theclo4ked1 - Tumblr blog

[theclo4ked1]

THINGS  TO  BUY BECAUSE  I  WILL  FORGET   TOMORROW IF  I  DO  NOT  WRITE THESE  ITEMS DOWN,  SO  HERE  WE GO:

this was the title of a note i'd written and left myself a while ago. i had it pinned to my door with a red pushpin. today i finally took it down... there were maybe seven total items, but the only things i got were toothpaste, soap, and some 90% isopropyl alcohol.

[theclo4ked1]

Heeyyy, it's been a looong time... *checks date* Again. It's been almost a month since I last put something on this blog. I've been really busy. being dead. And I haven't been playing Portal 2. But I have been playing a lot of the classic Sonic games via the Mega Collection, the absolutely incredible compilation disc. I think it tops Sonic Origins (which I haven't played). I feel like the comics and older illustrations, commercials, and Ristar (pronounced "Rye-star" or "Wrist-ar"? Or "Ree-star"?) win me over. And also, from what I've heard and observed, there wasn't as much love and care put into it, so the overall quality experience is hindered because

Money money money Is all you need

( Did you know ALL models of the PS3 can play PSX discs? I've been playing my newly acquired PaRappa the Rapper, too. I now own the trilogy. Only UmJammer Lammy is digital. I bought PaRappa 2 physically at my first gaming convention back in 2018, only to find out later my wife can't use PS2 discs. Big sad. You might saying "why don'tcha just jailbreak it?" I wouldn't, but even if I wanted to, I don't have the correct model. It's been so many years anyways, I wouldn't have her any other way :3 )

AND. It was with this compilation that--after all these years--that I finally achieved: 1) Beating Sonic 3D Blast (with the emeralds) 2) Beating the first level of Sonic Spinball (I've recommend some guy on YouTube having also done this, so good for him) These may not mean a lot to you, but to me? Man. And y'know what? I actually enjoyed my time with 3D Blast. It was a...unique game. I really like seeing all the sights and how the game progressed after Green Grove. After Rusty Ruin, I noticed Tails' and Knuckles' locations became way less hidden. Rusty Ruin Act 2, I think it was, had THE BEST hidden location, for Tails it might have been. No, scratch that--the whole ZONE has the best locations, you really have to go out of your way for them. What's that? ... Where did I find him? Pssh, I'm not telling you, play the game and use your brain. Just don't spin yourself around too much tryna find him. Anyways, I've been busy doing things. I've been developing a under-HTML-construction digital portfolio of almost all the art I've posted on Tumblr since uuuhm late 2020. You can find it through the link below: > the link < I'm beginning to have second thought about this one, too, so don't expect me to keep it for too long. Parallel to that, I've been trying animation again. Look guys look it is my greatest achievement: wario land 4 for the gameboi advanced. incrredible incrrrEedible- look guys look

Sigh...y'know, getting guud learning basic anatomy and figure drawing can spark an improved journey... This isn't the "true animation". What I mean is each of the original drawings were MUCH larger than my Flash Document canvas (1440x1080), so by compressing everything into a Graphic symbol, I was able to minimize all the frames at once to fit. It took a few tries to work, so I had to be conscientious as to not save over the "uncompressed" drawings. k cya l8r

[theclo4ked1]

Hey. It's been a while. Not really, it's only been a, oh, two weeks since I last touched Tumblr. I've come back to show ya something cool. Come, come by, come by.

"What is it?", you ask? (I'm not sure if you did ask that but) It's a game that I made for the SEGA Genesis, or the Mega Drive for those outside the U.S. I made it using the Sega Genesis Development Kit (1.51, to be exact), whose tutorial pages on GitHub refer to the console as the "Genny". The games I make/have made are tested and run in a modified, developer-catered version of the GENS emulator. This one, though, it's more the result of study, experimentation, and a little bit of growing up.

See, there's this kinda cool videogame, perhaps you've heard of it? called Sonic 3D Blast; the Genesis version whose lead programmer was Jon Burton. Burton runs (or ran) a YouTube channel by the name of GameHut, where he reveals some of the development history and the really cool computational and memory saving techniques and innovations, or "C0D1NG 5ECR3T5", for the games he'd worked on, notably Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R.

