valcuda

[valcuda]

Playful Crawl

Avery giving Quinton a playful startle after she finds him alone, on the floor of Jasmin's dorm.

Fearful Crawl

Quinton on the floor, fearing for his life, after someone lunged at him.

Fearful Crawl Alts

Now for your regularly scheduled ramblings.

It's been a while, hasn't it? Well believe it or not, I was actually planning to post this over a month ago, and even finished the draft.

I'm glad I didn't tho! Cause this is what it looked like:

It looks FAR better now! Not only did I massively improve the lighting, I also remade the entire room model, and all the furniture! This all came together to make the new version look 100x better IMO, with Avery actually looking more like how she's meant to!

Anyway, I originally made this render for fun, since obviously Avery and Robert were never meant to meet, but I liked this interaction so much, that I made it so they do! Avery and Jasmin end up becoming friends in college, and when Jasmin accidentally leaves Quinton alone in her dorm during a break, she has Avery look after him until she gets back.

Quinton unfortunately wakes up on the floor, and panics thanks to the memories of a scene from the first book. Avery ends up seeing him, and teases him by lunging at him, intending to just him a quick scare. Unfortunately, this gives Quinton a panic attack. Avery thinks his reaction is cute, and tries to calm him down.

Also, if you're wondering why "Fearful Crawl" is second, despite being the better of the two, it's cause "Playful Crawl" was the original idea, and "Fearful Crawl" was just a joke at first. Unfortunately, Fearful Crawl turned out FAR better, since the focus, Avery, takes up far more space.

--

Anyway, that's all for now.

[valcuda]

I finally got around to optimizing the VRoid models I use for my 3D renders, as well as finally setting up Inverse Kinematics for their arms and legs.

(Long Post Warning. Tho if you're using VRoid models in Blender, you might get something out of this!)

Importing them into Blender, they're split into 3 objects, however, the geometry in the "Body" object is actually a ton of separate geometry!

So, what I did was use "CTRL and +" to select these different islands, and separate them, and related geometry into their own objects. For body parts, I'd then use "Clean Up - Merge by Distance", which combined these islands, and made them look better when using the Subdivision Surface modifier.

For clothes, I had to be a bit more careful. Shirts were usually fine to just MBD as well, and pants as well. Skirts and Shoes however, were fucking nightmares!! ESPECIALLY Jasmin's skirt! If you MBD'd these, they'd look horrible with SDS, so I had to manually MBD vertices to keep the mesh looking good with SDS, I also had to learn what a "crease" was in Blender, and believe me, it's my new favorite tool for SDS!! I had to use it as a last resort as it could be worse than just being careful, but it saved multiple shoes.

So now, the models are optimized, look good with SDS, and split into more controllable parts, so I can more easily reshape things when needed, or hide something like legs (which were often still modeled, even when the pants completely hid them) to just save that little bit on performance.

---

Now for the part I did today! Adding Inverse Kinematics.

If anyone else is doing this, let me save you a LOT of time! The bones aren't named correctly, so Blender won't recognize their Left/Right equivalent.

Open the armature in Edit mode, hit A to select everything, then CTRL + F2 to open the "Batch Rename" tool, and set it to "Bone". Then, past this in to Find:

^(.*?)(_R|_L)(.*)$

And paste this in to Replace:

\1\3\2

Hit the "Regular Expression" button next to them, and finally rename. Blender will now automatically rename the bones so it can recognize their Left/Right equivalent. This saved me an hour of work.

Anyway, I then made some bone groups for the rigs, so now I can hide the Hair, Clothes, Control, and Controlled bones at the click of a button!

Then, I set up IK. Prior to this, I had to manually pose the arms and legs. Don't be like me, IK is worth it! I've only used it for a single render so far (which I have yet to share) and already I'm in love!

If you want to set up IK for yourself, I'd recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWfUe03Ib5E They use a pre-made, but they manually add the IK controllers, so it was actually quite useful. I will note though, if your bones, and IK Controller bones are set up properly, you only have to set the constraints on one side. After that, go into edit mode, select the bones, and hit "Symmetrize", it'll automatically apply the constraints to the other side, using the correct controller bone as well.

