try to stream this to get other's opinions. Is this a movie that should never officially see the light of day from the Mouse's Vault or is it one of those oddities that was just maligned due to a few generations becoming overly politically correct and deeming something should be hidden to hide some perceived shame? I'd be keen to know what others opinions might be on it.

For lack of a better way of putting things, life got busy and, out of the 4 goals, only 2 happened in full. I'm a bit disappointed, but at the same token, happy with the results. I got the first alpha of my game out there and it's been getting played a decent bit. Been getting a decent bit of feedback as well that will be used to make the gameplay better (as well as bug reports, which was my main goal of releasing it to begin with). Maya has also been very nice to refresh myself with over the last couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, I looking back at the sketches and other little things I was working on, I'm not happy with any of em and, to me, they definitely don't look "portfolio worthy" at least at the current time. Speaking of the portfolio, the site is still using "Animate" (aka Flash for those who might not have heard about the name-change) and I've got nothing but some concepts and some browsing done on how I'd like it to work. After releasing the game, things just kinda took a downward spiral as we entered the holiday 4 hit season which K.O.ed my drive to do most anything, save for some brainstorming.

It may be just the post-peak grind/christmas & new years blues, but I just feel kinda worn out. I am and am not looking forward to 2016, as there are alot of things running through my mind. New goals, new targets, new hopes, new fears, etc. All of it are just kinda lumping up to the point that even things that I should be looking forward to, are triggering thoughts of dread, such as MegaCon (Third convention I've ever gone to and first "major" one), a trip with family to Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure, and a good friend getting back from his deployment. It just kinda... I dunno. It's not anxiousness. I can't quite put it to words, but I almost wish it all wasn't happening at all. I want to go hide in the back room and just shut everything out for a week or two, no work, no friends, no family, no nothing. Just silence. I've already tried writing this journal twice today because of these feelings.

I really dunno. Either way, on to 2016.

As it stands I've got a few goals in mind for this year. Some big and lofty, others, well, we'll see. The main ones I'm gonna put up for the moment are save enough & buy ZBrush, Pay off at least 1 of the 4 loans, Get at least one of the board game in a prototypeable state (either physically or digitally) and, as a returning goal with a vengance, get at least 45 new pieces done for the portfolio. Unlike before I've got at least a week per piece so to speak, so hopefully I can get out of this funk and get it done. We'll see how things go from here.

Hope y'all have a happy new year!

Round 5, Halftime Show Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpSOq0bgj-w

TL DR
Goals Remaining: 2

Game: The more people I get testing, the more I know how much my coding work sucks. Drop me a PM if ya wanna give it a play!

30 Pieces: Nothing done

Website: See 30 Pieces

Long Version

The game has been built and sent to a few friends that were interested in testing. I had a few things that I wanted to try to cram in there before releasing the alpha for testing, but got distracted and wound up having to revert to another version from earlier this week. That was.... kinda depressing, but the knowledge that I've gotten to this point ON TIME has filled me with a bit of [Determination] (picked up Undertale earlier this week as a "Congrats on getting this far" kinda thing, the game doesn't need this but GO BUY IT NOW BECAUSE IT IS FANTASTIC).

I think I might take a couple of days off from my game for the interim just because I'm feeling a slight bit burnt out between working on the current version every single night for the last couple months without any major breaks and without going off on random tangents. Besides, I wait a bit and hear how it breaks on people's computers. Speaking of which, if anyone who reads this is interested in playing the game, send me a note/pm and I'll get the link out to ya.

Nothing else was really done the last two weeks though. Just kinda been running through some random thoughts and plans. Thanks to Undertale, I've kinda started looking back at some of my favorite old rpg games and I'm debating on building a quick little battle interface, just for the experience of it and to see how well some of the modular things I've been making for Rune Breaker might work on different projects.

Speaking of which, I've got to say that the game has been a hell of a learning experience so far. Alot of it however has been back-end code based, so I dunno how much other people may be interested in. So far though I've developed an xml save/load system, an item/inventory system (that does need a bit of finishing I will admit, only the bare skeletons are in the game at the minute), and alot of other modular code that *should* be fairly easy to adapt to future games. Whether or not that's true remains to be seen.

Next main target however is the 30 pieces. I've got a bunch of scribbles so far, but nothing really "portfolio worthy" feeling at the moment, hence the lack of any gallery updates. I have a feeling I should at least start uploading the scribbles, but, well, I always see more that needs tweaking. I really need to get out of that weird mindset.

Either way, till next update, when there should be at least SOMETHING to add to the gallery or next journal that happens to come out, I'll be seeing ya when I see ya.

Round 4, Fight

TL DR
Goals Remaining: 3

Game: I flat out went too far with the profile research/code tinkering, finishing the profile system saving/loading and made it easily expandable as new unforeseen info of the future needs saving....

30 Pieces: Working on a few concepts, but still nothing uploaded yet due to scatterbrainedness from coding.

Website: No progress other then browsing website building classes on Udemy.

