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chaoticsimlish · 11 months

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Get To Know Me

I was tagged by the sweet and endlessly talented @salemssimblr for this! Apologies it took so long to get to it, wanted to wait until I was on my desktop again haha

What’s your favourite sims death? Gotta be laughing to death! I had a sim for a legacy challenge propose to her girlfriend once and her girlfriend was already in a silly goofy mood but rejected her and then proceeded to laugh to death. I hadn't even known that could happen and was caught completely off guard!

2. Alpha CC or Maxis Match? I tend to lean more towards Maxis Match stuff but I really have move of a blend happening

3. Do you cheat when your sims gain weight? Nah if it happens it happens, you can't have a sim push out four babies for a legacy and still have a stick lol

4. Do you use move objects? Definitely do! Even switched back to my old keyboard because it is better equipped for handling move objects in build mode!

5. Favorite mod? More columns in CAS! I cannot make sims without it!

6. First expansion/game/stuff pack you got? I bought every expansion/game pack/stuff pack that came out until My First Pets Stuff so it'd be Outdoor Retreat! I only recently caved to that stupid stuff back, always swore I'd never put money down on a DLC for a DLC but it was on super sale and I think I'd like to have rats in game

7. Do you pronounce “live mode” like aLIVE or LIVing? Liv definitely, I know in context it's LIVE mode but I have never said it like that

8. Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made? Probably Monty! My green haired sim I made originally to submit to a story that someone else was doing. I have the most back story on her! If not her than my boy Kaz who was made to be a bachelor in my bachelor challenge that ended abruptly when the save got corrupted and life made it hard to play! Kaz still to this day remains my favorite base to use when making male sims :3

9. Have you made a simself? A long time ago! I should probably make a new one

10. What sim traits do you give yourself? Creative, Clumsy, and Geek!

11. Which is your favorite EA hair color? I really like the darker brown and the auburn-y red

12. Favorite EA hair? I rarely use the EA hairs lol I don't really have an answer for this!

13. Favorite life stage? YA for sure because it has the most stuff to do but also I started playing Sims 4 when I was 20 so I was a YA when I got to play with it and it has always just felt like a good home base life stage!

14. Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay? When I do get to play, I'm in it for the gameplay! I honestly hate building from scratch because nothing ever seems right so I usually tweak builds I find in the gallery! I also really hate how much time it takes to decorate and clutter things up!

15. Are you a CC creator? I used to be! First thing I created (like five blogs ago now) was a set of nerdy art for my sims, I also recolored a bunch of hairs in Pooklet's colors and recolored a handful of items. Pretty sure that's all gone now though and I definitely don't have time to do it anymore!

16. Do you have any simblr friends/a sim squad? I have a couple people I feel like I can chat with without feeling like I'm bugging them! @salemssimblr and I talk on discord about this and that (mostly writing!) and @druidberries and I have had a few good moments as well! I used to have a group I was part of on discord but that's been a long time ago now

17. What’s your favorite game? Favorite series is forever Bioshock! The depth of the worlds and just how well those games were developed and thought out was always great for me! What Remains of Edith Finch changed my entire brain chemistry it was so good, Dragon Age Inquisition has been played about fifteen times, and I'm really enjoying Tears of the Kingdom right now!

18. Do you have any sims merch? Somewhere, lost to the basement which devours everything, I have a plumbob light thing I got with a special edition of something. Other than that no

19. Do you have a YouTube for sims? Nope! I'm happy posting on here where no one can hear me stumble over my words and watch me spend an hour debating over which hair to put on a sim lmao

20. How has your “sim style” changed throughout your years of playing? It's changed pretty drastically I'd say! My early sims, when I started really getting into the Sims 2, were all super goth and had the most wild and ridiculous outfits! I used to make sims who looked like they walked out of My Chemical Romance music videos! Now, though I still have to push myself to not use as many of the same or similar features (I'm really bad about almond eyes, down turned lips, and noses with the nostrils just so), I feel like I do make sims with more variety. I also work hard to make sims who are either queer, non-white, disabled, or occult as well. It's really easy to fall into a pattern of making the same kind of sim over and over so I fight that as much as I can.