I also set up a controller which the characters eye-bones automatically rotate towards, allowing me to easily get them to look at something.

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That might not sound like a lot of work, and it isn't, unless you're doing 7 characters! The whole process took literal hours for me to complete. Fortunately, it's done! The process took forever, but it's gonna be well worth it when I can just tell Jasmin to put her hand somewhere, without needing to manually pose her upper, and lower arms.

Anyway, that's all for now. I have made some renders, but they're pretty much just experiments, so I don't think I'll share them.

[valcuda]

Here's something funny about Rossel! She wasn't created for Jasmin's world!

Originally, she was meant to be an important side character in Skizzy's story, back before I scrapped Multiverse Heroes and Skizzy.

A bit of a refresher, in this version of the story, Skizzy was created in a lab by the monsters, with her being the "Synthetic Killing Intelligence", a monster which would wipe out humanity. In Skizzy's world, the project went mostly unhindered, so Skizzy was created, and that's where the project failed.

In this alternate world however, the humans learned of the SKI project, and seized it, before starting a war against monsters, wiping them out. During this war however, the SKI project was handed to a genetic scientist, Rossel White, who was tasked with potentially altering it to work on their side. However, the war ended before she could succeed, and looking in the project notes, she realized her 'parents' (the people who would act as her parents) truly wanted a good life for her, instead of being a mindless monster.

Because of this, Rossel White, and her husband (who I forgot the name of) instead altered her to be non-violent, so she could live a happy life alongside humanity, and they named her "Mira Ophelia Nightglow".

In the story, Skizzy would learn of Mira, and end up befriending her.

Anyway, at this point while working on the story, Sophia still died in Junk-Watt's (what would become Jasmin's) story, and Skizzy was aware of this. So I decided to make Sophia Rossel's sister in both worlds (I feel I should note: Monsters didn't exists in Junk-Watt's world, so this was a bit weird), and thanks to dates lining up perfectly, they could meet prior to Sophia dying! This lead me to plan a scene where Skizzy would warn Sophia of the heart problem that killed her in Junk-Watt's world, thus saving her life.

Then, when working on Hellen's story, I needed a scientist for a scene, so I decided to make it Rossel! At this point Multiverse Heroes was still a thing, and Hellen's story was separate from Jasmin's/Junk-Watt's story. This changed, because I then had Sophia play a role in the story, which lead to a heartfelt scene between her and Quinton.

That one scene is what killed Multiverse Heroes, then Junk-Watt's story, then Skizzy's story, then Carrot Man's story. This lead to me liking Sophia, and not wanting to kill her off in Junk-Watt's story, which gave me the idea for a twist where she wasn't dead, but just in a coma. However, I couldn't get the stories to line up to make room for Hellen's story happening, then Sophia going in a coma for multiple years, having Junk-Watt be created, then Sophia come out of the coma.

This lead to me desparately trying to have the stories be able to take place in the same universe, because I didn't want to throw away the scene with Sophia and Quinton, but I also didn't want to scrap Junk-Watt.

Unfortunately, I realized I just couldn't have both, and Junk-Watt's story just didn't work as well as Hellen's, so I scrapped her, and that's how we got where we are now!

Mark my words though, Junk-Watt will return somehow! I just have no idea how, cause she doesn't fit in the current story...

Anyway, that's all for now.

[valcuda]

I just learned my Tab S4 has a tilt sensor in the S-Pen, and it's seemingly not mentioned anywhere!

I've looked at spec sheets for this thing, trying to find out every feature it had, so I could make sure it was an upgrade from my Note 4, yet not once did I see it mentioned!

I only discovered it because it kept screwing me up in Penup, the only app I use that supports it, and even then, I didn't realize why the brushes were acting weird! I only discovered it when I realized it looked like I was holding a pencil at an angle! Then began experimenting!

Even then however, I had to specifically look up "Does the SPen have a tilt sensor" because I still couldn't find any information on the Tab S4 specifically!