Long Versions

With the purchase of Maya down around the time of the last update, I'm down to 3 goals remaining. The game, the art pieces, and the website. Still riding on that high from last journal which is possibly to blame as to why I went in a different direction for the game's progress then my initial plans this time around. I'd wanted to expand the spell casting code a bit to get it ready for spell selections and casting controls. What I wound up doing was concepting and implementing a fully functional profile saving and loading system that is fairly easy to expand and add new bits into. It's all being saved out at the moment as plaintext and, while encryption does look quite nice and something I might add in in the future, I see no need for it right now other then to cause me headaches if I want to check the file generated manually. Next target is the rune/waystone field system and possibly the store/shop concept (uses currency obtained IN GAME, I will NOT be making money off of this project). In prep, I did a minor overhaul to the scene flow, but nothing too intense. Just some quality of life changes to prepare for some future content.

Speaking of future content, I've been doodling a bit on some concepts for the game. Namely, the intro screen. It's not much at the moment then the sketchiest of sketches, but I like the direction. Did continue playing with maya on and off as well over the past 2 weeks, mostly opening old files to see what I've still got and can pick apart to tinker with. Also trying to find a few scripts I used to use ALOT and having issues finding them. None of this was really high on my priority list though, so not a whole lot was done.

The website goal at this point is collecting dust, but I did take a look on Udemy to see if they have any html5/css classes. Got an email about a sale going on, but nothing looked like something I'd want to get into yet. I'm still wrapping my head around C# (though I think I've just about fully got the basics and then some at this point) and don't need to confuse myself by jumping into another coding/scripting language.

We'll see how things proceed, but, like I said earlier, still riding the high from last journal and now the new high of the save system. Time to keep the momentum going and get closer to another goal. At this rate, I should get at least 3 of the 4 goals done. I'm still kinda on the fence on the website at the moment just due to how the current web is changing. We'll see I suppose.

Just as before, once more...

TL DR

Game: Got a bit side-tracked with some quality of life stuff, but the base magic system is nearly implemented. The generating and storing of the mana is set. Just need to make a way to use it.

Maya:

30 Pieces: The game's code has been taking the majority of my time so not much done here save for a scant few doodles here and there.

Website Update: Absolutely nothing done since last time.

Long Version

The game is progressing along quite nicely after an initial setback. The "simple numbers" mana generation and casting system was a bit... more complicated then initially anticipated. And by "more complicated" I mean it made Unity chug HARD on trying to do a currently unknown amount of calculations per frame (I went too deep and had at best only a few thousand formulas running per frame, all logging to the console). The system was messy as hell to boot and added soo many additional variables on each rune and waystone that it became too bloated for it's own good. It was almost as bad as the first time I'd gotten to this stage. Round 3 of coding the magic system has GREATLY simplified things and made them more modular. Instead of the runes and waystones keeping track of everything magic-wise (Like I said earlier for those facepalming at that previous statement right now, I did the stupids again), I've now got a "Game Manager" in the scene that handles the Win/Lose conditions and the magic generating system while also generating the public variables for how much each spell will cost. Since I kept track of the script sizes this time around, the code went from 1,490 lines in the runes and 2,690 lines in the waystones to 137 lines in the runes, 155 lines in the waystones, and 214 lines in the game manager, and that is still with a bunch of lines spitting out console reports. Looking back, I have a tendency to over-think and over-complicate things. The really funny part to me is that I managed to get, not only the mana system up and running but also the whole elemental casting system as well with just a bit of a goofy, but effective system to say how much each casting should be worth. Modify a few numbers here and there in the rune template prefabs, and the system will do the rest of the work for you without killing your computer. Next major bit of code is the actual casting of spells. Given my initial intention to release a testing alpha to a few people by Oct. 15th at the latest, I might start trying to tackle the player systems and the field modifying systems. I've already got an idea on the player systems, but there are a few things I'm kinda in the dark over how to approach, namely some of the data gathering and reading/writing files outside of Unity. That may be the next bit of research I start on.

To get the shortest bits out of the way next, what was written above on the website was all that was done, which was nothing. I got really side-tracked with Unity for the most part this past couple-o-weeks so not a lot of drawing/3d doodles, or anything was done up till tuesday when....

Maya 2016 arrived. My savings are now essentially shot, but not closed out at least. Thanks to the holiday, the extra hours I've been trying to get, and everything else, I had JUST enough to buy the program without closing my savings or putting it in the "We (the bank) are going to monthly-maintenance-fee debit this account now till it's empty and close it" threshold (It did however come within $10 of going under 300 though which is WAY close for comfort). Got a physical copy, which arrived on Tuesday just before I had to go to work. Got it installed Wednesday and saw a few of the new features yesterday (Export to Unity, Export to Unreal, the new HyperShade menu, and the new Bifröst particle systems had me drooling). I also REALLY like the whole "Hey, This is a New Tool" indicator system they've got going on. It's a tad annoyingly vibrant, but I like how it shows EVERY new tool they added since 2015(? not sure if it's just from 2015 or from the version I have installed which is 2011. I'm kinda hazy on what new things they had put in with 2012 and didn't follow that closely on 2013 & 2014 due to having no job and purchasing program being a mere pipedream due to it's price). Either way, now that I've got a working version that is 64 bit AND A COMMERCIAL PERPETUAL LICENSE, you can bet your arse that more 3D stuff will be coming soon now that I can use it worry free and make some kind of income on what I make.

One down, 3 to go. I'm kinda riding a big high this week between Over the Garden Wall (Which, as a bit of good news about it just won 3 Emmys) and Maya finally being obtained. I wasn't expecting to get any of the objectives till at least mid October. To pull one off a month early and be at the cusp of another within the same length of time, it's really a great feeling. Just gotta keep that momentum going.