^ The first tutorial video Burton posted to YouTube About five years ago, as of this post, Burton created four videos, as of this post, that would help teach viewers a lil' something about creating games for the "Genny" by programming in 68000 Assembly, or ASM68K, which is what most games on the console were written in. Few games were written in C. While it is easier to read and write code with, the downside was that those games ran slower than those written in ASM68K--or so I've heard. An example is Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball. I heard this one was written in C to make it in time for a holiday release (archived source proving this is true). Anyways, around three years ago, when I was watching Burton's videos, and also learning the basics of the SGDK at the time, I was intrigued to learn more about what made Genesis games work, so I watched his tutorials. I've only built the first tutorial's game (on my hard drive, currently). In the video descriptions, he provides the files necessary to build the game. The game itself (when compiled) features a blue and gray scrolling background that I'd grown fond of. I liked it so much that I thought "hey i should make my own with the sgdk since thats easier than assembly :)" so I did. Addendum, Mar. 3, 2024. Looking back, I think my game as a whole is more based on Burton's second tutorial. In that video, he adds a Sonic sprite to the game that runs (more accurately, translates as a static image) over the background and around the PLAYFIELD. Compare his finished game side by side with mine, it's almost as if I used his ASM68K code, and the only modification I'd made was merely putting Nina over Sonic. Well, I suppose he is putting his code out there, but for educational purposes, and...ugh, I am trying. to say. it looks like I stole something when the truth is I made my game from scratch. In late 2020, I set out to replicate that background. From what Burton talked about, the scrolling background is comprised of blue and gray rhombuses. I don't think I had the prior knowledge that the PLAYFIELD, or what you see as "the screen", is made of 8x8 (pixel length) graphics known as tiles. Burton created the complete shapes of the background only using four tiles that were either flipped horizontally, vertically, both, or none.

^ The four tiles I made, dumped from my game's VRAM, then converted to a bitmap, then converted again into a .png because Tumblr doesn't take .bmp

A tile is a sorta crucial building block of real old-school videogames. They're used to make all kinds of graphics, but the important thing to know is, at the core, one tile is 8 pixels wide and tall.

It's also worth knowing that the screen resolution of the "Genny" is 320x224 (NTSC), or 320x240 (PAL).

const u32 tile[8] = { ~ ~ 0x00000000, ~ ~ 0x00000000, ~ ~ 0x00000000, ~ ~ 0x00000000, ~ ~ 0x00000000, ~ ~ 0x00000000, ~ ~ 0x00000000, ~ ~ 0x00000000 };

^ An example blank tile array, written in C using the SGDK Studying his first tutorial, Burton's four background tiles were created "in-house" (as I like to say), meaning they are not imported resources. He typed up some Assembly code right in the text editor to create the four tiles. The tiles' data is stored in VRAM (I think) thereafter.

DC.B $77,$77,$77,$77 ;02 FULL CHARACTER USING COLOUR DC.B $77,$77,$77,$77 DC.B $77,$77,$77,$77 DC.B $77,$77,$77,$77 DC.B $77,$77,$77,$77 DC.B $77,$77,$77,$77 DC.B $77,$77,$77,$77 DC.B $77,$77,$77,$77

^ A recreation of Burton's ASM68K code for the one of his tiles In other words, you draw the tiles from the code, something that's possible to do using the SGDK simply by utilizing a tile array. Each of the eight bits (the zeroes of that previous example) in the array represent one of the 64 total pixels that make up the tile. What number a bit is will correspond to the colour you set that number to. I think the numbers range from 0-9, then A-F: hexadecimal style! This tutorial explains how the whole thing works.

So, that brings us back to my game; how did I recreate Burton's background? (psst. play this song to enhance your reading experience) I won't dive TOO much into detail and theory from the SGDK's documentations and the like (also i dont know absolutely everything about it to fully utilize it), but I'll tell you this: most of the heavy graphics-handling code was put into a header file I called "tiles.h".

^ The original yucky, repetitive, inefficient tile drawing code from 2020 "tile.h" is where I set up the tiles; how they were coloured, where they were stored in memory, where they were placed on the screen, etc., etc. Me, not really knowing much about the C Programming Language and/or how to use it, went ahead with the idea to PAINSTAKINGLY. GRUELINGLY type out the attributes in every single parameter of every single tile on screen. So much typing...I must've gotten so bored and stopped working on the game and just left it at what I think was eight rows finished. The game was in a "proof-of-concept" state, likely never to be worked on again...

CLOSE TO FOUR YEARS LATER...

I recently looked back at my code and was like "how could we make this more efficient...loops. loops everywhere" because in those four years, I (well, I didnt really "take the time", I just) had been studying C, and the concepts of programming in general. There's variables, yeah, but there are functions--other than printf()--loops, structs, libraries, and soo much more that I have yet to learn...like pointers.

for(i = 0; i <= 7; i++) { ~ ~ for(j = 0; j <= 7; j++) ~ ~ { ~ ~ ~ ~ //draw row of 8 tiles... ~ ~ ~ ~ for(k = 2; k <= 5; k++) //draw 4 tiles to increase efficiency ~ ~ } }

^ Part of my 2024 code that made tile drawing A LOT less painful "For" Loops, specifically, helped to accelerate the workflow tremendously, and achieved better results that I had previously hoped. I felt like a real computer wiz. But how much did I have to draw?

