Peak Scratchpad
- Posted by mariteaux on October 12th, 2021 filed in Updates
- Comments Off on Peak Scratchpad
(I still have zero clue how to use any of Postee’s advanced features, like categories, tags, or images, so that should be something I toy with eventually.)
Wow, I am sleepy today. I have zero clue where Caby is, as of writing this. She was up and on Discord a few hours ago, posting in Somnol’s Discord, but she seems to have disappeared sometime before I got up. That kinda sucks, but ah well. I can deal with it for a few hours. It sucks even more because I finally got Macintosh Garden’s Discord-IRC bridge going, meaning I can use Discord and everything on the eMachines Box and not have it be so ridiculously isolating like it has been up to this point, and used it all last night and it worked great…and today, I’ve mostly just been spammed by people going online and offline. Such is life.
Mostly been doodling this morning. I still haven’t posted any of my pencil doodles here, but mostly, I draw on paper, and if it’s any good, I can use a photo of it as the sketch layer when I go to digitize it. I’ve only attempted that once so far, and it’s on my DeviantART, but I’d really like to do it more because the results were surprisingly good, given that I’m utterly clueless about art, digital art, and having a steady hand. (I do feel it happening, though. It’s always bits and pieces – “Oh, I can put the ear on the side, huh.” “Oh, if I draw a second circle, that’s a snout, and a good 3D one too.” Very cool.)
I’ve made it something of a goal to try and learn how to draw Cammy (at long last) by the end of the month, and I’ve gotten alright at his head…at one angle. (At least it’s an angle Caby uses a lot too…) Bodies still scare me, I still have no clue where to start with those ever, but wanna get better at those too. Eventually, I just gave up figuring out other angles and drew a Colton. Glad I can still make him work, and maybe even a bit better than before. If his body ever comes out looking okay, that’ll be my next one to line. Wanna go for a sitting pose with a guitar, something that qualifies as an actual, full drawing.
As far as my other projects go, I have the FreQuency soundtrack rip and mix I was working on maybe 95% done. One disc is entirely reconstructed and mastered and sounds great all the way through. I still need to mix two other songs from it, both of which of course will finish the other two discs, which I then need to sequence and master. I’ve been using a bunch of neat tools and tricks to make it sound better than it does even in-game, let alone any previous rip. Soon, I’ll be putting together a soundtrack for the first Rock Band, because that got requested.
Honestly, it’s kinda fun being “the soundtrack guy” in MiloHax. Feeds my inner music geek, and Harmonix always picked great songs. Eventually, I’d also like to put together full rips of the three Harmonix Karaoke Revolution games too, which are mostly soundalike covers of pop and rock staples from the 50s onwards. It’s about the only place you’ll see Dean Martin, R.E.M., Britney Spears, Joan Jett, and Aretha Franklin together, aside from I guess on a real karaoke machine. (As a fun bit of trivia, the cover of “I Love Rock and Roll” from Karaoke Revolution Party was reworked with a better solo for the first Guitar Hero.)
Caby and I are thinking I should probably focus more on pursuing my writing actually getting published, and that’s a good plan. I think I should aim for getting something, maybe two somethings, submitted places by the end of the year, but moreover, I think I should just aim for getting a more steady stream out. I’d ideally like to be writing something every day. It doesn’t have to be stories, it can be blog posts, it can be tutorials, whatever it is – but I want to be flexing the language muscles every single day. I really do think it’s my strongest asset.
Once I have a portfolio of published stuff, I’d really like to look into some kind of residency and make it a proper, consistently-paying job, but one thing at a time. I don’t mind if it’s reference/technical writing, opinion pieces, something more creative – I can do all of them, and I have done all of them for fun. Just pay me and I’ll spit out words for whatever you need them for.
Really, the big thing on my mind has been Pennyverse. After I finished up the toyhou.se stuff finally in September, I really had no intention of stopping or taking a break from this world that I neglect far too often. I’m aiming for another batch of shorts this month, something festive after a few years of not being able to make festive stuff happen. The theme will be “worst nightmares”, of course. (Only some of which will be actually scary, of course – I can’t just drop bowling balls on people anymore, nor do I particularly want to. Some of the things I regret the most about what I’ve worked on so far has been how nasty and cold I can be to these damn characters. It’s not fun to read nor to write. I’d have Arthur fighting the communist scourge dressed as a Union soldier if I could get away with it.)
Man, what else? I did mention Gopher in my last post, and updating the Somnol Gopher (which has had some impressive uptimes, I should mention – I haven’t touched it in months, and through internet outages and power outages, it’s always recovered and is up to this day without issue) is something I’d like to do soon. I think the old Pennyverse profiles are still on there, so if you want to embarrass me in ten years (I’m being semi-hyperbolic), grab ’em now and save them. Or don’t, preferably, because they suck either way. I think Jake mentioned to me that “A Conversation With Colton” never made it on there either. I’ve been slacking, so let me stop doing that hopefully soon.
I also got the strangest urge to go back and listen to Sound of Dentage again as I was drawing, having slaved away all April on putting that thing together. It’s honestly still pretty good. Kinda funny reading back through all the blog posts I wrote about it. The earliest ones all have this star-crossed kinda nostalgia about it, and the last ones, I was mostly pretty sad reading about Nirvana’s last tour, his marriage falling apart, him being a narcotics god to people (which also happened to Layne Staley), and Krist/Dave fighting with Courtney publicly about how best to honor the dead man. Nirvana’s story might mostly be all punk spirit and 90s nostalgia now, but honestly, through the late 90s and early 2000s, it was pretty miserable times. Still kinda bums me out.
On Dentage itself, though, I’m thinking of experimenting with YouTube and putting it up as a big long two hour playlist rather than splitting it up into three videos. Normally, I prefer each song as its own video, but I might be in the minority on that, and last time I did that with the Amplitude soundtrack, Caby said it looked kinda spammy and I ultimately took them down. People like long videos they can leave on and forget it, and it’s the most convenient thing for me. Win-win! (We’ll see how much I’m winning with the Content ID system.)
I guess I’m mostly rambling out my to-do list to you through Outlook Express now, aren’t I? No shortage of things to do, and I’d like to post more here and make sure I have something to look back on 6-8 months down the line, like I was doing for Sound of Dentage. Thanks for listening to my stream of consciousness jumble. You’re looking at peak Scratchpad here.
(Still no Caby :<)