I realize it's kinda odd for me to make a journal so soon, but I just had one of those "Huh, that actually makes a decent bit of sense" moments concerning narrative stories. There are many kinds of stories out there, but for the longest time (well, at least from my 6th grade English teacher through college) we were told that all stories are permutations of "The Hero's Journey". The Hero's Journey is a narrative structure that can be applied to every story out there and has been around since time began at this point. It's where a singular character is called to adventure from his known realm into the unknown where he is challenged, tempted, and eventually transformed into a new person from what they were at the start and eventually return to their home. Fairly cyclical in nature, but develops into one hell of a story. Up till today, it made sense that soo many narratives follow this formula. It's the growth of a character as the world challenges them.

Now, I question if this heroic narrative is all that there actually is or if we've just been applying it to places where it, quite frankly doesn't belong. Around October/November of 2014, Cartoon Network green-lit a short mini-series called "Over the Garden Wall". It's recently been put out on DVDs for those who haven't seen it and my copy just came earlier today. For those who haven't seen it or had no interest in it on it's first run, GO BUY THIS DVD AND SHOW CN THAT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA AND THAT THEY SHOULD DO MORE OF IT. It's honestly that good. As I was rewatching it, it got me thinking, what is it about the show that really got my interest beyond the art, the style, and the writing. As I was thinking, it occurred to me that, while it does have the monomyth in it, it's not chained chained to it as a good many other narratives are. Same, dare I say it, goes for a good many other shows that reached high-popularity. A few Anime, some shows here and there, various comic books, the occasional movie, and a decent amount of videogames all buck the monomyth paradigm and focus more on the journey itself instead of the character's growth.

This leads me to the the theory mentioned earlier. I'd like to propose that there are at least 2 writing structures out there, The Heroic Narrative, and the Journey Narrative. Neither of the narrative structures are completely unique to each other as you can see the Heroic Narrative within the Journey and vice versa. The main difference between the two, at least as far as I can define, is who or what the story develops more over it's course. If the heroes develop further and everything around remains fairly static, then it's a Heroic Narrative, ala the Iliad/Odyssey. However, and this is where I might be argued with, if the entire world grows, evolves, and develops over the course of the story, it's a Journey Narrative. A few recent pieces that seem to show this to me include One Piece, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Over the Garden Wall, and a giant chunk of the main Marvel universe. It's not just about seeing the ripples of water the protagonists make, but also how the entire world changes, evolves, grows, shrinks, and creates it's own waves as well.

What do you think? I could write and iron this out more, but I'd just like to see if anyone has a couple of cents to throw into this jar. I'd like to hear what people think.

Bi-weekly updates... go figure.

TL:DR Version

Game: Is progressing and I'm working on a prototype magic system to be included in the alpha. General numbers will be used. More in-depth details will be given later.

Maya: Autodesk financing never got back to me, but *Knocks on wooden table* I should be able to buy Maya by the end of the month WITHOUT killing my savings.

30 Pieces: Been sketching finally and taking a bit of time off from working on the shading network. Not happy with anything yet enough to sketch, but I might start uploading what I've been doing soon just to get feedback.

Website Update: Found a few... interesting... options? But nothing with all the stuff I'm looking for. Once Maya is mine, I might fork up $19/mo to adobe for a few months just to update the site. I'm not 100% convinced it's worth it, but it doesn't seem like that bad of an option at the moment....

Long versions

The game is coming together in bits and pieces. The base "bricks" are made and destructable, but I want them to regulate mana income and a few other things. The destructable brick code should work well for the runes and waystones. The thing I'm trying to figure out is how to update a few behind the scenes stats on creation and on destruction though while having a bit of randomness and some unpredictability as more and more runes get destroyed. The general concept is that the waystones provide you mana and chaos while the runes provide protection for the waystones and stability. Both can also provide elemental filtering/imbuing which is a separate layer that I do NOT plan to tackle just yet. Been mulling over the math of these systems and I think I've finally got something, somewhat worked out. Gonna try implementing it over the next week or so.

Been mulling over my paycheck as well over the last week or two and... I think I can actually purchase Maya without any major issues. I still plan to wait till at least October just to give myself a little bit of a cushion because of future unknowns, but it's now looking very, very good though. As soon as it's bought, I will be able to work fully in the program for games and animations without the worry of Autodesk coming out of the blue one day to slap me with a suit or fine or some other crap for using an "educational" version for profit. At this point however, I've pretty much given up on their Financing division on EVER getting back to me and their website's support section seems woefully missing any actual contact information for their financial division.

Sketches have been... coming.. but I'm still trying to get out of the "burned earth" methods I had been doing. Not happy with any of it, but I am starting to save it now and then. It's mostly just trying to doodle out random ideas here and there, but it keeps hitting odd bits here and there. It's not all bad, just annoying as it was before. Still working on that board game here and there and some of the assets are coming together for it. I am still fiddling with maya as well with some 3D doodles as well. A shading network that I've been prototyping out for the game however is backburnered for the moment due to me trying to relearn too much at once and hitting a confusing catch 22 wall of cyclic thinking. For right now, I'm refocusing on modeling first then going toward basic texturing, then rigging, then shading networks/scripting. I might start posting some of the better looking 3D doodles. There's still rust on the Maya gears in my head, but they are turning once again.