Remember when I said the screen resolution is--let's use PAL for this--320x240? Together, those numbers' product is 76,800 TOTAL pixels on the screen.

320 horizontal pixels / 8 pixels per tile width = 40 240 vertical pixels / 8 pixels per tile height = 30

That's one row of 40 tiles, and a column of 30, starting at the origin point (0, 0), which is the top left corner of a screen, or monitor. Oh okay, but for the whole screen? 40 * 30, that's...

1,200 tiles to draw?!

No. WAY I woulda had the time or even the patience to type oUT EVERY. SINGLE. GOT DAMN TILE that needs to go on AND OFF the screen since when something like a tile or sprite goes too far off the PLAYFIELD, it may loop to the opposite edge of the PLAYFIELD. Addendum, Mar. 2, 2024. While my sentiment remains the same, I've come to find that the screen resolution, even in PAL regions, is 320x224, but sometimes 320x240. I'm not clear on how that works, but natively, the Genesis screen resolution is 320x224 pixels, which is deconstructed into 40x28 tiles across and down, respectively; the tiles themselves comprised of, again, 8x8 pixels. What I'm trying to clarify is that my maths turned up incorrect: the true number of tiles drawn on screen is 1,120...most likely. This phenomena is know as a "screen wrap". You can see this in a great example, the original Pac-Man arcade game. Those two tunnels would warp you to the opposite tunnel of the board, which is result of a "screen wrap" that works to your advantage (most times) to avoid the Ghosts. I'm losing what I was explaining, but long story short, I cut aaaaaaaalllllll those lines of code down to about 50 with those "For" Loops. I had made three increment variables, called i, j, and k, to use in different places when I needed to do the same thing more than once. I also made some variables that helped with tile drawing. "tile_x" and "tile_y" would help to change the drawing position when I finished a whole row. "tile_x" would be incremented and reset to 0 more often than "tile_y" since I drew the tiles left-right, top-bottom. Addendum, Mar. 3, 2024. In professional and/or large scale computer science projects, it's a general rule of thumb to NOT give your variables single character names like i, j, k, x, y, z, and so on. You should be short but descriptive when naming to tell what your variables' purpose(s) is because your teammates will ask what it's for. Type the name in "camelCase", too. Also, comment often--document everything, and be neat with your code, especially around me, or else... AND THAT'S ALL THERE WAS TO THE BACKGROUND! I even made it scroll using a plane-scrolling function, and the "screen wrap" along with the extra tiles outside the PLAYFIELD allowed for a seamless and smooth scrolling background pattern. A nice screensaver, too! Addendum, Mar. 4, 2024. I should have put a full definition for PLAYFIELD since, at this point, many things have been established and explained as well as I could so...

The PLAYFIELD, or what you see as the game's "screen" or even "board", is a multi-layered 2D plane that's 320x224 pixels wide and tall, which can be broken down in 40x28 tiles. This is where the game happens, and the layers consist of either tiles or sprites, but never both on the same layer. When a graphic goes off the screen, it will wrap around to the opposite side in a "screen wrap".

^ Nina's sprite design progression, reverse chronology So, what about Nina? She's in the game, trapped in that dimension! No, not really. She and her sister are staying somewhere close by. I made sure of Nina and Veretta's safety, which is among my top priorities. Addendum, Mar. 2, 2024. Nina's sprite design was taken from a pixel animation I made using the Piskel website, around April 2019. The image that looks like a Game Boy monitor details a location in Nina's world that I forgot to include with all the others up until a long while ago. As a result, I label it as a "forgotten" land. The original Game Boy-coloured sprites were first used in a painfully underdeveloped Game Maker 8.1 game I started in late 2020 titled "The Girl Called 'P'" (wonder what the 'P' stood for?), which is odd because I designed that sprite as Nina. Then later, when I started to work on the VGM Player, the Nina sprites were used there and coloured according to her palette. The rest is history. Anyways, player input is done through the built-in joypad engine that the SGDK provides. I made the player controller very simple and easily.

Player characters and other interact-able or moving objects are sprites. They're different from tiles in that sense, but similar because they're built out of 8x8 pixels. You cannot make either dimension less than 8, and if it's greater than 8, it should be a multiple, going to, at most, 128 pixel length in either dimension. Each one of Nina's sprites in her latest (top) spritesheet are processed as 24x24. Exactly where the sprite starts and ends extends beyond just the object.

For example, the breakable walls in Green Hill Zone (from Sonic the Hedgehog 1991) may look like the background dirt, which is made of tiles, but the breakable walls are really sprites, by the interact-able trait, and also because GENS KMod has the ability to isolate the sprite layer when tile layers A and B are turned off. Okay. I think I've said absolutely everything I wanted to say about this almost forgotten game. No one else can do anything about. I made it, no one else will finish it. I'm growin' up (in my learning and enrichment). Thanks for reading!

