December ProgBlog #1: ramp

Stuff is ramping up.

I’ve been mostly working on photobooks trying to get them done in time for printing and shipping back to the island in the vain hopes it might not get there too late. I’ve also been working on my dice system (it has undergone two major overhauls in about as many days) and roleplaying notes (gained a bit of extra time as the kids didn’t feel like playing the weekend just gone, I brought the stuff over anyway just in case I actually needed it but got to just hang with my friend the entire time).

November ProgBlog #5: kinda rage

I should probably start going to bed earlier as I’m constantly tired and staying up late trying to cram more work in doesn’t seem to be working. But I keep doing it because I feel bad about not getting a lot done. It’s a vicious perpetual cycle.

I’m also feeling bad because it was my last day at work today, I’ve just found out someone else at the centre is dropping because of the vaccine mandate. I don’t know what’s going to happen with their program, they were the only one running it. There’s been interesting conversations and sometimes I’m wondering if the people claiming “I get it, I really do!” after I’ve explained my reasoning to them do actually “get it” (in fairness some really do even if they made a different decision, and others are really, really struggling with the fact that after considering essentially the same information, how other people could possibly have come to the “wrong” decision). Work is also now severely understaffed and my boss is stressing which is making me stress because I like my boss and there isn’t a right thing to do.

November ProgBlog #2: distractions

There are many and some of them are just things I’ve decided to add on because I’m not very smart like that.

After WoDMod1 finished I started hacking on a dice system I’d written for AER two decades ago x_x when I was roleplaying a lot more. It mostly worked out fine when I was playtesting it with the friends I roleplayed with frequently back then because it was a fork of World of Darkness with a lot of my fudges and homebrew built in (it’s actually more or less the system I run now when we’re playing World of Darkness, just closer to the original than my fork so the children reading the sourcebooks know what’s going on).

November ProgBlog #1: legitimate reasons

I actually had them for the delay for once, and that was going out for birthday churros (not mine, but someone’s).

After that I was trying to render out some super quick and dirty walk cycles (which are literally just hands and feet approximating walking motions, no refinements or personality injected whatsoever, which partially accounts for the jerkiness and the other part is only vaguely remembering how to do looping gifs and animated gifs in general and couldn’t get the timing right when making the gif, I haven’t done one for game engines yet and I don’t use them at all for animations) and my computer crashed three times while rendering the first one (I’m a bit extra so I did three different views because of course I did).

October ProgBlog #4: "I just wanted a nice render..."

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.

October ProgBlog #3: geared up

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).

October ProgBlog #2: the stupid things I do

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 -_-

October ProgBlog #1: Toolsday

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

September ProgBlog #4: shifting patterns

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.

September ProgBlog #3: another slow week

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.