Found a good many bits out there from Kompozer to Bluefish and there does seem to be a lot of promising stuff out there. The biggest issues I seem to keep coming across is that most of the programs don't have WYSIWYG page viewing and/or their support was dropped a few years ago and are no longer being updated. I wouldn't worry about that second issue soo much if it wasn't for the fairly drastic overhauls happening to web browsers. Between Firefox... well... actually firefox seems to be one of the only ones that hasn't changed in any significant ways. It's still a memory hog of a browser that some people program rather hoity toity websites for (We've probably all seen the occasional site that comes up with "This site requires firefox to view"). Chrome appears to have had quite a bit of backend updates, including one that should reduce it's memory footprint by ALOT. Internet Explorer appears to be dead with Microsoft Edge being it's replacement. Opera, an old favored browser of mine, seems to be spinning in place, trying to add new features every update while screwing up what used to work flawlessly. Then there's the ol' spinning wheel Safari which, despite Apple trying to patch their leaky ship, is still as full of security holes and flaws as it was 3 years ago when I graduated and still supposedly has issues with some CSS and JS enabled sites as well as issues with newer stuff like HTML5 and CSS2. Now, take all those issues, multiply them by the various versions of the Browsers people are running, multiply that again by the mobile market browsers out there and then try to figure out how well something that hasn't been updated in about 2+ years will fare. Needless to say, that $19 per month Adobe single program subscription doesn't look that bad for a couple of months while I update my website. I mean, it's still looks like a sham of the highest order, but, it's not something I'm going to rule completely out anymore. At least, for the peace of mind that what I want to get working should work across the many, many, many browsers out there. I might just drop this goal for the moment due to it going from being complicated, but fairly straightforward to a knotted spaghetti mountain that could potentially rival Denali in height that needs to be unwound before anything can be done with it (topical humor ftw maybe? Eh. I'll still probably call it Mt McKinley. It's what I've known it as for 27 years and they can't change that). Perhaps that board game can fill this slot if things get to that....

Finally, wow. I actually have been updating fairly regularly? The journals at least anyway. The main submission gallery hasn't seen any direct action in a bit over a year. At least these seem to help keep me on track. When I look at what I've been working on, I don't see much progress, but through these journals, well, there does seem to be a bit of forward-moving traction finally. It's kinda weird to see the progress through journals, but I can't complain. I actually feel like I've been accomplishing stuff. Not just getting through things either, but actual accomplishment. Even from unfinished things, these journals are odd retrospectives on what I've been doing and seeing how things are going. Just gonna have to see where these journeys will take me.

Videogame: Progressing, but progressing a tad slower then I'd prefer due to a distracting new project that I keep trying to push to the backburner. Placeholder art is nearly done and coding is coming along. Should have something soon.

Maya: Still waiting on Autodesk to get back to me on their financing program, but no longer as concerned about it due to 3 backup plans that should be executable should they never get back to me. The biggest/least risky of which is to flat out purchase the program at the start of December and drain the savings more severely then desired.

30 Pieces: Mind keeps running blank when trying to doodle, but I have been working on a shader network from the game and reacquainting myself with Maya by various mini 3d things? 3d sketches? I guess? Don't really have a better name for em at the moment. Rigging is coming back bit by bit as well as object modeling. Big one I'm working toward is character modeling.

Website: Did absolutely nothing directly for the site other then look up some stuff. If anyone has any suggestions for a free website development software, I could use em. What I'm looking for is a web coding program with a WYSIWYG window. Similar to Dreamweaver if possible and can handle, aside from html and css, various other languages, specifically at least xml, php, html5, and javascript. I could care less about direct FTP support, but it would be a nice plus. If anyone has any tips or suggestions, short of shelling out $19.99 a month for a few months, it would be GREATLY appreciated!


And then there is the.... new project.... which I'm both proud of and annoyed at how quickly it is coming together, is a board game. It quite literally sprouted and grew over the past 4 days from a goofy concept to a nearing prototype phase. Every time I push it to the side, it just pushes back into my main stream. The rules are all set, various gameplay is in place, player counts are set, only thing really missing is creating about 350 to 430+ prototype cards, a few placeholder tokens, and the starting playing board and it would be ready to test with up to 7 friends (8 people total). To be perfectly honest, I have no idea if it would be fun. It *sounds* fun to me and a few friends I bounce the game off of so far, but that's as much feedback as I've gotten on it aside from one of them saying to try pitching it at either a board game publisher or kickstarter once I've got something playable.

This thing is actually driving me kinda nuts right now. As far as I know, board games take a while to come up with and put together and in general seem very hard and obtuse to produce, yet this thing somehow blew up and, as far as I can see, doesn't actually need much more, if any, conceptualizing. Every time I try to push it away and work on stuff that I want to get done before the end of the year, it comes back with more complete and needing to be written down. Hell, the turn phases and rules of the game are all complete already. There is a win condition and a semi-hard to get at lose condition (you gotta fail ALOT of dice rolls at the moment to lose and I might alter that or add another lose condition to make the game more challenging as you are going against the game itself not the other players) as well as movement quirks and a rather unique board mechanic that should make each and every experience different each time you play. The only real "designing" left is the big baddies of the board and a few board pieces. The rest can actually start being made directly almost right now.