[theclo4ked1]

taking the moment to archive my entire blog tonight! trans people i recommend y'all do too. you know. just in case.

[theclo4ked1]

abnormally large paintbrush aura: diminishing return. Probably the last bit of painting I'll have for a while. Here, we have seven of the eight paintings I did from late November to almost Christmas of 2023. For this series, I focused more on colour and landscape variety--I didn't want two paintings to look or feel the same or be similar in any way; uniqueness was the challenge. I'm sure you know the drill with these: paintings are ordered by creation.

I'd say this was a strong opening for this series, and I like it. In this abstract painting, and only this one, I had used my fingers to make some paint strokes. There is some brushwork, yes, and I think five colours were used, those being the primaries in acrylic and a yellow and a black in oil. I was thinking of another episode of Daria while doing this, too; where Jane was also applying paint with her fingers.

An all oil painting; this one uses blues and whites to make a mountain range by a lake. I did try to mimic the way Bob Ross painted mountains as I saw him do in an episode, it didn't work that well, and all I got out of this was Ice Cap Zone.

A green oil painted forest that has a acrylic brown layer painted underneath to make it seem dirtier. Nina's was planned to be there, skipping through shrubs, but for some reason, I just didn't add her, so now it's just her ghost. Nina was planned to appear in a larger painting, what could have been the eighth, but I had other plans.

A grey tornado in the farm fields somewhere in The Country. This one was done very fast because I did it fast because the tornado makes a messy and you can see the spin of the tornado, right? I want to see one someday, but I think I may regret living that dream. I have a feeling this was made to also use paint so it wouldn't be wasted. The sky behind the tornado is a dull maroon and green gradient thing, that's because I remember something that said skies become a vague green colour when disaster such as this happens.

I wish I knew what this was supposed to be in the first place, but it's a part of a canyon.

It gets better from here. The sixth and seventh were in creation at the same time. Those two are the only ones that were drawn with pencil first to plan out the perspective landscape. This sixth one is an abstract city, with oblong and strange buildings, and a church with a dome that's missing a cross (if you look hard enough, you might still see where it's supposed to be). The clock tower on the left is also stacked like misaligned building blocks. The moon is also present.

Comparison, not inspiration: my painting vs. Tallest Mountain ("Click!". Dora the Explorer. 2002.)

The seventh one, surprisingly, ended up being my best one in terms of content, colour, and technique--seriously, I had NO idea I was capable of this. It's also my favorite. And see? Mountains done right when I didn't do so great in the second painting. It's a good thing I didn't do a valley painting sooner because I don't believe it would've been as good as it is now. I just needed let be to cook, I suppose. Thinking now, this probably has some of East Asian influenced pulled from my memories, but know, when I finished the painting at first, I looked at for a bit. Then I was like "oh god did I just unconsciously reference Dora the Explorer?" I mean look at the mountains: purple and green. The painting looks better if you look at it from farther away or if you blur your vision.

There is no eighth painting here. It's not be included in this collection, not even on Tumblr.

{ It would've been here. }

This. Is the largest painting I've done thus far (also the largest acrylic-only painting I've done), standing--well, it would be, if I had stabilized it with a wooden frame--at what I think was 6' x 5'. In fact, its size was the reason I opted to not stabilize it and instead just went for "raw canvas" style. It allowed me to transport it with relative ease. I had nailed it to the walls of where I worked. When I was done where I was, I simply removed the nails and rolled up the canvas so I could carry it elsewhere. Peers thought the coloured circles made the subject seem at a party. Just at a party staring off from a corner. The stance and look of the subject looked heroic to one peer. I have no real reason for what I painted. I just did what I thought. It's partially undone, but it is what it is... now I have paint marks on my wall.

And that's it! I don't have to talk about painting for a while, at least until I get my own drive to create a painting. Ooh, I've got a other project waiting in the oven and I'm going to shit my words onto the screen when I post about that. It's an ugly one, but the greatest love letter ever! Soon though, I need to paint it... Thanks for reading!

[theclo4ked1]

a short survey: results

It was awhile ago, at least a week ago. The announcement of Tumblr Live's (soon to be) shutdown was just set upon us. I couldn't believe it at first, until I saw all the memes that came forth; the roasts were epic. In the heat of the moment, a user had said something along of the lines of

this is probably the only time Tumblr Live has ever been trending

Victory is shining down on us, but a question dawned on me. I took to Tumblr Live itself for answers. I asked:

What are your thoughts on Tumblr Live shutting down?

