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Showing posts from 2017

Strange American man translates normie American speak

"I'm not a fan" = I don't like it but I'm so afraid of what other people think I use this veiled language instead of just saying what I really think- Example- I'm not a fan of Del Taco, I got explosive diarrhea last time I ate there. "It is what it is" = I have nothing to say so I'm just going to open my mouth and make a noise and say something that means nothing- Example- I got fired, it is what it is. "You're not getting any younger" = you are close to not being sexually desirable and your time of death is near- Example- When are you going to get married? You're not getting any younger you know. "Me time" = I'm lazy and want to sit around doing nothing- Example- I really should be working on that project but I decided I needed some me time. "Amazing" = mediocre, if everything and everyone is described as being amazing that simply cannot be true- so amazing really ju

Game before film

Check out this PS1-ish style maaaaaan My last post was describing an animated short film I was going to make/release for Halloween this year- I'm going to have to push that back a few months as I'm making good progress on my current game project- I'm an obsessive worker and game dev- more specifically programming can really feed the obsession thing- I'm doing ten hour workdays everyday and loving it- I hadn't planned this game to have a procedural component BUT I looked into and started playing with some code and now the room skeletons are randomly chosen from a list and they are filled with stuff procedurally, items/objects are placed procedurally as well- I might generate the rooms procedurally as well BUT I need to set some limits for myself so the games scope doesn't get too crazy for my current skillset- I'm not doing anything fancy- just breaking the spaces into cells then applying labels to the cell- then objects read the cells and rotate

A short animated film for Halloween

Storyboarded a new animated short while sitting at this bench yesterday- It's a new episode of my "Darksided" series-  Well- I did part of the storyboard when I was on the bus on the way there- I walked 3.5 miles to this bench- storyboard the rest of it then walked back- Script is ten pages- storyboard has a little over 100 shots-  So finished short should be about 10 minutes- I penciled it into my calendar for the 23rd - 30th so I can release it on/just before Halloween as it's a spooky little thing- I'm going to make it in Unity using Slate- it needs lip sync but I haven't decided how I'm going to do that yet- I could go the audio driven puppet mouth route as that's easy to implement but as of right now I plan on using realistic human models and puppet mouth wouldn't work well with them- So I either need to go the stylized route with puppet mouth OR stay with realistic humans and look at some facial mocap options- I don't own any m

Burn Hollywood Burn

Since there's Hollywood scum in the news this week I thought I would write this- In 2007/08 I had a few experiences from inside of the film industry- In this short time I met the fakest, most incompetent, and douchiest people I have ever encountered as a group- I had a meeting with a guy from The Weinstein company in New York in 2007- they were interested in having me direct a movie or something like that- At the time I attended a lot of events as this "Youtube" filmmaker guy and so I  knew the people who worked at youtube "film" The woman in charge of Youtube film used to work at The Weinstein Company and left it to work at Youtube film- her assistant at Youtube film had the last name "Weinstein" but I'm sure it was a coincidence and not nepotism ^_^ Anyway- this dude I was meeting from The Weinstein Company knew that I knew this woman- so in the meeting the first thing he says to me is- "Is (the woman's name) still ho

There is a value in not knowing any better

There is something to be said for not knowing better- With years of experience comes the ability to project boundaries around your aspirations- This is being “realistic” Experience teaches us to be realistic- inexperience usually provides a whole lot of not knowing better- A professional is realistic, rooted deep into the earth- an amateur floats around, head in the clouds with no roots to be found- they are more like a fern than a tree- Experience usually breaks our heart one or more times in more than one way- with each heartbreak, with each disappointment- we become more experienced and move forward with our experience- if we don’t quit- In creation- heartbreak is projects that were never finished- projects that were finished that you had big expectations for that never panned out- etc Real experience carries with it real confidence- inexperience carries hope and wonder as the “limits” are not known- Now, there really aren’t any limits- I think

What are you building?

A model from something I'm currently building Every once in awhile someone who has seen/heard/ something that I've made will send me a nice message- every time I get one of these messages it reminds me as to why I started creating things and releasing them for free most all of the time- I've been in some dark places in my life and it was manga/anime/music/films along with a lot of self work that helped me get through things- So I'm happy and proud that I've been able to make and release a few things in my life so far- I threw them out there and whenever I get some nice message about them it's the energy I put into to them comes back to me- This is a key Speaking of energy and putting stuff out there- I've made some crazy things but my major works all have hope in them- they have heart and soul- I built funky little houses that may look scary and strange on the outside but there a fire inside to keep you warm should you choose to visit- I

Tiny text based news broadcast

Hurry tiny man it's tiny text based news time! My wife and I made this "Dottir" album a few years ago- Fortress of Thugitude by DottiR People keep buying it and I'm at a good place with my current game prototype- I never thought I'd be pseudo-coding on paper but that is what I do all day- The second to last method is all wrong but I fixed it in the code- the code maaaaaaan- the code! I love programming so much 0_0 I finally feel capable coding in Unity now that I have a full bag of tools and I learned a lot about code architecture- My current game prototype is online multiplayer so soon I'll probably post a link here for testing with you people- So yeah I'm about 6 tracks through a new Dottir album- when I'm making stuff like that I average about two tracks a day- I create all the parts, sequence them, and write the lyrics- then some time soon we'll go into the vocal closet and record the vocals- The other morning I couldn