I'm almost tempted to add a 5th goal for the end of the year because of it, but I really don't want to add another seeing as the 4 are fairly tall orders as they are. For the moment, I'm just going to see how things play out and go from there. If I can get it in before the end of the year, yippee. If not, well, there's always 2016...

As of... a few nights ago, I've kinda had enough. I like my job and wouldn't mind seeing how far I can get in it, but at the same token, it's not the career I'd like to do from here til kingdom come. Had a few revelations come upon building and using my computer too which has now boiled down to a checklist of things I'd like to do before the end of this year.

Five months ain't a lot of time, but is at the same time. Either way, I'm placing this to do list up in my galleries to try to help motivate myself. If you've got any comments, rants at me being a lunatic, trolling that "needs doing", etc. Go ahead.

I've already hit my wit's end with the way I've been doing things so now it's time to start changing things for the better and get some kind of disciplined routine going. Inspiration and motivation be damned. The worst anyone could do at this point is stoke the flames further.

The 2015 to-do list

1) Get a playable alpha going of the game I was working on. (As a side note, an upcoming submission may or may not be related to a character that I plan to feature in it and could use a bit of feedback from the character's creator if I'm on the right path.)
2) Get at least 30 new pieces complete. (This includes but is not limited to sketches, clay maquettes, 3d models, finished 2d pieces, or any other artwork I do between now and December 31st and will be gone into a bit more details below if anyone wants some art)
3) Purchase a perpetual license of Maya. (I will go into direct details on this right after the list and yes, it does pertain to the last footnote as well)
4) Start reworking my website. (I'll concede that this is a low, LOW priority, but seeing how flash is being pulled from damn near every browser and may not survive far into 2016, it is something that is on my mind. Between that and... well... how limiting the site is at the moment when it comes to what content can be put up, it's in need of some tlc and some oil to get the gears running smooth again)

And that's it. Those are my goals for the end of the year. No more taking months to get the proper "inspiration" or "drive" to do it either. No more "This isn't working perfectly yet, what if I do this..." thinking cycles that derail things for months at a time. I'm quite frankly getting sick and tired of chasing my brain in these loops. It's not working and worse has been adding unbridled stress, self-doubting, and nay-saying. Enough is enough at this point.

For those interested in further details and want to know more and/or help in some way, keep reading. Otherwise, feel free to close the browser. I've hung on your ear long enough. The next bits may ramble a bit as well as I plan to vent my frustrations with myself and how I kept going in circles.

Concerning the game project, I'm recoding the thing for the 4th damn time now since that journal at the start of April. This is the LAST major recode I want to do before allowing friends and other people to get their hands on it. Between changing the level flow, refactoring and retyping major swaths of code just to try to get it to what mentally would be a perfect working state due to the aforementioned mental self-doubting and nay-saying on my part, it was taking forever to do anything. Having a plan is great and all, but plans mean nothing if not acted upon. I just can't keep delaying things because of what-ifs. I've got a whole swath of other ideas that keep popping up for the game and I've yet to get the main core working due to the earlier mental issues. My somewhat final plan at the moment is to get some placeholder art/models done and get the main core game play working. There may be a few simple placeholder menus and guis in place, but the key target is to get the main gameplay playable. This will be released by mid-October at the latest and mid-August by the earliest. Come hell or high-water SOMETHING will be put out there by October 16th on the game.

Next, concerning both the 30 pieces and the Maya purchase. There will most likely be ALOT more then 30 pieces done since I'm including sketches, but the plan right now is at least that many to add to my portfolio. Finished game art will also be added to this. As it stands at the moment, I've not been doing a whole lot recently art wise and most of what I have been doing, has either been going straight into the digital trash can or has been collecting dust on the drawing table. Yet again, a victim of the self-doubting due to the untold amounts of applications for art-related jobs since 2012, some of which has finally been getting back to me with terms along the lines of "Sorry, we're not interested in your works". Each week, I plan to upload a scraps page full of sketches from that week. If there is something more significant done, ie an animation test/render test, etc, it will get an submission of it's own.

Ideally, I'd like to get back to working in 3D as well, which, is a tad... problematic at the moment. Around the end of my time at AI I bought Maya 2011, then the school upgraded as 2012 was released a week after. About a month after 2012 came out I got a copy of it from a friend and used as a gapfill since I couldn't bring work home without a but-load of version issues with my copy of 2011. I used that copy till my graduation then switched back to the legal copy I bought. Upon installing it recently on my new computer, I started to notice rather glaring problems and running into major issues as I started to try to open old work to refresh what I knew. After doing a bit of digging, I found that the main problems I was facing with the version come down to the type/license and the age.

For any who may not know, Autodesk did at least have an educational suite version which didn't have any of the limitations of the "free for 3 years" educational version, save one that I'll get to in a bit. The suite I'd picked up with Maya was known as the Autodesk Educational Suite and, for the time, it was glorious. No proprietary filetype that couldn't be opened by anything (that includes regular version of Maya, They REALLY butchered that versions save formats), no watermarks over EVERY RENDER EVER, full access to the rendering, skinning, animation, dynamics tools, etc. For the time, it was FANTASTIC and did everything I needed it to for classes. Till the college updated that is, then I could barely do a thing due to a major software back-end rewrite that made the scripts I wrote, incompatible, node used for rigs, unavailable, and files unopenable. There were a few tricks I could do to open files IF I'd saved them as the right format, but I was soo sure I'd be working in a studio and able to afford the latest, that I didn't think to duplicate my files to .ma (maya ascii which is editable outside of maya) and just saved as .mb (maya binary which is not). Fast forward to earlier last week and I get 2 new blows against being able to use Maya 2011. The first, and more painful, is the license which prohibits commercial work. The second, a small widget that tags EVERY FILE SAVED WITH IT, with a pop-up on opening said file that states "This file was created using an educational version of Maya and is not to be used for commercial purposes".