In my research, all of the (about) five streamers I'd asked, all responded with ignorance. None of them were aware of what was happening. One of the first people I asked, a women, revealed that she didn't know what was going to happen, but she'd also informed me that she was streaming via MeetMe. Guess that explains all the sultry, or dare I say 'salacious' (thanks for the vocab @obsoleteozymandias) profile pictures of women I would see half the time. Tumblr Live is powered by, or hosted by, that site, or something; a fact I previously knew from a YouTube video, then I forgot, then found out the info for myself. Just wanted to share my findings.

Addendum (1/24/2024, ~12.00am): After getting my answers, I would click the view blog button by the video stream. To my surprise, none of the streamers had a blog that existed on Tumblr. That's not to say all Tumblr Live-streamers don't actually use Tumblr for its blogging purpose, it just goes to show that MeetMe really was a parasite, I mean...wait. What's that? "Blind Date"? God, why is Tumblr Live still on my dashboard? It is the next day already. But GOT. DAMN them tiddies--but why tho? for why tho just LEAVE ME ALONE Addendum of the above Addendum: nevermind it's gone now. it's 12.12am, just refreshed the page, blam. Now if only we could have the old website layout back, this one looks too much like Instagram and Twitter. I haven't been on Tumblr for very long compared to most, but even four years, a high school's worth of Tumblr, is quite a while. Tumblr has always made me feel at home (virtually, of course). The comfortable layout I knew was the one used since 2020. It used to look like this:

Image Source: Rachel. "What is Tumblr? A Detailed Guide for Beginners," Kikolani. Sept 15. 2020. I liked it, it had and identity I hadn't seen elsewhere. Getting rid of Tumblr Live is definitely a step in the right direction.

[theclo4ked1]

[theclo4ked1]

earlier in the afternoon, i took my bedsheets off because they were dirty. i left them in a pile on the floor and hadnt come back for them to do laundry. hours later as im sitting here, that stinkbug thats been in here climbing on my desk had made its way to a blanket in the pile. i watched it periodically as it hiked up the mountain, and when it finally reached the top it stop moving. i imagined that it was admiring the view from half my shin's height, and maybe thats exactly what it was doing. there are few bugs i tolerate in my living space, and a stinkbug is one of them. still wouldnt want them flying around me though. p.s. i dont know where it went and im kinda nervous where it could be right now edit: nevermind its on the mountain top again :) edit2: OH GOD IT STARTED FLYING

[theclo4ked1]

reblog to drop a car battery on a post below

[theclo4ked1]

abnormally large paintbrush aura, too (scroll down for the art) Happy New Year, everybody. 2024 is off to a pretty great start so far for me, especially today since we finally got snow on my part of ZA WARUDO. We, mostly me, made these really cool snow-people in the last 24 hours, look.

These are my friends (in order from left to right), Monkeypaw, Hemorrhoid, and Kankersore. Hemorrhoid is Kankersore's girlfriend. Monkeypaw was found to have fallen over earlier this afternoon, so he's dead, RIP. What I liked about creating them was treating the snow like clay, that's why the men hats made from snow, and even though you can hardly see it, Hemorrhoid has a hair bun. She and Monkeypaw both got dat necklace drip, but only he and Kankersore have brown eyes (the darkness is made from dirt and leaves).

Snow sorry for the sort of cold opening (and the puns), I was just really happy to share that. Anyways, a short time after the last series of paintings, I had started a new project in which I experimented in larger paintings. I made three that time, so lemme tell ya 'bout 'em. Again, like last time, the paintings are ordered by creation.

I wanna say something, but I wanna see if you notice a change in subject (hint, hint), especially when you get into the next post. So, the one on the left is a Lunar Valley-type grassland with the mountains that line some of the valley's perimeter. It's a very (hmm how do I say...) "airy" kind of painting. It just looks like the texture is cloudy/foggy, especially in the mountains (not pyramids, as a peer had thought). The paint is thin because I diluted the paint with more oil, in addition to pre-coating the canvas in Linseed Oil, which was over a dried layer of extremely thinned brown Acrylic Paint. This series was when I began to incorporate Acrylic Paint into my works. The other painting is an aqueduct whose water flows into a forest, all against an orange sky with the sun standing by. The water is the best thing about the painting, and I was given constructive criticism to improve on the piece, but I've yet to act on it. The best thing suggested was to add bricks to the aqueduct to make it more like an aqueduct.