But then I learned something that blew my damn mind! The first device to have a tilt sensor in the SPen, was the Note 4!!! My original drawing 'tablet'!!!! I simply didn't notice because I didn't have any apps that used it!

To make things weirder though, the tilt sensor isn't listed in the Note 4's specs either!!!!!

Imagine being Samsung, and you update your stylus tech to include tilt sensors, then you decide to just never tell the consumer for some reason. Barely anyone uses it? Much less knows about it? Keep it in anyway!

Hell, the Reddit post I learned this from, was for the Galaxy Fold. It's as if they added tilt functionality to the SPen, then just forgot about it. I seriously wonder how many people know about this, cause I've had this tablet for a few years now, and I only just learned about this.

[valcuda]

Elizabeth, Sophia, and Rossel, have all been successfully updated the AV Style! Meaning the main Jasmin family has been fully* updated to it! (*excluding Jasmin as a child, and Elizabeth's labcoat alt)

Anyway, here they are, starting with Elizabeth! (Old on left, New on right)

Elizabeth Atkins

Elizabeth turned out AMAZINGLY!!! She looks far closer to how I imagined her in my head than she did in the JWatt style!

I've given her an ear, added detail to the seam, made her collar come off her neck slightly, and gave her eyebrows! Not just any eyebrows though!

Elizabeth was the first character I designed to have eyebrows, since she was originally made for Project Mansion, which was gonna have a different artstyle from Jasmin's world. When I decided to put her in Jasmin's world, I then experimented giving everyone else eyebrows, but they looked horrible on Sophia, so I decided against it.

Fortunately, Jasmin's draft is still in her project file. So, I was able to go in, find the eyebrow layer, and finally redraw them for her final linework!

Another fun thing is that Elizabeth was the first character to use this new shading technique, meaning I didn't have to set it up.

Sophia Kelly

Absolute pain. Her chest was EXTREMELY annoying to shade, and literally doubled the time and layers it took to shade her, and I'm still not entirely happy with the result... I'm pretty sure this happened originally as well though.

Anyway, I redrew her head, cause I originally drew it using a thinner pen, which doesn't actually look very good! I then gave her ears, updated her eyelashes slightly, and updated her collar, since I didn't like how basic it looked originally.

Like I said with Elizabeth, I tried putting eyebrows on Sophia in the past, and they just kinda looked awkward, so my plan originally was to redraw her eyes. Unfortunately, there's a certain softness her current ones have, that I was unable to recapture... so I left them mostly unchanged.

In the end, I rotated her closed eyelash slightly, and think that helped with the awkwardness. This is definitely one of those things I'm just gonna have to get used to.

Overall though, I think she looks better than she originally did!

Rossel Kelly

I find it kinda funny that I never got around to shading her originally.

Something funny about Rossel, is that I didn't need to draw the eyebrows. As mentioned with Elizabeth, I tried adding eyebrows to characters, and while they didn't look good with most of them, they fit perfectly on Rossel! So I just used the eyebrows I drew for that experiment!

Like with Sophia, I gave her ears, updated her collar, and updated her eyes slightly. The hardest part with her was figuring out how tf to shade her hair. I was also debating shading her chest, but that didn't turn out well with Sophia, so I decided to make her flat chested for my own sanity.

--

Here's the whole family together! Excluding Gunther, cause I really need to redraw him, but really don't want to.

Honestly, I think they all turned out really well! I think Sophia, Rossel, and Elizabeth were designed for this flatter style, cause Sophia and Elizabeth both just look better like this IMO. That's probably why I never shaded Rossel.

Quinton looks a bit strange, cause he actually was designed for the JWatt style, but I'll get used to it. For Jasmin, I initially hated her new hairstyle, but it's definitely growing on me. I'm honestly really glad I did this!

Of course, my job's not done yet... I have to updated Hellen, Child Jasmin, Elizabeth's Labcoat Alt, then redraw Trisha and Tithon, then draw Child Trisha, and finally, procrastinate on doing Gunther. I also have to finally draw Liena and Selina, cause I never got around to that for some reason.

