#studio log

[ev-nhua]

January 2024 | Studio Log

Currently working on 🐝

CCA/OAC funded research project

Not a ton to share here; we're in the early stages of data collection and lots of reading! Grateful to both councils for being flexible with the timeline here while I balance these commitments with a full-time job 😵‍💫

Currently reading 🌱

Raving by McKenzie Wark

Reading this one as part of a mini-book club! It's such a treat and a brainstretcher to see rave culture framed as both reflective of and an escape from the post-capitalist terrors of the "real world".

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

This one is hitting hard, especially in tandem with SFPC's Solidarity Infrastructures class! It's filling the Octavia void left by wrapping up the bulk of OBAI last year.

"There is no such thing as a blank canvas, an empty land or a new idea – but everywhere there is complex, ancient, fertile ground full of potential."

Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck & K Wayne Yang

Reading this to keep up with the syllabus of CCT395 (and it was also a piece I didn't get to as part of Beyond GLAM Land Acknowledgments at OCAD last year). They are incredibly clear in their stance that the phrase of "decolonizing our ###" may work to decenter settler narratives, but it not synonymous with decolonization and the reparations that follow.

"When metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future."

 A Rant About “Technology” by Ursula K. Le Guin

"I could learn. We all can learn. That’s the neat thing about technologies. They’re what we can learn to do."

Technology & Ethos by Imamu Amiri Baraka

"See everything fresh and “without form”–then make forms that will express us truthfully and totally and by this certainly free us eventually."

Decolonizing Design by Ahmed Ansari

Very interesting to have this against the Tuck & Yang essay! Ansari uses decolonizing as a metaphor, but the central point of decentralizing eurocentric perspectives, and the pitfalls of what happens when we try this on the surface only, still stands.

"whenever we construct knowledge around an unfamiliar Other, we make what is local and familiar to them familiar to us through a process of reduction by passing what is observed through our own concepts of the world, in what amounts to a “globalization” of knowledge."

Currently thinking about 🌊

Fractal relationships as a way to view community

Consistency of change & the strive and acceptance of temporary perfection

The scale of waves

The coastline paradox as a proxy for zooming in and out

Currently listening to 🕯

Coming Home Song by Sammy Rae & The Friends

Big Girls Don't Cry by Fergie

The Redwing by Feist

[dobski-digital-morgue-and-more]

Gearing up to sell digital illustration prints! Super nervous, but making the most of it. Can’t wait to wrap this one up!

[retquits]

happy fields of mistria day 🥹

[bobby-ross]

Never gonna stop thinking about the tragedy that is qDan. The last thing he ever said to anyone was "I'll see you later". He never made it home. He wanted to help. He promised to be back. He made a waypoint of Maxo's house so he would know how to get back. He played hide and seek with his child and sang him to sleep. He did his best to protect his partner despite never once having a piece of armor or a weapon. "Let me save you" is one of the lines he said that I remember the most. "Let me save you", he said, to someone who was much stronger than him. "I'll see you later", he said, to someone he would never see again. "Tell me when he wakes up", he said, about his child, because he wanted to be there. He wanted to help. He wanted so badly to be there. Let me save you. I'll see you later.

He never made it across the second river.

[lucys-art-log]

What if Akutagawa was like Ashitaka, but he rode a horse instead of a red elk?? Just me?? Ok I’ll shut up now….

[kryomax]

【sketch log.5】

Commissions are currently: OPEN! (msg me: DM/Website)

[sage-basil]

i missed him suuuuper bad, so i drew him

art blog -> @sage-basil-art

[esyllt-log]

[draconiselegy]

FIELD NOTES, VOL. V

someone posted a new video. i wasn’t ready. i thought i was. i lied.

it’s front row. crisp. devastating. you can see the fabric grain in his tunic.

his eyes—his eyes are hazel. not “brown” not “green”—hazel, like a pond reflecting a fire. like someone who’s seen the divine and is pretending not to flinch.

he smiled at the crowd and i made a noise that was not meant for human ears.

i paused the video. i rewound it. i watched it again like it was a confession. like it was mine.

the way he tilts his head. the way he laughs but looks away first.

there’s softness in him and it’s killing me gently. like medieval poison. like honey with teeth.

i am not okay. i am learning what it means to want in ways language cannot hold.

i am going to have to walk into the sea about this.

i have dissertations to write and instead i’m weeping over a man in a foam island costume.

but tell me—how am i meant to continue living when he blinked directly into the camera and looked like he knew?

[thetriangletattoo]

.

[sarcastic-clapping]

jobs paying wildly different rates for the literal exact same role based on your location is so wild when you think about it for more than 0.5 seconds because it’s like. so you’re not assigning a dollar amount to my time and energy based on the value delivered by my work, you’re dictating how well and how comfortably you think that it means i deserve to live in whatever area i happen to exist in

[talk-nerdy-to-me-thyla]

Saw muppet vision 3D 3 times today

[starrytreestudio]

Currently working on my human illustrated starter pack and it’s sooo cute!! I can’t draw humans for the life of me lol, so I’ll insert a cute character based on me that I never posted 🥰💗

[rainspicestudios]

End of May Update

Wait, what do you mean it’s already June?? Wasn’t it March yesterday? It’s already my birthday in three weeks?? Time blindness aside, enjoy my monthly devlog ✨

The good news is, some more assets are drawn for Enter the Eternity and for The Code of Crystals. I’m still a one-person team, but with how busy May was, progress was still made, and that’s what counts.

Here’s what I want to work on in June:

Two Second dates have been fully coded in, so I want to get the rest of the second dates in and playtested as well.

I want to get assets for at least two third dates done.

I dislike a background that I drawn for the Eternity/Other World, so I want to redraw it.

I also realized that I absolutely hate Henry’s magical boy outfit. I have a new design for him which is almost finished, I just need to render/shade his sprites.

Sadly, this devlog will be a little short: I spent the month of may moving across the city I live in and I might have a new job that I absolutely need sooo 🙏 let’s hope that I get it. I clearly did not finish two “parts” for The Code of Crystals and may be too ambitious for Enter The Eternity. I will get them done, but I will have to slow down their development due to everything happening outside of the internet.

I still want to release Enter the Eternity around the end of 2025.

Thank you for your support and let's make some good progress in June 🥂✨ Have a great day, everyone!

Enter the Eternity is a dating simulator in which Michi (name customizable) signs up to study at the Matsubara Institute for a semester and lives in a shared house. The problem is: every single one of your roommates is a magical girl (or boy, or person)!

How will you survive abroad with magical girls? Will you be able to adapt to this new life and make friends? Better yet, will you end up dating one of them?

[itch.io]

[lucys-art-log]

I was watching Tales from Earthsea the other day and I paused it on this perfect frame of Hare riding that weird bull thing and just had to sketch it real quick. I should do that more.

[kryomax]

【sketch log.2】

Commissions are currently: OPEN! (Just msg me: DM/Website)