In the last post, I mentioned "another dreamscape painting I’ve wanted to make for a little over a year now," and how that's "a story for another time." That time is now, BEHOLD, my floating masterpiece: the EGG CarRrRiARrr! AHEM sorry, I had played Sonic Adventure some days ago after about a year or so since I last touched it. My "waifu for laifu" PlayStation3 would know better than I would, but anyways, let me tell you, now the story of the next painting-- wait no, a bit of backstory: I was at friend's birthday party back in October 2022, when I actually had the dream. It was a fun time, and that chocolate cake she shared with us was awesome. I can't remember what kind of chocolate cake, but it was mmmmm… Later that night, I returned home to my bed and slept. The dream began. Please BARE WITH ME as I try to remember exactly what I experienced. I told the same story to my peers, and I think I explained it better since it was at an earlier time relative to now, when I'm more likely to forget more of a finer details of that dream because it was so long ago. It's a weird one, too; Activation-synthesis theory and all:

I was captured and tied up aboard the evil pirate Risky Boots' ship, just about to walk the plank and thrown into the drink. I was cornered, with the sea to my back, and Risky and her sword across my throat. I don't know what I did, but it was likely I wouldn't make it out of this alive. Next thing I knew, I found myself in the ocean of my own blood, and the last thing I saw was that pirate's face (and her rack). I most likely died by drowning first... It was dark for a period, followed by a gradual brightness and materialization of my environment. A massive and ever-shifting sea of yellow dandelions forming a floor and a ceiling in front of an azure sky that looked like it had a navy-blue rip in the space-time continuum. I was floating over the sea. I wasn't in the air, but I wasn't swimming either. And speaking of swimming, a Blue whale was maneuvering through the environment as if it were swimming in water, it even went into the flowers. For some reason I can't remember, I began calling out to Nina, as if I was brought to this heaven for the sole purpose to find my "daughter" (spoiler: I couldn't find her). I continued floating to a point where the flowers started to end, and a dirt path of green grass began. I had landed. Finally, I was able to walk. I walked, still hoping to find Nina. The path lead to a new environment. It widened; tall trees began to appear and grow taller with every step I took. Zoo animals were present along the road, yet the only one I remember clearly was an elephant. I continued walking until I approached a familiar looking set of fences, which I recognized as part of the zoo that used to be part of a childhood park. Behind me and the fences, was the playground by where my Grama used to live. In this playground was a crowd of people; kids and adults. Among all the noise and children and water spraying from the newly installed play-area was my father, just watching. None of my siblings were there nor my mother. Just him. I walked up to him. I opened my mouth to ask "Hey Dad, have ever you seen 2001: A Space Odyssey?"

Put that on Wattpad, why don't I? After that last line, I woke up, and that same morning, I talked to my father about the dream and asked him the same question, to which he responded "yes". He also recommends I give the movie a watch, which I've also yet to do, but it's on my list. In fact, it was the first thing on my "Movies To Watch" list. V For Vendetta was recommended to me also by one of peers to which I told my dream. I think that same peer also commented how the dreamscape painting looks like a flag. By the way, this is only painting with a name in the series. I call it "i died and went to heaven". There were also multiple versions before this one. Sorry, I'm forgetting what I want to say. OH, yeah yeah, so that dream left me pondering. First off, I'm a weirdo who's Agnostic and Christian. What do I mean by this incredibly ridiculous and confusing proclamation? Welp, I'm on the fence about truly believing in God; that He created all, and the stuff about Jesus and whatnot, and I occasionally pray (though I don't think prayer is an exclusively religious concept), yet I'm not really Christian; however, I'm not opposed to the belief of the existence of a heaven and hell. What am I, can you tell me? Back to the dream, after I died, I was taken to the dandelion oceans. I'll chalk this up to the Activation-synthesis theory, but if that was supposed to be my heaven (cuz there ain't no fire and brimstones and all that junk), is everyone's heaven different based on their own perceptions? D-do you understand what I'm trying to ask? I asked my dad about it too, and his answer is one I also cannot remember, but I think he was just as unsure as me. I had always thought Heaven was this magical afterlife, with clouds and sunshine, and the gate outside of Heaven where Madea can stay so she don't have to go to Hell-- what? Well, I suppose that's what TV told me. Ever since that night, my view of what Heaven could, at the very least, look like has been the dandelion oceans, the blue sky with the rip in the space-time continuum, and the whale. It just has to be Activation-synthesis theory, it could only be! Yet, how I do remember almost everything about the arbitrary events. It was illogical, nonsensical, I was travelling backwards through time in the dream for crying out loud. It took parts from all over my unconscious, and not a single GOT damn part of the dream was related to Sonic the Hedgehog OR Dora the Explorer, two of the biggest influences in my childhood. No, it'd have to be subconscious, wouldn't it? I don't know but like, how do you take my favorite flower, NiGHTS Into Dreams, Shantae, the children's playground, the old park with the abandoned zoo, and my dad and make a dream like this? Where did the space odyssey come from?! Aargh! I'm going to bed. As usual, thanks for reading.