But I've got the main 5 down, so I'm gonna celebrate anyway. Anyway, that's all for now!

[valcuda]

Y'know, I was planning on redesigning the Jasmin World characters as sketches for the AV style, before using that as a base for their new artwork.

Unfortunately, I encountered a massive issue, the sketches looked horrible...

So, I decided instead of sketching a redesign, then drawing from scratch, I'd sketch a redesign, then edit their current artwork.

Currently, I only have Jasmin and Quinton done, who are the only two I sketched the redesigns of. Those sketches might've looked bad, but they gave me an idea of what I wanted to change, so they weren't a complete waste.

Anyway, without further ado, here's Jasmin's AV Style artwork! (Old artwork is on the right for comparison

Jasmin was COMPLETELY redrawn, heavily using her original artwork as a reference. I did this because her proportions were messed up originally, and her head wasn't symmetrical, as well as her overall design just being incredibly old, cause fun fact! Her artwork was originally made in the Ski-Z Style! And simply lazily updated to the JWatt style!

This meant my abilities have improved considerably since she was drawn, which is best seen by comparing her to Quinton or Elizabeth, who're far newer in comparison.

Anyway, I changed her hairstyle to actually make sense in 3D space, which is something that's been bugging me a lot! I also gave her an eyebrow, but it's unfortunately quite hard to notice. I was gonna give her a more natural skin tone, but I decided against it, since it just removed something from her, if that makes sense. Fortunately, since the shading is now separate from the color, I can easily change that if I decided against it!

I also decided against giving her ears, cause they just looked weird on her...

-

Anyway, next up is Quinton! (Old artwork on the right again)

Pretty massive difference... don't know how much I like the face shading...

Anyway, Quinton reuses most of his previous linework, notably however, I moved his left arm closer! It's been bugging me to no end, and I fortunately kept his posing armature in his project file! So I quickly redrew it, and edited his hand to fit!

A far more noticeable change however, is his eyes!!

I'm not joking, I nearly cried while designing his new eyes! You might not have noticed it in his original artwork, but he's supposed to be terrified!!! That's why he's hugging his arm!!! He barely fucking looks like it though! And that has annoyed me to no end! So I spent 20 minutes redesigning his eyes so he looks like he's on the verge of tears! He was already a bit of a scaredy cat prior to being shrunken, and he was already incredibly weak, to the point his friends made fun of him for it! Suddenly, he's 4 inches tall! EVERYONE can kill, or at the very least, hurt him! And he can't do anything to stop it! Especially since he freezes when scared! So he's terrified of angering everyone! Even Jasmin and Sophia! His adoptive family!

So, I ensured his eyes SHOWED that fear! Those eyes are what I thought his eyes on his original artwork looked like originally!

Anyway, I also gave him ears, since he looked very awkward without them, making him the first character I wanted to put ears on.

Oh yeah, one last thing about Quinton, all of his shading was done on 1 layer! This only excludes his eyes, which are on a 2nd layer, specifically so I can swap them out if I want.

-

Anyway, that's 2 out of 11 characters done, so 9 more left.

Next, I'm gonna do Elizabeth, with her 2 outfits. I'm probably just gonna give her an ear, but more importantly, she's gonna get her eyebrows back!!!!

After her are Sophia and Rossel (Jasmin's mother and aunt), the Trisha and Tithon, who I'll probably actually redesign, cause I still hate their current ones. After that, I only have characters I know I'll procrastinate on...

Those are, Hellen, Gunther, Child Jasmin, Child Trisha, and Bridget. Not characters I talk about very often, which is ironic with Hellen, since she's an extremely important character, and literally the main character of Quinton's story.

-

Anyway, that's all for now. I probably won't make updates whenever I finish a character, so the next post'll likely have Elizabeth, Sophia, Rossel, Trisha, and Tithon done, cause I already know I'm procrastinating on those other ones! (Child Jasmin is still in the Ski-Z style, and also the only character to not be at 4K resolution)

[valcuda]

A racoon came to my house today, and when I opened the door, he walked up onto the doorstep!