21. What’s your Origin ID? EchoSoul I believe, there may be a 13 in there somewhere lmao

22. Who’s your favorite CC creator? I think the creator I jump to download all their cc every time I reset and whose cc just gets used and abused in my game is @clumsyalienn! I have almost everything they make and I'm pretty sure every single sim I make has at least one thing on their's on them!

23. How long have you had a simblr? I've had this simblr since 2018, before that though I've had multiple other simblrs that either got killed off because of a lull in notes or just disuse. I started in the simblr community in 2009 I believe! I've been on tumblr since 2008 and as soon as I found the sims community I've always had a foot in the door!

24. How do you edit your pictures? I don't lmao

25. What expansion/game/stuff pack is your favorite so far? I'd have to say that Realm of Magic and City Living! I'm a sucker for magic and witches and to this day San Myshuno is one of my favorite worlds to live in! Can't go wrong with the Spice District!

26. What expansion/game/stuff pack do you want next? I have all of them except for Dream Designer and a handful of kits so I'd say Dream Designer lol

NOW

I tag @shittyysimblr, @lilypixels, @whyhellosims, @pink-chevalier, @katmk36, and anyone else who'd like to do this who hasn't been tagged yet!

#long post!#tag games #tag games i actually got tagged for!

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rotshop · 3 years

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i cooka da pizza , i horror da body ,, and YOU kill murder chompa da person ,,

n e ways enjoy but heed the warnings !! ;;]

The Loves of my Entire Life

tw ; descriptions +/ talk of body horror, gore, blood, breaks ins / home intrusion and murder

The shift in Nevada's society and over-all structure had changed drastically over time. This wasn't anything new to say or anything remotely unfathomable. It was a simple fact of the matter that people seemed to grow used to, slowly numbing and adjusting to it all. Sure, it was a grim thought in retrospect but..it happens. Well, rarely it happens, nobody really knew if there was another case like this somewhere out there. Nobody really cared about that thought anymore either.

Hofnarr had changed with Nevada in several ways. For the most part, he'd been able to keep some slivers of his old life. He was still in a home like his old one (he wasn't sure how it'd been left in such fine condition, he didn't bother asking questions about luck like this), he was still intact, and he still had you. Granted, you'd had much more noticeable changes in yourself as well.

He'd become far more of a morning person, much to his and your surprise. His previous habit of staying up all night working turning into him waking up far too early for your taste. He was always careful to not wake you when he got up, even just laying there until you got up yourself sometimes. Despite everything, despite all the new fears and things to worry about, despite the risks of dying at any given moment-

he doesn't think he's ever slept this well.

At first he'd just joked that it was because you were warm or because the weight of your arms around him or your head on his chest was comforting. It wasn't entirely a lie, either which way, you really did help him feel at peace. Then he'd started to think on it more and more, zoning out for a period as he went over the thought. While he was still stressed, scared and overwhelmed at times, he felt freed.

He didn't have to worry about performing perfectly under deadlines and watchful eyes. He didn't have to worry about being completely professional nor about jokes and attempts at small talk that fell flat under unamused sighs and stares. He didn't have to worry about Phobos, his job, anything of that manner. It felt nice.

Though, of course, there were still times he had to remember it wasn't always peachy.

It was another one of those nights where he'd woken up in the middle of it. They weren't annoyingly common but they weren't rare either, most times he was able to toss and turn a little and then fall back asleep. This time though, it proved to be more stubborn. Despite him only having really slept for an hour or two, he felt perfectly awake.

He felt a sigh pass by his lips as he begrudgingly sat up, idling for a moment as he fought against his lack of motivation to get up. Briefly, he'd glanced over his shoulder to look at you, shifting his focus temporarily in hopes it'd help. It did. You were still passed out, the majority of your figure hidden under a blanket, save for your hand that stuck out from under it.

He couldn't help the little chuckle that'd bubbled up in his throat at the sight. Carefully, he'd reached and held onto it for a moment, either as some sort of wordless signal he would be back (he was sure you wouldn't have known, he just didn't know how else to explain it and he was still flustered to admit he just liked feeling your touch sometimes). He could feel your hand twitch a bit, distantly registering the weight of his. He'd smiled at that, brushing a thumb over your skin gently, grinning to himself when he'd heard the familiar rumble of you purring. He'd stayed there for a moment or two, simply enjoying the little moment of affection before he'd hesitantly pulled his hand away.