[theclo4ked1]

jane lane

[theclo4ked1]

~Happy Holidays!~ Finally, I am catching a break and I'm so happy to start chillin' with some DLC (downloadable content) in my room. I used DLC as a shitty gaming alternative to TLC (tender loving/love and care), but it's true! Before a few days before Christmas, I just could not remember the last time I played a videogame--the last time I even touched a joystick! I was going through a "withdrawal" period. I wasn't experiencing the actual symptoms of proper substance withdrawal, just this constant realization that every work day passing was another day in my life I was not gaming, another day without Sonic or Mario or Smash Bros., all my faves. But this also helped me realize that this is just where I am right now. Times have changed. My body and mind have changed, and I'm not the "Sonic-X-at-7AM-Saturday-Morning" kid I once was. And you bet I'd be playing Sonic games (SA2 mostly, if I recall) after watching the show that same morning until around noon. I'm thankful I was lucky to have that--HELL I'm thankful to be privileged to still have access to have that, I just have a bit less time now. AHEM but that was about a week ago, this is now! I wanna show you something!

You know "Supa Paypa Sistas", right? It was the best stop-motion animation video I've made in years. It was also the...only one of mine that have made it onto the internet... All the other ones I've made are either lost to/in time, or stowed away on my Windows 7 (the best one) laptop's hard drive. You can re/watch the film via the embed YouTube video, or the post link from the start of this paragraph.

Below are the work-in-progress posts I put on Tumblr leading up to the completed film.

https://theclo4ked1.tumblr.com/post/703490039983800320/the-black-box-a-wip-stop-motion-animation-shot

https://theclo4ked1.tumblr.com/post/703689454131478528/supa-paypa-sistas-no-longer-the-black-box

There exists a third draft video that's not on Tumblr and has only ever been used for an outside purpose. Y'know, it's been about a year since I finished that film. I suppose this post is something of an anniversary, and that makes me proud. Without further ado, NOW! for the moment you've been waiting for: what I wanted to show you! Since Tumblr allows only one video per post, I've compiled the forgotten tests and extras I did just before working on "Supa Paypa Sistas", all in a neat Windows Movie Maker package for you :3 They're rough and run slower than the final film because I had initially underestimated the 3DS' ten frames/second animation runtime and did animation on twos instead of ones. Beneath the video I'll detail some things about each cut.

Music: Is That You or Are You You? - Chris Zabriskie

The camera easing test was probably done just as a test. Easing was a concept I've applied already in 2D animation, but in stop-motion, I needed this to create something of higher quality.

True, before the box, there was this bear thing that transformed in a kraken because a super pill went up its butt. I dunno what I was thinking last year, it was late at night.

All three of Veretta's animation tests were just ways of getting the film to start. Two of the cuts were based around the idea of her creation. You can see she was originally put together with just tape before I turned her and Nina into paper dolls using string to increase efficiency. There's one frame at the end of the third test where you can see the circle where Veretta's shoulder connects her arm to her body.

The bouncing box was another easing test to simulate physics with the box's reaction gravity and material. I never thought of what that material is.

Nina's only appearance before the film started was her sliding on the ground.

Veretta's final cut, also the final of the cutting room floor, is her just falling. This was probably a test put after a planned creation since that's what happens with Nina after her creation in the film.

The last thing I want to share are these two photos I captured of the two sisters on December 7, 2022, after I had drawn and cut out all of their limbs. Since the faces were drawn with pencil, I was able to erase and create new expressions when I needed, but Veretta's left facing face was harder to change because I pressed the pencil to hard, so she kinda had a "resting Donkey Kong face".

In an email explaining my animation process, I told my recipient "Nina and Veretta are bristol board paper dolls I made using 8 limbs each: Head, torso, 2 pairs of full length arms, 2 pairs of thighs, and 2 pairs shins/foot parts, ALL painstakingly cut, and bonded by tape, glue and string to create two girls." I think that's all I wanted to say about my little film. I hope to make more things like that in the future, but maybe not with those puppets, they're relics now. I keep them in a drawer of other stuff I've made "by hand" in the last, maybe, eight years? They even have the same expressions I left them with after the film ended. Up for auction: never. Thanks for reading!

[theclo4ked1]

I feel like I've been stepping up my art game up a bit in these last few fortnights. Ever since that one pencil crayon drawing, my art has become so much different and I've been liking what I've been making, which is a plus since I'd be creating things I'd ideally want to keep and not throw away or sell. At this rate, I'm afraid I'll suffer another burnout, by Winter no less. I can feel it, too.

One of my last projects was a study of abstraction. Five drawings, each one after the first are to become increasingly abstract, but I took it one step further to try to do bizarre things and made the final drawing what I thought was unrecognizable entropic mess, but peers saw remnants of objects from the past drawings, so I guess I did an unconscious artistic action.