I swear, Tom Nook is getting desperate for that loan repayment. He knows once that next Animal Crossing releases, his chances of me repaying it just go out window.

[valcuda]

If you're wondering why I haven't been posting much, that's cause I'm currently procrastinating on the project I'm using to procrastinate on writing more of Robert and Avery's, cause I realized I fucked up majorly on it.

This is gonna be multiple related rants, so I've decided to put titles up, so you know what it's about.

Robert and Avery's Story

Anyway, I realized... the story is nowhere near ready for me to write it yet. I'm not joking, I literally don't know when it takes place, which is EXTREMELY important for the story!

So, I was originally going to have it take place in ~2007, as this is when I originally pictured it taking place, with Avery being based off of sitcoms I watched as a kid, notably "Victorious", as that's what I thought highschool was gonna be like. As a side note, it was so different from my experience, that I actually thought it took place in college and had to look that up, and nope, that's a highschool.

Anyway, I then leaned a bit too much into the tech side of things for my liking in that era. Notably, a crucial plot element is that Avery is a contributor to a Fan Wiki for the (in-universe) "Stardust Gadgetory" series. This works, since Fan Wikis were a thing back then, and seemingly of similar quality to modern ones (And even better in some aspects).

However, this lead to me putting a bit too much research into smartphones, as the first iPhone released in 07. This then lead to me realizing Avery and her friends would be PERFECT as more modern era teenagers, like I think ~2018. Jasmin for example, I can't really imagine her using a smartphone, but Avery, I can totally imagine rocking an iPhone, and teasing Selina for having an Android!

Another bonus, is that if I set it in 2018, if I play my cards right, I could reasonably have Avery and Jasmin become friends. Jasmin is 12 in 2018, and Avery would be 17, so in 2019, they'd both be in Highschool, which is where the opportunity shows itself.

Anyway, I don't know if I want the series to take place in the same world. It was initially something I was against, but there's no real issue with doing that! Hell, I'd argue it make my life mildly easier, since I have an explanation for why people just accept Avery has a 1 foot tall person with her, cause tinnies exist. Yeah, they're only a few inches tall, but they're meant to be rare, so most people haven't even seen one, they just know they exist.

-

Now you might think there's a downside to this, that being that I have to follow my own logic, and increase Robert's vocal pitch, like I did with Quinton and Elizabeth. While I am going to do those calculations, (I just spent 2 hours preparing the UI in my tool for the addition of those, instead of writing this post) I won't hold myself to them.

Robert has an excuse. He's a scientist capable of making a shrink ray, and he's surrounded by other scientist, who know he's capable of speaking. This means it's likely he'd have some sort of technology that corrects his voice, possibly made by himself!

However, he's also from another universe, so I could just go the boring route, and say that's just how his universe works.

-

Anyway, Avery and Jasmin crossing over isn't something that could happen, and I think I'd like to keep a possibility, in case I get any ideas for it.

But yeah, I'm not really decided yet on when Avery's story takes place, though I am leaning on the side of 2018, just cause I know it better, and the cross over possibility!

If you wanna know the actual reason I stopped though, I couldn't figure out how to naturally introduce Avery and her friends... This is what made me realize that maybe I should focus on getting the story written, then posting it...

My art got retroactively worse...

All the artwork I show of my characters is actually pretty important to me, cause I use that to help write, and develop them. That's their main purpose, I can't work on a character properly until I have some visual to help ground them.

Unfortunately, I drew Avery way too well.

I think this a feeling all artists can relate to, you draw something that is so good, it manages to make your old art look bad. Like, I know what quality looks like now, and the Jasmin world drawings are far from it...

Basically, I can't stand to look at the artwork of Rossel, Sophia, Jasmin, Quinton, Elizabeth, or Hellen anymore. I already couldn't stand to look at the artwork for Gunther, Tithon, and Trisha, so that didn't change.

Anyway, so I'm planning on redrawing them in my new "AV Style" as I'm calling it, with their current style being the "JWatt Style". (And my artstyle before that was called the "Ski-Z Style"). Unfortunately, the two styles have some differences, notably, the JWatt Style lacks eyebrows and ears, while the AV style has them. This means I actually need to redesign the characters to account for those!