He'd shook his head slightly, some sort of attempt to clear it as he stood up, cringing internally at the cold of the floorboards. Nevada could get bitingly frigid at night, it'd been hard to adjust to given how blistering it was when the red sky rose, but you'd both done your best. It was dark ; furniture and walls as guides only being vague shapes and outlines in his vision. It'd been hard to find his way around at night when everything had first spiraled, with no sun that meant no moon, much to his grimace. Luckily though, you start to gain muscle memory of your house after the nth day there, it was a small blessing he could enjoy.

Gingerly, he'd pulled a cup from one of the cabinets, hoping he could just get a glass of water then lay back down. His previous restlessness had melted into a sleepless exhaustion, something he hoped to change soon. He'd felt any lingering wisps of sleep snap away when he'd heard that one sound he'd grown so accustomed to.

A click.

"Put your hands where I can see them," the voice was rough, scratched and bruised in its heaviness.

Just from that voice he knew he didn't have any chance of fighting without any sort of proper weapon. He could only hope and pray for another stroke of luck, though he knew the chances of such a thing were low. He only vaguely registered how his grip had tightened on the glass, nails pressing hard against it as his mouth ran dry.

"Are you deaf? Did you not just fucking hear what I said?" They'd barked, irritation obvious, "I said, put your fucking hands where I can see them and maybe you won't paint the walls red."

He'd swallowed at that, struggling for some sort of thought on what to really do here. Slowly and hesitantly he'd set the glass aside, raising his hands with growing anxiety. The air was thick in its gore, danger laying heavily in it. Though, after a moment of reconsideration and distantly hearing the steps of his visitor grow closer, he realized that in full.

It wasn't the gun that was the danger. It wasn't the intruder that was the danger. There weren't any others outside that were a danger. There was something far more controlled, far more quiet, far too still despite the adrenaline, and far too familiar for him to be afraid of it.

He'd hesitated once more as he spoke up, "Please take this outside."

He could hear the start of a sentence, the beginning of a breath before it died on the intruder's tongue. There was a shout of surprise as metal clattered to the floor, weight being dragged around like a rag doll as you lumbered away. He could hear how the struggle grew more distant, carried out through a door and into the unforgiving winds of Nevada.

He was thankful you had as much control over yourself as you did, it wasn't fun cleaning up the first few times this sort of thing had happened. There was still stains from it in the wood, the grooves between boards being recolored a dark crimson for the price of a disposed body. It was a reminder of how brutal you could be. It sounded odd, maybe even a little insulting, but you seemed like a personification of Nevada.

You could be gentle and a home when you wanted to, even with all the claws and teeth. You were strong and skilled in endurance, scrambling back up whenever you were knocked down. You could be brutal, rendering flesh and turning figures inside out in crude distortions of themselves. You were vast in a way that he found comforting while others never found it at all, never getting the chance to over the gurgling of their own lives bubbling up their throats.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been standing there, only really snapping back to it after you he heard the door open and close once more. He'd turned to look back at you, the dark hiding you along with everything else even as you drew closer, him feeling it more than he heard it. He'd let go of his breath for a moment as he took his own steps closer to you, careful as he wrapped his arms around your torso.

Your hands hovered for a brief moment over him, the smell of copper gave a silent explanation as to why. You'd taken another moment before carefully putting your own around him as best as you could, having to lean down to close the difference in height and uncomfortably hold your hands away from his shirt. It wasn't the most pleasant of positions, bones uncomfortably arched and muscles awkwardly pulled to form it. Despite the way your body groaned under itself, it was paid off by the little murmur you could just barely make out under the ringing silence of the night.

'Thank you.'