Loop for success

I was thinking about what it takes to follow through and achieve goals- I came to the conclusion that it's just all about writing good loops that keep you going- that keep you repeating the same behaviors/activities required to achieve your goal- A simple C# "for" loop looks like this for(int index = 0; index < listOfItems.Count; index++) { //do this //then this // then this etc } What this is doing is looking at your listOfItems and repeating the same thing over and over until it's gone through the whole list- It will only STOP when the whole list is finished- So let's say for example- this "list" is a shot list for an animation or film? The loop will keep running until you have gone through the whole shot list- with this current code it won't stop for any other reason- This part controls when it stops " index < listOfItems.Count " index is being incremented each time with index++ So again, it will only stop whe

Get off

When mobile phones became a thing I passed and never bought/used one- I still haven't- I've missed nothing but endless streams of nonsense and trivial matters delivered via "social" media apps/sites- When "social" media became a thing I tried it out for a little while- deleted most of it in 2008- deleted Twitter this past year- I've missed nothing but an endless stream of bickering about nonsense and personal reality show drama- I barely have the attention to answer emails in a timely manner because I'm so involved in my work- Why would I want constant notifications about bullshit to disturb me? I'm trying to code some crazy procedural puzzle system! If I just wanted an excuse to procrastinate and fail at reaching my goals I'll be all over having a phone and all the "social" bullshit- I'm sure I'd find tons of other losers who would tell me "It's ok to fail bro, you know- some things are just too hard, we s

Electronic Media Maker Man

As I continue to iterate through 7 day game prototypes and improve as a programmer a desire to exercise my filmmaking/animation skills has bubbled up- This is my life right now- well this and working out- As you can see its art free- my prototypes are just code and un-textured prim's- maybe being in this art desert is making me want to make vivid things? I've got another music video to do soon but.... My current game prototype is my first foray into procedural generation and online multiplayer- it's going pretty well and might stick and become a real game- but if it doesn't I'll discard it and move onto another- I'm getting a lot better at coding and my understanding of game development is evolving and it's all starting to make sense to me- Here's some books I've read recently I can recommend Clean Code This is probably the best book on programming I've read- it will help make your code easier to read/work with + make mo

I've slowly translated my filmmaking skill set into Unity muahaahahaaaa

I've now done quite a few music videos and cutscenes with Unity- for cinematic sequencers I started with Cinema Director, used Timeline briefly and now I'm using Slate which I think is the best of the lot right now- Here's a recap in order of creation- "Powerless" cutscene with Cinema Director "Strange Driver" cutscene with Cinema Director " Huginn Og Muninn" music video with Cinema Director " Necromimesis" music video with Cinema Director "Awake" music video with Cinema Director "Λήθαργος" music video with Cinema Director "Witch Hunt" music video with Timeline "Reclaim your sol" video game teaser with Slate So after making all these short things I feel totally confident in creating film-like stuff in Unity- Most of the music videos were made in about 3-4 days- the last cutscene was made in 5 days- The game the cutscene is for is still my big "

Reclaim your soL

Here's a special unlisted Youtube link for the 8 people who visit this blog ^_^ This is the first teaser trailer for a game I've been working on for some time now- Watch the video here It's a concept/story that I really believe in- it means a lot too me-  it's sort of strangely connected to my first animated feature "We Are The Strange" I almost walked away from it weeks ago but decided to refactor it instead of totally abandoning it- it's the only thing I've worked since I stopped making films that chokes me up and brings a tear to my eye when I imagine it being completed- Long story short- I jumped into it knowing too little about proper code architecture and before I knew how to code haha- I built things that worked BUT they were an amazing clusterfuck- since then I've finished other little projects + studied/read a lot about programming and NOW I can build something that works and isn't an amazing clusterfuck that yo

A strange man types his thoughts on a train to San Francisco and back

In 2016 I was working on a book I finished but never released- to create the book I took train trips to different places and wrote the whole time- a real stream of consciousness thing- this is the writing I did one a train trip from San Jose to San Francisco- -------------------------------------------------- A train slams the side of my window as a “bullet” train slashes by- it's called a bullet train not because it's some kind of super train like they have in Japan or China- no, it's the same old train made in 1985 it just doesn’t stop as often- we begin rolling forward slowly- Stacks of cement blocks lay in front of a cement plant next to an apartment complex- car parks- dog parks- no kid parks- more graffiti splayed out on the walls- names I can’t read- shiny icons- large cement pipes lay in a pile next to grey mounds of dirt and an excavator building new cookie cutter condos- or maybe a strip mall with the same stores you just saw 5 miles before so you c