So my current plan is to do what I'm doing with Avery, Selina, and Liena, and first do a design sketch, then a proper illustration in Medibang.

Unfortunately, there's a minor problem, I HAVE 9 CHARACTERS TO REDRAW!!! Jasmin and Trisha have child alts, which are basically their own characters, so 11, then Elizabeth has 2 alts, so basically 12.

-

Now, the AV style is simpler than the JWatt style. Shading in the JWatt style alone basically doubles the time I need to spent per drawing, while the AV style can get it done WAY faster, so the final drawings should take considerably less time to draw... but I need to sketch everyone first...

That's 12 sketches! Followed by 12 drawings! Can you see why I'm procrastinating?

-

Now, the shift to the AV style will provide some benefits! Notably, since the style is simpler, I can more easily do alts, since the shading no longer takes 100 layers, and could easily just be done in a single layer.

This'll be nice, cause it means I can experiment a bit with outfits, which I already kinda do in Sims 4, since I often create my OCs in that. (Junk-Watt is actually an MVP in my multiplayer save, literally saving our asses multiple times, which is ironic, cause I've otherwise scrapped her)

# The End

So tl;dr, I've decided against posting Robert's and Avery's story until it's actually finished, and I'm procrastinating on that by telling myself to redraw all of Jasmin's World's characters in Avery's artstyle, which I'm procrastinating on because that's 12 drawings.

Anyway, that's all for now.

[valcuda]

Y'know, I was working on Trisha's character the other day, and I realized I somehow got her personality on my wiki completely wrong.

I don't know how, since she's had the same personality for over a decade now, and I literally imagined scenes with her that only worked, if she's was a bit of an outgoing character. Yet I described her personality as shy, and very reserved.

Anyway, I fixed that. Also for context, I use Obsidian Wiki as an organizational tool for my stories, with character pages formatted to be similar to fan wiki pages, though they don't tend to be very well organized, since that's not how my brain works.

[valcuda]

Robert and Avery - The Beginnings - Prologue, has been released!

THIS CHAPTER ISNT A SIGN OF WHATS TO COME. THIS HAS A VERY DIFFERENT FEEL FROM THE REST OF THE STORY.

This chapter sets up an important event for later. Don't know when later will be, it should be pretty early, but I need to introduce Avery before I have it pay-off, so it'll at least be a chapter.

(Also note: This is quite short. Expect to be able to finish this in a single sitting)

Anyway, you can find it here!

-

Now for some ramblings!

Anyway, this is the start of a new series, currently named "Robert and Avery", cause those are the names of the two main characters, and I didn't know what else to call it...

This is called "The Beginnings" because it just sets up the story really. It's currently the part which I plan to be multiple chapters, thought that'll potentially change.

I do have plans for lone chapters, hell, I already have scenes typed up, and even more ideas I have yet to flesh out. This series is meant to be kind of "slice of life" like, just made up of parts that are loosely connected.

This is seriously the most experimental series I've ever done, which should be obvious from the fact, this is my first bit of public writing I've done in years. Don't look for my first, cause I deleted it out of embarrassment.

-

The characters will all have posts talking about them. They're literally just rips of their pages from my private wiki, which I use to organize everything.

The posts themselves are private, but you can access the ones related to the characters in that particular part from a link at the end. I do plan to have a master post on @valcuda-story-content which has all the character profiles, but I'll only do that once this part is finished, since I want to introduce the characters first.

-

Honestly, I'm diving into the deep end here. This is an idea I didn't want to go through with, but am forcing myself to do anyway. I literally don't even have finished artwork of Liena or Selina yet... nor have I decided exactly when the story takes place, which is pretty important for the next part.

I don't know how good this'll turn out, but hopefully it'll turn out well.

-

Chapter 1'll actually take some time to make. I basically already had the prologue thought out before I even started working on this, it was just a matter of trying to figure out how I wanted to do it, since I originally planned for this to be a comic, but my artskills suck with comics...