Between that, being unable to go back to 90% of the work I did at AI, and the program flat out crashing consistently and constantly on my new hardware, I do believe it's time to bite the really, really, REALLY expensive bullet and buy the latest version of Maya. There are just 2 new problems in the mix now. First, upgrade discounts are no longer a thing. Second, this is the last year they are offering perpetual licenses. This is on the cusp of being doable, but is a fairly risky, expense wise issue, and I will openly admit I could use some help. I need to still pay Sallie Mae/Navient due to student loans, but I've almost got enough in my savings to buy it outright right now. The main reason I can't do that even if I had the cash is because our car keeps having niggling issues due to it's age. I still think it's going strong, but it is a 2000 Ford Taurus, and did agree to help as much as I can if we need to get a new car. My current "Plan A" is this. Come November, I pay as much as I can without going below the 3K mark in my savings (which should be around 1,400-1,600 if I did my math right), and finance the rest with Autodesk. The downside to that plan is that I've officially now waited a week since initially contacting them about it and have yet to hear back. I've already sent them 2 messages about it as well, but have yet to reach an actual person or get any info. Because of that, "Plan B" is going into effect now. That plan is to sell what old toys/cards I still have as well as ask if anyone wants to commission me to do some art for them. At this point, any reasonable price will probably be accepted, price chart be semi-damned. Part of the money gotten will supplement the fund to buy Maya, the rest is being set aside for the car, be it either to fix it up to like-new or to purchase a new vehicle. Either way, I'm still going to be working my arse off at Amazon and trying to get the most hours I can each week from now till November. I'm not too concerned about the student loans at the moment as 1 paycheck each month typically covers it and I've been throwing extra at it this year to bring it down a bit faster as well as push back the latest "due by" date. By the end of the year, I should owe them right around 12,300 and have still have 7 month period that I could theoretically forget about them without worry of anything being due. I do have a "Plan C" but I REALLY don't want to uber-drain my savings to pay for Maya and leave myself without anything should the car finally go out unexpectedly or I get fired for some odd reason.

Finally, the website. This one kinda hurts. Alot. I was and still am quite proud of how well it works. That would be one of the many reasons I haven't updated the site. It's a memory of good times, and was a hell of an experience to put together. Looking back now, I could probably could have done quite a bit more to future-proof it, like having the flash version be a side-version and the rest as a regular of php/html/etc. Even now as I look on it now, I want to keep it going as it is, but between adding new media to the site, like games and new animations, and how limiting the size of it is, and how difficult it is to update some of the information on it, it just isn't worth keeping on it's own anymore. The core idea is to try to reformat the site and have 2 versions. The first being a usable site/core gallery. The second being a new flashy interactive section, potentially built with Unity if I can make it dynamically load the content from outside the game's executable file. Last thing I need however is another glitch-tastic, pain in the arse like it currently is. Main thing is getting a mobile-friendly web gallery and contact info working at the very least. The rest can come with time.

As you might be able tell after that whole giant venty mess. I kinda had a self wake-up hell over the last couple of weeks, but It's been a good bit of wake-up. I've got a good idea of what to do now. Now, it's no longer a question of waiting for inspiration to strike. Instead, it's a what shall I complete today. And damn is that needed.

Anyone have one of those really, really weird trips home after work and see something that you just could not believe even though you just saw it? I don't mean trip as in drug trip either. I mean trip as in a journey from point A to point b.

Just had one of those and I really dunno if it was real or not. I'm fairly certain it's real, otherwise, somewhere between Amazon and my house there is probably a green car wrecked with me unconscious and/or dead in the front seat. On the other hand, if I didn't dream this, then our police force is in DIRE need of going back to their training academy. That and I might need to consider my stance on "Elderly people are generally harmless". I've already met one person who put that into question and tonight would definitely put another point in that being a falsehood.

Here's the general gist of what I may have born witness too. Stopped over by Taco Bell on the way home and, at the CVS right next door, there was a van out front. As I was exiting the drive through and making my way toward the CVS to get back to the street, 4 elderly people were... hobbling? I can't say booking it, cause I know EVERYONE can probably walk faster then these 4 people. Either way, they were rushing out of the CVS on their walkers to one of those elderly transit vans that was waiting out front. As soon as all 4 got in (this took about 4 minutes and the van was blocking the whole lot) the van peeled out of the parking lot and gunned it, turning south down 87th Avenue.

I didn't think much of it at first. It's unusual, sure, but, and I really hate to say this, that's normal driving for about 99% of the population in Miami. Especially at night when there are fewer cars on the road. I make my turn out of the lot and stop at the light as it was red. Within about 20 seconds of me stopping at the light I hear some emergency vehicles. A moment later 3 police cars blast down 87th same direction as the van while a 4th car along with an ambulance stops at the CVS.

