Avatar, Shift!

Posted by Zaron on July 26, 2010, 12:12 a.m.

Woosh, there it goes. It still freaks me out from time to time because I fail to realize immediately that that image does, in fact, represent me, and thus I keep wondering who the hell random sites have logged me in as.

I think it was Cyrus who said in only slightly nicer words that smug Gato came across as a bit of an ass, and to be honest I've not felt particularly prideful lately (more of a lonely, depressed and semi-abandoned state of mind, but I do try to keep the emo to myself sans some closer alliances). Thus, the new one is a far more neutral Sam and Wynn from HP, the latter of whom still just exists in my random doodles and junk. If you feel so inclined, the larger version is over yonder on Newgrounds at ten times the size. If you don't feel so inclined, well, whatever.

B'sides, I don't feel my reception there will be so fantastic after Cyrus just finished terrifying half of you with awkward furry breast-implanted fan service. Speaking of which, I did some of that too in a shameless attempt to get attention that I'm both happy and sad to say worked all too well, now being my most viewed thing ever, save maybe an old STWPT flash from years ago. The controversy it sparked and the score's rapid swaying back and forth are entertaining to watch, as it's honestly pretty amusing how much people value personal taste over artistic merit, and how this can pull a lower rating than an image of an abused girl barely holding on to life and with the description reading how she's stopped fighting the drugs because it's the only thing that eases the pain and she only has a week left to live. True to fashion, Newgrounds embraces that as "Sexy," while what people are arguing isn't even proper smut (because good luck talking me into proper smut) is an abomination against nature and moral standing.

I expect far too much logic out of the site where people get upset about the mic quality behind their dick jokes. What I do not expect, however, is more than one of you to like that second image, but why not just feed the spaz fire at this point? That's what I've fallen to.

In more overall news, my webcomic is finally approaching it's 300th page (by my count, anyway), tonight updating with #298 and more fire before I swap the scene to something thankfully less red because I am so tired of painting an endless stream of red. I think this is evidenced by both previously linked images being markedly cooler in color scheme, I guess, but I'm thankful all the same to be getting back to Jamal and Sam's squabbling come next week, when both my Airbender and DBZ influences will be dancing around in full force in quite possibly the most obvious display ever, so stay tuned for that, I guess.

Regarding game making (the point of this site? Blasphemy!), GM8's news feed thingy pointed me to their latest contest, which, in a brief stint of insanity, I decided to try and put something together for. The results so far are decent enough save some semantics issues I'm still trying to work out, shattered self-esteem, and my thoughts going from "I would like to move on from GM after this" to "I shouldn't even bother with programming because I am a worthless human being apparently for not having learned programming by pulling it out of my ass at age 12 before I even really understood what the internet was because my family is not entirely technologically inclined or particularly supportive of my pursuits, largely on account of them being insane and me wasting more time crafting run-on sentences than actually getting crap done." I've been told I'm wrong in just about every feasible way these last few days from the art to the programming, game project or otherwise, and it's gotten me feeling pretty down.

On the upside, you can make a little man run around and bounce a blue ball all over the room in an attempt to make water appear. Interpret that how you will.

As for HPE itself, I'm back to wondering what it's future is when apparently an entire RPG back-end is no problem for me but basic platform collision and a freakin' particle destroyer are blowing my mind. Aside from that, Erik has been offering to assist to some extent for ages, and now that PlaneShader is actually a thing I can see, I have some degree of confidence in that happening someday.

All the same, being reduced to "guy that draws everything" really kills game design being a break from drawing everything for me, which is a good explanation for why I never get any sprite work done, and the present extent of HPE's "battle system" looks like She-Hulk's flattened tit.

Time will tell, I guess, and Erik's prospective animation system sounds pretty in line with the shit I dream of doing (my perfectionism tells me to try and match Odin Sphere, but reality says I should probably aim a smidgen lower for a first outing, mayhaps).

Wish me luck, and shorter blogs or something.

Comments

mazimadu 14 years, 4 months ago

You should try using Fireworks for your sprites. By using mainly vectors instead of raster, you can add as much detail as you want and then scale the image down. Try breaking the characters up into pieces too. I use that for my sprites.

sirxemic 14 years, 4 months ago

Fireworks? Isn't Illustrator better than Fireworks for vector drawings and isn't Fireworks better than Illustrator for website designs?

Zaron 14 years, 4 months ago

Fireworks is made for website prototyping and the graphics associated with such, but is painfully slow. I use an ancient pirated version (read; one away from not even working with Vista) because it's stupidly expensive, and Illustrator is infinitely more so, but better on every front.

Blackhole linked me to a free vector tool he used to make his engine's logo, called Inkscape I think, that might serve your needs well enough. I've not tinkered with it much yet myself, but it's something.

Castypher 14 years, 4 months ago

Quote:
because it's stupidly expensive
Correction. All Adobe products are stupidly expensive.

Zaron 14 years, 4 months ago

To be fair, I never said that wasn't the case, as it very much is. I suppose the proper wording would have been "Even MORE stupidly expensive," as last I knew the only thing more expensive in the CS than Illustrator was InDesign. Because when I think "I want to do page layout for a project I'm working on," I think "it would be fantastic to drop over a grand on a fancier version of Publisher."

Castypher 14 years, 4 months ago

I wasn't bashing you though, I was bashing Adobe. Stupid Adobe for creating/buying good software that costs a fortune.

Zaron 14 years, 4 months ago

And then runs slow, crashes, and takes out your motherboard when you uninstall it.

…. I'm not bitter or anything. >_>

sirxemic 14 years, 4 months ago

I forgot to say, I like your drawings. Well, not those where the emphasis is on furdom. I like those which could be from a children cartoon.

Zaron 14 years, 4 months ago

As I stated, I put the emphasis there in a shameless ploy for attention and exposure, which 3K+ views on the thing tells me worked. I'm kind of sad that that's what I have to resort to, though. :c

On the upside, at least I find m' girls easy on the eyes. >w> So I guess there's a bit more furry to me than I like admitting, probably because "furry" gets one tied with so much weirdness I really want… nothing to do with. >_>

Glad you like what counts, tho. : )