Anyway, that's all for now!

[valcuda]

It's 6AM, and I haven't slept yet, but I've had a revelation.

Once upon a time, I wrote a small snippet of a story, and posted it to Deviant Art. Years later, I returned finally, copied the story, backed it up to a text document on an archive drive, then deleted it because it was absolutely horrible I didn't want anyone else to have to lay eyes on it.

However, someone messaged me when I was gone. My social anxiety forbid me from reading it, until today.

The person saw the absolute piece of shit I wrote, and liked it. Hell, the message was them asking me if I could write for their worlds! They liked my dogshit writing so much that they wanted me to write stories using their creations!

Obviously that message was asked years ago, so I highly doubt they'd want me to now, and besides, I don't like working for others cause I prefer working on my own (slow as fuck) time. But reading that message, it felt like a compliment to something I made that I think so low of, that I even hated it at the time!

This then made me think of something else!

In Freshman year of highschool, my English teacher always complimented my writing, and one day even told me she had to grade me on a senior level! That's how good my writing was! Then fucking Junior year rolls around, my English teacher told me "Don't let this get to your head, but I have to grade you at a college level". Keep in mind, I often wrote these papers in a max of 2 days, without any revisions. Once I finished a paragraph, that was that! I'd rather rewrite the entire section than edit it!

--

I'm not bringing this up to brag, I'm bringing this up because I'm dumbfounded. That beginning chapter to a story I never finished, which I hated when I first wrote it, someone liked that. Freshman year of highschool, I'm breezing through my English papers, my only goal trying to be unique, and I'm writing at a senior level. Junior year of highschool, I'm breezing through my English papers, just trying to get them done fast, and I'm writing so good my English teacher gives me a compliment and tells me to not let the compliment get to my head.

Am I actually good at writing? Am I actually my biggest critique?

Am I actually a talented writer, who just has such a high bar for quality, that I think I'm a horrible writer?

Like, this seriously has me questioning this! Is my biggest issue currently that I lack confidence in my writing??? Or that I'm focusing more on long-form content when my skills are best utilized with short-form???

--

I don't know who you are, person who indirectly complimented my writing many years ago, but dude, you've fucked me up mentally in a possibly good way.

I'm now trying to think, like, I need a short-form story I can just update occasionally. And ironically, I think I have a story already suited for that task!

It's already my most experimental project, and it has no real end goal, so I've been wondering what the hell to do with it, and I think this is the perfect fate for it. My first ever public story I just occasionally add to.

Assuming I go ahead with this, I don't know when Chapter 1 will be released. I'll make it a goal to release it before the end of the month, cause I want to get it out there, but idk. I'll also probably make a new sub-blog for these stories, just so you don't have my ramblings clogging your feed in case this actually gets some fans.

--

Anyways, this has taken me half an hour to write for some reason... so yeah, I need to be getting to bed.

[valcuda]

My plans for my new laptop were ruined when, instead of getting a $200 2-in-1, I got a $1.5K gaming laptop...

I'm not upset, I'm just so dumbfounded, cause I only wanted a word processor, and now I have a laptop so powerful that it's a literal upgrade from my current Desktop in EVERY sense! (This even has better VR performance)

Anyway, I'm currently trying to get used to this new laptop (figuring out how exactly I want to use it), which I have named the "Sword", so it'll still be a while before the next render/artwork unfortunately. Fortunately, I am now making progress on my stories again! Maybe I'll ramble about them again sometime!

[valcuda]

The fuck you mean someone is "in [my] orbit"??? Like, "follows [user I follow]" makes sense, and so does "followed by [user I follow]", but... in my orbit??? Do they follow literally the same people as me or something???

[valcuda]

I'm getting a new laptop for Christmas, and it's made me completely stop doing anything, cause those things will be so much more exhilarating once I get my new laptop! (Nothing will change)

(This is also my excuse for barely posting, I have nothing to post about cause of this laptop excitement, which is causing me to have nothing to do, cause I'm not doing anything, cause laptop that will realistically barely change anything)

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Actually, y'know what? I was gonna end the post there, but instead, let me talk about this laptop I'm getting! This is my topicless talk after all, I need to be more topicless.

