It's chocolate ice cream

     Oooh, you weren't expecting another update so soon, were you? That's my trap, I "trick" you into thinking I'm a lazy asshole, but now and then I follow a left jab with a right hook.  After some more boxing analogies, you are left confused, maybe a little sleepy.  That's the perfect time to show you this.

 

     This was the first one.  I can't stop drawing pictures of myself from when I was in my late teens/early twenties.  I feel like if you could come up with an image to represent the "internet generation", whatever you came up with would be very similar to this if you were being honest.  I'm sure this genre of person has always existed in some capacity, but the internet made it viable.  I made myself a little sad with this one, I wasn't expecting to put so much disappointment into that poor woman's face.  

     I was surprised at how quickly it came together.  Maybe an hour or two of work? That probably sounds unimpressive, but for me it's unheard of.  If I'm getting to the point where I can draw a few people in a reasonable time frame, maybe I'll actually be able to draw backgrounds that aren't just perspective lines, and as long as I'm dreaming, maybe I could overcome my crippling inability to colour.

     Middle child syndrome.  Whenever I'm satisfied with an initial drawing, I get the second one started with just the highest hopes.  This means I'm literally not capable of being happy with it.  Not that I think this one is particularly bad, I just couldn't make it work as what I originally wanted it to be.  At least my hands are getting less atrocious.  That's a left-hook fist if I ever saw one, and I have to say I'm surprised with how much I like the eyes.  Big enough to be expressive without being a pile of weeaboo anime bullshit.  On reviewing these, I think I overuse some poses, and am going overkill on certain perspectives.  I'm trying to be a little more creative with what I can do, which led to the third drawing-

      Not that what I've been drawing so far has been photo-realistic, but I hadn't done much exploring of cartoony exaggeration.  This took me almost no time, like I'm talking in the fifteen minute range here.  Again, probably not that impressive, but something like this would have taken me days a few months ago.  Now that I can actually draw faces/expressions, I might be ready to start making animation again. 

    
     So until next time I guess, this is me in real life.

Well now I'm even more confused

     I've been bumbling my way through some more Adobe programs lately.  Mostly Premiere, the video editing software, with a little After Effects on the side.  They're both fun as shit to use, and when I get better at using them I hope I can crank out some fun stuff.  After Effects even has green screen capability, which could blow things wide open if I made that happen.  Of course, I still think there's a lot of learning to do before I actually start dropping real money on things.  Creative hobbies can get pretty goddam expensive, and you don't even get adorable little costumes like the guys that do model trains get to wear.

     I made a few tutorial videos for a video game with the help of Premiere.  You might notice the horrible sound quality.  I tried using a different mic than I had used to make the earlier cartoon projects.  This mic was a condenser microphone, and those usually have a better reputation for voice recording than the dynamic mic I had been using.  Unfortunately, that seems to have been the wrong choice to make for this.  Although, since I'm getting better with Adobe Audition, I was able to salvage it a little.  As hissy and weird as it sounds now, you should have heard it at first. 

     The game is called Dwarf Fortress, and I should tell you right away, I completely understand if you don't watch these videos all the way though, if you even watch them at all.  It's one of those games that I'm really into because it's difficult, complicated, unforgiving, and unpredictable.  The graphics are ASCII (a Sanskrit word meaning "ugly like troll taint") but if you don't mind tedious computer work you can find user-created tilesets that make it look less like ass.  Long story short, I recommend this game to people often, but it doesn't have a learning curve so much as it has a learning cliff.  Maybe I'm just the kind of person that enjoys pointless challenges, but it's so far up my alley it's tripping over stray cats. 

     So, yeah!  There's that.  No drawings for this update because for the life of me, I couldn't find my friggin stylus.  It eventually revealed itself, so I think I'm going to be doing some more of that over the next few days and hopefully will have an actual, entertaining update up within a week or so.  Until then, you always have the option of downloading Dwarf Fortress (it's free) and learning a completely useless skill.  Until next time,

farts,

me.