I have absolutely NO idea what the hell just happened. Heck, I'm not even sure if what I saw was even real at this point. Driving home at night can really play havoc with you at times and it gets even worse when doing it semi-hungry around 1 AM, but this? What the hell was that?

A few months ago, after the end of peak at work, I set a repeatable goal for my savings. Sometime in march, I hit that goal and started saving for the "reward" for completing that goal. That reward was a new computer.

As I type this, I'm waiting for various updates to finish and installers to finish downloading on Hephaestus, my new computer. It's not 100% operational yet, but it'll probably be there in about a week or so (art program updates and windows updates are a new form of HELL when reinstalling em from old disks). I was originally debating on picking up ZBrush, but given how some strange stars and moons aligned for Memorial Day, the computer looked to be the better choice for a few reasons.

Atlas, my last computer, has been retired, but is not heading for the scrap-heap. I refurbished the parts, picked up a new harddrive, and gave it to a family member who was stuck on an old computer running windows xp and kept refusing to buy a new one despite a slew of hardware issues. I'll openly admit, this was one of the big reasons I went with the computer over a new program to art with. Their computer was a mess and I'd gotten really tired of the various parts all shorting out one by one and having to fix them as best as I could due to the computer being from the HP dark days when they had custom parts/layouts. The computer itself was from 2003-2004 and it served fairly well till it's networking card blew out sometime last year around July and became completely unrepairable/replacable.

Needless to say, after I salvage a few more files off of that one to put on Atlas/Aesop (didn't feel right naming it the same since it's going to a semi-new owner), the ancient compaq from hp will be going away and we will both get to enjoy working computers.

Atlas and Hephaestus were both put together by me. Atlas saw me through my time at MIUAD and, given the parts I picked up for Heph, I hope it'll see me further.

For those who are comp nerds, here's a part rundown for both machines

Aesop (Formerly Atlas)

Asus P7H55 Mobo
10gb DDR3 (mixed corsair/pny) ram
EVGA Geforce GTX 550 Ti
Intel I5 Quad-core 2.7 ghz Processor
Harddrives:
(as Atlas)
-1 160 gb Seagate Barracuda (Main Windows Install & most of the programs initially)
-2 500 gb WD (Dump drive for my docs & new installs of programs)
(as Aesop)
-1 500 gb WD

Hephaestus

Asus Maxiumus VI Gene Mobo
16 gb DDR3 (GSkill Ripjaw) ram
EVGA Geforce GTX 970 x2 (sli linked)
Intel I7 Quad-core 4.0 ghz Processor
Harddrives:
-1 120 gb Corsair SSD (Windows Install + art programs)
-2 500 gb WD (All other programs & games)
-3 500 gb WD (originally from Atlas, contains "My Docs", less messy to just leave it that way)
-4 160 gb Seagate Barracuda (originally from Atlas, contained old Win 7 Install, will be reformatted soon and become a current project drive)

Still arguing with the game. I am trying to tear apart the code to figure out exactly what I did so I know what to avoid in the future and that is taking a bit longer then initially intended due to a few... complications... on my end. Had a few wrist issues again mainly, but nothing too horrible.

On to the question and this is one that's been popping in my head recently more and more often. It started after I'd read an article recently on CartoonBrew ( http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-.....ty-112926.html ) and it's titled a very simple question but one that alot of artists, not just animators, seem to fall into the trappings of.

Why Imitate Reality?

Imitating Life? Sure, as that gives your characters weight and your backgrounds life. Imitating Form? Again, very much something that gives dimentionality, visual style, and a visual appeal. But imitating reality? Granted, on the surface it seems like it would be chalked up with the other two. I mean, if you are drawing something from a live display, that is, in and of itself, trying to imitate reality, right? Or is it? I suppose in some circumstances, yes, the end goal is to imitate life. Just look up super realism and you'll see tons of stuff that was created just to replicate that which already exists. I, personally, never saw the appeal in it though. If I wanted to see a person's face again and again, I'd simply grab a picture. Same goes for anything else that is already real in our reality. I don't see why someone would ever want to go out of their way to recreate anything that already exists at various scales in multitudes of mediums when it, as stated already, "already exists".

Marcell, in the interview, stated something similar about animation.

"Why would one imitate reality? Just leave it to the living actors! Earthbound reality is not for animation. Animation is a stylized, fantastic world."

I may be part of an extreme minority in this thinking, but I honestly believe nothing should go soo far to do realism/super realism. Is the real world a great place to learn how life is and how forms define? To me, yes, yes it is, but when you constrain yourself to just what the real world can do, you aren't creating, you are just copying, and we've already got simple devices in our pockets that can copy reality better then we can.

I have no idea where to really go on this, but I'd like to hear some additional thoughts on the subject. Also, a small apology if any of this makes no sense. I am writing this after a long day at 4:00 in the morning so I *may* be a little out of my gourd at the moment. It's just something that's been bugging me quite a bit as I see various studios, developers and graphics houses pushing how "real" they can make their 3D and 2D renders for art, movies, and games. Most of it just rubs me the wrong way I guess since I don't see it as much progress.

That game thing I've been working on is *technically* in a working state... in Unity. The problem? Upon building the game to test outside of a development environment, and doing something that is possible, but not required to finish a round of the game, the game locks up and my computer blue screens.

Crap....