Okay, so I currently do nearly everything on my "Focus", a custom built Windows PC. When I say nearly everything, I mean I write on this, I view my drawings on this, I render on this, and I play my games on it!

I also have a laptop, an Inspiron 3000, which is so fucking bad, I had to install Zorin OS on it, and use it exclusively as a word processor, and it still lags! If I ever want to write after I've shut off the Focus, I use the Inspiron!

It's so bad however, that I refuse to use it during the day, when I have the Focus on, which is when I do most of my writing. So, I have all my files on the Focus, meaning I have to copy them to the Inspiron whenever I want to work on them before bed...

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THIS is where I got the idea for the new Laptop! If I can get something decently fast, then I can just keep the story files on it, and back them up to the Focus once every week. This way, I don't have to plan for writing at night, so if I randomly think of something, I can just write it down.

For the new laptop, I decided to go for a 2-in-1, cause I might as well, I've always wanted one. I also decided to go for a Dell Latitude, as my first PC was a Latitude E6500, so I have a good experience with them!

This lead me to finding the Latitude 5289, a laptop that meets all my requirements! And even has a PEN!!!!!! It doesn't officially support Windows 11, (and the Pen doesn't have full compatibility with Linux) but that's not gonna stop me.

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Anyway, so the idea is, I can try using it to aid with artwork, specifically for making VRoid models! As I'll now be able to draw the hair on, as well as drawing better template textures in VRoid, which should make it easier to make them in Medibang!

I can also use it for modeling in Blender! Obviously, the Focus is where I'm going to do renders and such, since it's far more powerful, but for making props for renders, it should be fine!

Like I said, I'm also going to be moving all my story files to it, meaning I can work on them at night! And I don't need them constantly open on my Focus! I can also work on them outside my room, meaning it should help me spend less time in here, which will likely improve my creativity!

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Now then, those first 2 might sound amazing, but I'm gonna blow your mind! I'm already planning to get an app for my Tab S4 which turns it into a drawing tablet for my Focus, meaning I'll be able to do those things directly on the Focus... with a considerably more accurate stylus... and I knew this before choosing the laptop... yet still chose it over a more powerful one that just lacked the pen...

Yeah, I might be a bit of an idiot, but screw you! This laptop is just meant to be a word processor, meaning I only need more power if I have the pen! (Assuming I can run all my writing apps without the extra power)

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Anyway there, I'm finally making this blog more topicless! No more Topical Talk!

[valcuda]

I just randomly remembered something stupid I thought of once, and it absolutely kills me every time I think of it. (I'm literally light headed from laughing, and I only remembered this 2 minutes ago!)

So, imagine your friend sends you a video captioned "When you go to your tall friends house" And then it's just a video of some dude in a weird tan room, and he's all smiling at first and is like "A tisket a tasket, it's yo boi, coming at you life from another FUCKING basket!!!" and he's clearly irritated as the camera pans up, revealing he's stuck in a woven basket.

[valcuda]

I just caught a glimpse of Elizabeth's original artwork prior to me using an actual skintone for her skin, and I have no idea how I ever thought it looked good!

Anyway, new post on my G/t blog finally. I won't announce every new post on it, this is just the first post I've made since I created it for some reason, so yeah... I decided this was a special occasion.

[valcuda]

Here's an interesting fact! I made my icon years ago, and haven't changed since! That's not the interesting part though! Re-rendering it in Blender, changing nothing (but some textures cause I lost the originals), leads to a different result!

That's the same model! And the same lighting! In fact, the pumpkin is entirely the same! Yet the lighting is different for some reason.

So, since I had to make a new render for my new blog, I decided to update my current icon to match it, which involved changing the sun's angle to put the Pumpkin back into shadow.

So here's the freshly rendered Icon!

I also made these same changes to the G/t icon already, since I view the face more as the icon, than the pumpkin.

Anyway, that's all for now. This also breaks my near month-long streak of only posting G/t renders!