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Pinterest Study 02 | Pt. 1 — The Black Hole of Overthinking

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So, maybe about a year or two ago, I decided to do a quick character design exercise in an attempt to actually make use of the pins on my pinterest board. The design was inspired by two images that happened to be in close proximity to each other, which I thought would look pretty cool together.  One was a pair of pants of the Kiko Kostadinov brand, and the other, a photo shoot of an individual in a gas mask created by IKEUCHI Hiroto.  Both entities are really interesting in their own right, so here are the links to their websites/projects:  https://kikokostadinov.com/ | https://www.sfdept.tokyo/ The hakama-like pair of pants combined with the top-knot hairstyle and gas mask inspired me to draw this, sort of, streetwear-wearing samurai. I thought that an emphasis on the unique quality of the hakama — the opening in the sides of the pants — would be an interesting take on the samurai in streetwear illustrations that I’ve come across in the past couple of years. I really loved the pink
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Some Sketches: Long Necks and Over-Working

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I came home from work and thought I'd wind down with a bit of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. There is no "winding down" with Three Houses.  It took about an hour and a half before I finally got to the next battle. Probably not how you're supposed to play it but -- Anyway, I was working on a character concept, and I had some issues with the neck. I often have trouble connecting the head and neck, especially when the head is in perspective. In the end, I think I just needed to make the neck and shoulders a bit wider.  I’m starting to notice that the size of the head is relative to the width of the shoulders. Whenever something seems off, I try to adjust one of those two things, but neck thickness is another aspect that I didn’t think about until now. Many a year have I drawn the long and slender neck ahaha Another thing I’d like to pay more attention to is the distance of the head from the shoulders.  On another note, when I looked back at the original sketch, I felt that I
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Pinterest Study 01

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(Future Note #1: This is an old post from January of last year (lmao) that I’ve decided to post now.) I have a Pinterest that’s flooded with too many pins, but recently I’ve finally gotten around to actually making use of all of the stuff that I’ve saved. There’s a big rabbit hole as to how I got onto what feels like a new paradigm shift, but before I get to that, I’m just going to talk about this first. Pinterest is honestly quite terrifying because there are too many images and I lack self-control The Pinterest Study I really liked this middle pose — the overall shape looked really pleasing and I wanted to capture that. I haven’t developed the idea just yet, but I’ve been on a shape language/shape clarity kick, and one thing that I’ve started thinking about was how clothing can shape a person’s silhouette. In this instance, I like the way the clothing is draped off of the model here, and I liked how thick and loose his jeans are. Kind of refreshing, given that I’ve been drawing nothi
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When You Start to Notice How Cute Frogs Are

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I stumbled upon some frog photos the other day. It got me inspired to do this:   Here are some preliminary sketches: Now I've just got to... actually do the thing. /nervous sweating I haven't forgotten about Godot or programming, either. I burned out pretty quickly, but I'm gonna try my best not to drop it.
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A Cool and Helpful Detour

I found this channel called Jabrils in my youtube recommendations, and through his channel, I found his series on basic code. It's pretty amazing! In a short afternoon I learned some C# and Python, and it wasn't intimidating at all. He does a really good job of explaining things. I thought it'd be helpful to watch his videos since GDscript, the language used in Godot, is based on Python, and I learned that C# is the language used in Unity. It was neat, because sure enough, I started to recall some of the stuff that I learned in the Godot tutorials. I had the context to better understand those concepts that I'd previously followed somewhat arbitrarily. I really like the way the course is set up, because once you take the initial coding tutorial, you can then pick and choose what videos you want to watch, based on whatever concepts you struggled with. It kind of reminds me of the tutorial/hint system in Romancing SaGa, if you'd humor me for a bit: If I recall corr
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I Wrote Lore Instead of Studying Godot

I wasn't meaning to, but I ended up writing lore for one of my game ideas. I won't give much away, but I was trying to figure out why the world was the way that it was. The premise is that you're a group of monks in a small cliffside town that was built on the grave of the hermit who founded it. The town is famous for its shrine, which is said to inhabit a higher being, so pilgrimages to the town are common. Your group is responsible for serving the community (i.e. quests), purifying evil spirits, and other such things, which really amount to dungeon crawling and exploring nooks and crannies in the hub town while shooting the breeze with NPCs and getting closer to your party members. Oh and your ultimate goal is to become the vessels for different angels. Dunno if one or seven or more than that. I'm not sure yet. But the town is really into these angels coming down and dwelling among them. I want the game to mostly take place in the town, with maybe one or two nearby a
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It's Thursday. On Wednesday I learned Godot.

It's also been three years oops It's kind of late where I am right now, but I wanted to update this blog since I've been doing a lot of things and want to keep that momentum going. I've made quite a few drafts attempting to keep track of all of it, but it feels too scripted and unnatural. I think I'm just going to upload whatever drawings I have and then just add commentary where I see fit. I don't want to get too verbose, but I really want to be understood. Hopefully I can strike a good balance. That's why I tried bolding phrases in earlier entries, so that the main ideas would be easier to parse. Anyway Lately, I've been learning Godot, and that's kind of... more work than I thought? As you might be able to tell, I'm a largely abstract thinker and just want to go straight into designing things, moving things around and whatnot. I love that Godot is super lightweight, but I didn't realize that I would have to write the scripts myself. If mem
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