Worst part about it is that I have absolutely zero idea what is wrong. I remove the offending part, another bit, that was working perfectly fine by the way, starts causing the same issue. I remove that other piece and bring the original back in, and we get a nice screen full of blue yet again. The weirdest part to me is that when playing it IN unity and not building it, it all works fine. No bugs, no issues, no errors, nothing. I build for PC and test, blue-screen. Build for web-browser and test, blue-screen. It's semi-maddening the way that it is consistently doing this without producing a single error. Especially since the code is almost 1 for 1 with a piece of scripting from the Udemy course I've been taking, and that one has no issues whatsoever in Unity and post-build. The only real differences are a few variable names and the order of where some of the functions are, and that would be mostly due to me trying to code it from near-scratch and memory to reinforce the lessons.

I'm kinda at a loss at the moment over it. About ready to redo the scripts that appear to be causing the issue from scratch. Perhaps round 2 will be better? Or would it be round 3 since this was done in the course? Eh, I'll figure it out. Just wanted to vent some frustrations for a moment and put out a small update.

Had a much longer journal written up about how things were going since my last one from the start of december, but I accidentally went back on my browser and lost it all.

Short of it was things are going well. I took a stroll down memory lane and re-read alot of my old journals which is what got me to write this one. Noticed I was also quite whiney a long time ago and apologized for that. On the work front, I might do voluntary full time again if I'm still at Amazon around November this year. As for personal projects, the animation project is still being worked on, but got moved to the mid-burner for the interim due to work and feeling semi-burnt out on concentrating on it. Also working on 5 videogames, 4 of which I mentioned previously (and are not being actively worked on right now due to being WELL beyond my abilities to attempt right now) and one small scope game that I plan on having a working pre-alpha version in a week or two. As soon as I get it running, I might elaborate more on it as well as possibly post it online for people to fiddle with once more of the temp placeholders are replaced with their near final art. Been taking an online class that teaches Unity3D which has been helping an immense amount with this little project since I knew next to nothing on C# or scripting/programming other then little bits I was able to piece together. Art as a whole however has been slowed down due to hand/finger/wrist numbness when drawing or writing for any length of time, but the culpret may be a 35+ year old mattress that I plan to replace soon since I has the moneys.

Aside from that, how's things on y'alls ends?

For now though, (and hopefully not going to disappear for another multi-month span) till next time!

-Ras

I'm part of the Amazon workforce. Actually got it around the end of October, but they don't want us to say a whole lot about working there, soo....

without going into details....
uh...

It's ok? working there? Not absolutely horrible most days, but some days... like today... I could probably bend steel girders with how tensed, stressed, and annoyed I am. Granted, part of it was the police closing a 1/20th of a mile section of road and forcing people to add an additional 2 miles to get around it. But the other half... definitely happened in warehouse.

Personally, I'm hoping it'll turn into a permanent part-time, but this will be the last time I volunteer for fulltime durring the peak season. a small bonus worth roughly 2/3rds of a paycheck is SOOOO not worth the agrivation of people who refuse to see what's going on or getting on your case when you are doing all you can do.

I want to go into full detail right now, but, they really don't want us talking about their "secret package shipping techniques" which really aren't that secret and are (most of the time) common sense. Then again... no nda....


nah... better not risk it more then I have already.

hopefully I'll have something more to say soon.

-Ras

Then I thought about it. Dealing with gut-wrenching abdomen pain for 48+ hours is an experience I hope to never go through again. However, at the same token, I can say one definitive thing about it. For all the tax-payer funded "improvements" they've done to Baptist Hospital, their wait times still suck. Went in around 9:00 PM and was finally released around 5:00 AM and, throughout that whole time, I think I saw the doctor and nurses for all of 30 minutes if you totaled them all together. The majority of the time was just waiting. The first 5 hours in the waiting room/initial checkin area and the last 3 in a bed after finally being admitted.

I actually had written up a sizable complaint/rant on it, which, to a point, I guess I can be still entitiled to do since even after going through all that they were unable to figure out what the hell is/was wrong with me, but after reading what I had written, it just felt, I dunno, off.

Either way, I'm back home now. No idea as to what exactly was causing the issues, but they have narrowed it down to a few things (they think it's either GERD or an ulcer) and gave me a prescription for something that is essentially Prilosec. Semi-not looking forward to taking it (lotta dizziness reported from users from a cursory look around online) but if it'll help keep that pain from EVER coming back, I'd rather be dizzy.

Now on to the other half of why I'm still making a journal. Monitor issue, resolved, for the time, however I'm a tad concerned over how much the hospital bill may be. They ran quite a few tests (Blood, Urine, EKG, CT Scan, and a quite few more that I only have vague recolections of after they'd given me a shot of some pain numbing medication). I do have insurance, thanks to my mother, but, as far as either of us know and can tell, they are only going to cover around 60% of the bill. I've got a lil money put together that I'd been trying to get together for the monitor, but this will be superceding that, expecially since that problem has been solved for the most part. We'll know how much it'll come to soon, but we're anticipating having to shell out 800 to 900 which is money we do not have. We might be able to put it on credit, but that's not really an answer to the issue.

If you'd like to help, at least mention the issue and that I'm open for commissions. I've also got an iron artist open as well with sketches going for a buck.

Regardless, now that I am at least mostly functional and no-longer doubled over in pain and that certain bits have finally been cleaned up, I'll be starting to scan some of the newer stuff soon. Hope everythings going well with y'all.