Today I Made Some Of The Animations For Snake Holding A Pistol For Our Peace Day Retro-game Fanfic. The

Just best friends 🫶

Axiom Verge fanart I drew in Procreate. It's just moments before Trace wakes for the umpteenth time in an egg chamber - though it's not exactly in one. Elsenova is just sort of observing Trace, curious, kind of concerned and caring. Though she hates Athetos, this younger, kinder version of Trace has made an impression on her powerful AI being.

Specifically I made this for Wildragon, because their AV art has brought me so much joy this month, when I got into Axiom Verge. You know that feeling when you share a fandom with one other nerd across spacetime in exactly the same way? They brought me it a million times over.

This is a custom NPC system I made for our game, Unstable Scientific. Because it's only Dustin and me working on it, I always have to consider how to make sure that the code load is low on Dustin's end. That means that sometimes I have to come up with my own code-free solutions to challenges. In this case, the system is now so simple that I might ultimately be able to write the code myself!

I created a system in Photoshop in order to generate sprites of custom NPCs with a wide variety of assets such as hair and clothing, all without writing a line of code! 

Trans person in the US. Bust some of the doomerism for me? Tell me it's going to be okay?

Hi Anon

Usually, I have boundaries for myself about keeping this blog focused on environment-related issues, because there are limits to what I can speak knowledgeably about. But now doesn’t feel like the time for that.

Anon, I will tell you that I live in the US, I am queer, my spouse is trans, and we have two young children. I am sitting right there with you in the fear and grief and every day when I ask myself “is there still hope” I find reasons to say “yes”.

They want us—all of us, not just queer folks—to feel overwhelmed and hopeless, because despair is a tool that keeps people from realizing their power and taking action.

They want us to feel so afraid that we lose our faith in other people and withdraw from our communities, because we are easier to conquer alone.

Do not give them what they want.

Hope is most necessary in the bad times. The ability to imagine a future that is better than things are now is exactly what gives us the power to begin making things better. Our community has been through terrible things before, and they did not lose hope or give up—otherwise we would not be where we are today.

When you start to feel like all the light is being blotted out, turn off the news, put away your phone, and go get in touch with something you love. Go outside and look at the sky, talk to a friend, listen to music, do some small thing to make something better even if it’s just cleaning your kitchen or picking up some litter around the block or returning an extra stranded cart in the grocery store parking lot. Remind your brain that you have agency to make positive change in the world through your actions.

I know it is really hard to pull out of the darkness sometimes. I know there will be days that hope seems like a foolish, naive thing, that despair and distrust seem like the only rational options. But hope is what keeps us alive. Hope is what allows us to save each other.

I wish I could give you a specific article or other source to reassure you that everything is going to be ok, but things are still too in flux day by day. I can tell you that people are already fighting back, in big and little ways, all over this country and the world. These orders and bills are being pushed by a loud but small minority—this is not how the majority of the country feels about trans rights.

Make a plan for staying safe. Reach out to your community. Find music, activities, podcasts, movies, whatever helps you feel uplifted and take mental breaks from dwelling on the news. If you can, find ways to get involved in making things better in whatever big or small way feels doable for you--it may help push back on the doomerism more than you think. And my inbox is open if you need to talk.

I wish I could invite you over for dinner. I wish I could look into your eyes and tell you that things may get hard for the next few years but that does not mean that your life can't still be full of joy and beauty and fulfillment in spite of that.

I’m right there with you. Let’s make it through this together <3

Some Axiom Verge critters

Holy crap this was a ride

people will say "why cant the eldritch gods just be nice to humans :((" and then kill a bug for existing near them

This is too cute! This line work is just so expressive too!

Snake! Not in front of the men! 😳

Past years

I just watched the new episode of Extra Credits today, "3D NPCs Please ", and this is a screenshot of the part where they say that mentor characters don't always need to be old men. I love it!

Self-reblog from the other game I'm working doing art and animation for!

I’m working on the art for a swooping melee-attack damselfly right now, and wanted to get a more realistic wing animation.  This turned out to be fairly challenging, first because insect wings move so quickly.  Even a 12x speed video won’t capture more than a blur.  There’s plenty of dragonfly slow-mo videos shot with professional cameras, but damselfly videos are harder to find.

Why damselflies?  Because they rest their wings folded atop their bodies, looking better for a 2D perspective in our game.  Dragonfly wings would look odd, seen edge-on.   My search for a reference took me to some fascinating places online.  Japanese researchers back in the 1980′s had studied the flight mechanics of damselfly wings, down to the forces acting on individual sections!  Check this out:

University of Tokyo, Flight Mechanics of a Damselfly -  AKIRA AZUMA, SOICHI AZUMA, ISAO WATANABE AND TOYOHIKO FURUTA  https://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/116/1/79.full.pdf The black and white gif I included is from photos taken from this paper. Next, I found at a video that illustrated damselfly darting with fluid mechanics simulations.  https://youtu.be/erd8FibfPR4 (the other gif is carefully taken from this video and reassembled so it stands still, for use as a reference).   It’s like the damselfly swims through the air, using two sets of paddles - and still, the movement appears strange and counterintuitive.   The only reference I couldn’t find was on the color shift of an ebony damselfly’s wings.  I had to fudge it, half from blurry video frames, half trying to not look too busy in a pixel-art animation. This has been fun, challenging, and a deep dive into a rabbit hole I otherwise would have overlooked!