Charcoal has been a go-to recently, for good reason. It's been lots of fun to just go to town, absolutely scratching and smudging and smearing all over my paper. It's also faster than a pencil on my usual 18" x 24" papers. These drawings are approximately 9" x 12"; sizes which do not fit the scanner tray of my printer, so a few centimeters of the bottom of each image is cut off, but I don't think you're missing much.

The base objects, from left to right, are some tin flower pot, a ceramic container that reminded me of Greece, an old tea kettle, a glass bottle, and part of one of the trees and plants in the back of the room I was working in. My intention was a slow start and then quickly melt into the insanity, which was kinda hard to gauge with five drawings. By the third, things began to pick up. The tea kettle turned into an apple with two fingers, the tin flower pot became an unidentified cephalopod, and the background tree becomes a slime/ooze or acid tidal wave (I can't remember which substance).

I remember working and spending, admittingly, not a lot of time on this project. I made the first two drawings in an evening, and the final three in an afternoon. To me, the abstraction didn't just mean breaking things down into "just lines", it meant warping reality and going beyond the guidelines; breaking rules has become somewhat of a mantra in my works. That's how I add my own twist. Originally, my take on this project was "ol'right, i can break things down into geometric shapes". You can see the results differ than the initial plan.

Since I didn't deconstruct my composition into "just lines", it hindered my time. My workflow, or how long I spent on one drawing, could have exponentially (or logarithmically?) accelerated had I went into "just lines", but because of how I end up going, each drawing took a larger fraction of time that I could have evaluated. The best as I can explain is "every drawing is made 30 minutes faster than the last". Inaccurate, but that's how I'll put it into perspective. I even tried being more explorative in the sense that I gave every drawing a different style as the abstraction went on.

ZERO: It's the original still life, it was drawn as one-to-one as I could. It looks pretty good coming back to it and digitizing the final image.

ONE: The "sketchy" or "cartoon" style, where the objects have black outlines and a lack of detail in the lighting and shadows.

TWO: For this one, I challenged myself to make one without smudging to create value, opting to crosshatch and few solid black areas or lines that are just pure darkness, like on the ring.

THREE: What I called the "One Detailed Object", in this case, the open eye that gazes into you, I hope. Not much to say about this one.

FOUR: Finally, the chaos. On the back of the paper, I labelled it "The Mess" as my style guideline, so here I just went nuts, but not just blindly putting lines anywhere, no I had some intention, but again, I didn't notice that I had aligned a few objects from the past drawings until my peers pointed this out.

And unlike my painting series, I did NOT make an extra one because I was too tired. Heh. Thanks for reading!

[theclo4ked1]

THE RESULTS ARE IN! There were nine total votes and it's a four way tie, though I'm not sure if the other votes were even human, but nonetheless, the winners are:

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)

Portal 2

Crash Bandicoot

Sonic Frontiers was the fourth winner, but only because I put my vote in there, so I won't count it. As per the rule I set, I'll choose a game of these three to play through for the stream. I hope you swing by when I start it. I've heard some shady things about Tumblr Live, so it's more likely Twitch will be the my sole streaming platform...or YouTube. I'll have to set up a date and time first, the future looks tantalizing yet uncertain, in more ways than one. Thanks for voting!

[theclo4ked1]

This is the only day you can reblog this

[theclo4ked1]

Despite my current less-than-desirable circumstances, I've been thinking a lot about streaming a videogame live on either Twitch or here on Tumblr. Twitch would probably be best for functionality, but Tumblr could supplement for publicity, I hypothesize anyhow. Here is the list of games I'd like to stream:

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991); likely gonna snag the six emeralds.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2; Any% because I can't get the emeralds.

Lots'a Pac-Man and a few other Namco games

Pac-Man World 2; Any% run because 100% completion took me a very long time the first run.

Portal 2; I do have the first game via The Orange Box, but I'm more acquainted with the sequel.

Crash Bandicoot; probably going for 100%, since I'm a masochist for this game, but I'll be rusty when I get back there.

Sonic Frontiers; New Game+, Extreme Mode (Final Horizon Included), Any%, so I won't have to focus on 200% completion. It'd be like Sonic Adventure 2, Mission 5: "Clear Hard mode!".

I've showcased some form of gameplay, which you can find on my YouTube page (see pinned post), for all the above except Sonic 1 and 2. My guess as to when I could start streaming is during the Winter. You'll also find a link to my Twitch page in the pinned post. What are your thoughts? What game would you want to see me go through? OH! This would be a great opportunity to try out that new poll function!

I don't know how likely it is that I'll even get a single vote, so if I get none or there's one too many tied results, I'll default to my own choice. See ya later.