technonaturalist

Late progblog is late again but that’s nothing new. This time was an interesting combination of I had to go in to work early and completely forgot to start (I’ll usually make a start on writing in the morning, pick at it throughout the day and then finish up at night when I get back from work and do super basic if any edits) and then because I’m really close, figured I’ll just get a render done to use as a cover image because I’ve been doing my usual doing a lot but nothing to show for it thing.

UASG

Spent today trying to catch up with the last couple of weekend’s worth of work and I have now almost completed the three main items that Yue carries around with her (partly because they’re things that she uses very regularly and mostly because they’re kind of a security blanket).

First is the airfoil, which is a sword when folded up:

and a giant fan that she can both fight with and glide on (skaterpunk Yue’s skateboard wasn’t going to work in an airship setting, and I went with a variation of the Talespin “airfoil” rather than the slightly more sensical Avatar: The Last Airbender glider partly because ridiculous steampunk anime, partly keeping some aspects of Skaterpunk Yue and mostly because I hate staff x_x).

I did not forget July, apparently we didn’t do anything at all.

Or at least we didn’t do anything that I took photos of. The boys had random conversations with me and 16yo with his friends at gym about astrophysics, philosophy, life, the universe and everything and I really wish they would write this stuff down so I had proof. 14yo has been out and about with her boyfriend including going to AQWA. I’m trying really hard to pressure them harder into writing down stuff and basically doing their own reports especially as they’re doing so much stuff on their own now but still having zero luck with that.

I still do too many stupid things to count. This is just one of them.

No not that in particular, that’s just my attempt at approximating Chinese brush painting (I have exactly no idea so I watched some tutorials, and I still have no idea). The *actual *stupid thing is this.

That at the top is a copy of my rough sketch (the original has been turned off on the upside down one) and I’m going to repaint it. Because Yue’s airfoil has the same design painted on both sides but as they would have been painted independently rather than the cheat way of just rotating the image like a sensible person would do, that’s what I’m doing for accuracy -_-

So, with the sheer volume of stuff happening on the weekend (work, training and roleplaying), it will probably come as a surprise to exactly no one that I’m struggling to get progblogs out on those days.

Additionally despite knowing from a ridiculous amount of previous experience that it leads to burnout and intense slowdown at best (I can feel how slow I’m moving and it’s annoying me no end) and downtime at worst, I cut into sleep time again because it’s the easiest thing to cut x_x

The weather finally warmed up enough that I was able to make it to training (late as per usual because the time I would have to leave to get there on time is about when I’m waking up x_x but better late than never?). I fell into old habits and doing low stances after three months of not training at all is generally not the best idea, I was somewhat stiff and sore afterwards XD and then the following day we went on an 8km hike because yes.

It’s been a busy weekend with states competitions, following a busy week of training and preparing for states competitions. We had to skip roleplaying (for the third or fourth time in a row, previously people had been staggering being sick x_x) and there were 5-5:30am starts on Saturday and Sunday x_x as 14yo and I were getting picked up at 6am by the head coach. 16yo was sick for regionals and bailed out of states (because it’s been a weird year some people that missed out on regionals due to illness or quarantine were allowed to apply to do states and most were accepted, he now regrets doing so, told him to make up for it next year). 14yo had an amazing day on Friday; managing third on vault and beam, equal first on floor with one of her friends, and third all around. On Saturday were just there as cheer squad. My level 3 and 4 boys did pretty well on Sunday with all of them getting at least one medal.

I accidentally spent the entire week on UASG (or to be extremely specific, on those freaking dreadlocks >_<).

I’m currently on my…6th or 7th iteration.

I thought I’d be a smartarse and lay out the curve guides first (which I think I mentioned last progblog), and then followed up with experiments on whether I use the particle hair controls or the similar looking controls on the curve guides themselves to do the dreadlocks.

The slow and painful days are starting to become a habit I really need to snap out of. Both projects are plodding along and I’m kind of bumbling my way through everything else around them with varying degrees of success.

AER

After switching back to the colour map, I attacked the shape of the dragon tattoo, adding in these little belly scale segmentation things.

Trust me it’s one of those tiny little things that you don’t notice when it’s done but that you would definitely notice if it hadn’t been done x_x

It was starting and I had plans and then other stuff happened and I just kind of tried to deal with things (generally failing) so kind of just buried into music (generally looping my project playlists) and did stuff (not nearly as much as I wanted, yeh I know that’s the usual story, but it’s even less done than usual as brain is not functioning correctly at the moment, I borked) and then suddenly it was the weekend.