#hof is that one 'so true beasty' post ill die in this hill fuck you #dr hofnarr x reader #dr hoffnarr x reader #madness combat imagines #madness combat x reader #madcom imagines #madcom x reader #rot writes #my entire brain is just 'GRRR ARK BARK SNNNRNSNNEDKEDL' rn

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doubleddenden · 4 years

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Well, its a huricane outside, and busy hands keep a mind distracted. So I decided to redo a sprite I made ALLLLL the way back when I first started. Gnateon, the bug type Eeveelution.

Initially I spliced and recolored a bunch of parts from official Pokemon sprites to make it (I think this was BEFORE gen 5 if I’m not mistaken). I didn’t have a grasp on shading or coloring.

The next was what I thought was a good enough edit. I was wrong.

The last one is one I literally made a bit ago. This one was scratched, no help from any outside source, other than using the original as a guideline for colors and overall for ideas. I like this one a LOT better. I’m actually surprised how quickly I made it. For my starters it took like 3 days to an entire day as I got better, this one was done in maybe 2ish hours? I lost time due to an emergency I had to attend to. Either way I LOVE it.

Anyways

Gnateon

Bug type

Ability: Heat Proof/Compound Eyes

Evolves from Eevee while it holds the type changing item: Scale Scarf

Gnateon are perhaps one of the oddest evolution paths for Eevee to take, since it changes into a mammalian insect hybrid with a tough outer exoskeleton in addition to warm blood and traditional mammalian tendencies. Fast and fierce, these Pokemon strike with precision utilizing their wings as blades, and can use their legs to latch onto prey and use a stinger in their tail that can inflict massive pain or to inflict a toxin that can paralyze their target. They can fly extremely quickly, but only in short, quick bursts. In addition, their eyes are protected by a special goggle-like lens that shields it from dust or other particles that could harm it at intense speeds.

Although a bit quicker to anger, Gnateon still retains a very playful and compassionate nature that bonds it rather closely to its trainer. They tend to display affection rather strangely, such as bouncing and bumping their heads onto the faces or heads of their friends, or by orbiting constantly. Gnateon also have a strange instinct to be drawn to bright lights, no matter how dangerous, and will attempt to lunge at it, or the smell of food or garbage will send it into a hunger frenzy. These pokemon get along SURPRISINGLY WELL with Fire, Electric, or Pokemon that smell odd.

As far as stat spread, this thing is more or less a physical Jolteon.

Anyway, the 2020 sprite is made 100% by me. If you have any questions, just ask.

#pokemon #fakemon #eeveelution #bug eeveelution #pokemon sprite #doubled32 #i think i improved but i still have a ways to go

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betweengenesisfrogs · 5 years

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Homestuck is My Favorite Sprite Comic

Yes, you read that right.

Homestuck is my favorite sprite comic.

Those of you who remember the earlier days of the internet are probably looking at this post in disbelief right about now. Others of you might be scratching your heads, not knowing what I’m talking about.

But here’s my pitch: Homestuck is the culmination of an entire genre of internet art, and the tools that make it so powerful are the very tools that made that genre once so reviled.

Homestuck is the greatest and most successful sprite comic of all time.

And honestly, I’ve wanted to talk about that for ages, so let’s do it.

WHAT SPRITE COMICS WERE

Many of my readers are probably too young to remember the era of sprite comics. So: what were sprite comics?

Sprite comics were a genre of webcomics made entirely by taking pixel art from video games – especially character art, called “sprites,” but also backgrounds and other images—and placing them into panels to tell a story. They were near-ubiquitous on the internet in the early 2000s, emerging right as webcomics in general were seeking to establish themselves as an art form.

They were not, shall we say, known for their quality. The low bar to access meant that art skill was not an obstacle to starting one. The folks behind the huge swell of them tended to be young people, kids and early teenagers recreating the plots of their favorite video games with new OCs—not the most advanced writers or artists. They were the early 2000s’ quintessential example of ephemeral, childish art. Unfortunately, they look even worse today—blown-up pixels don’t hold up well when displayed on higher-resolution monitors.

Today, they’re mostly forgotten, remembered only as a weird, strange moment in the youth of the internet. Someone who evoked them today, such as a blogger who compared them to one of the most successful webcomics of all time, would be inviting good-natured teasing at the very least.

It would be unfair to dismiss them entirely, though. In this low-stakes environment, comics where the author could bring more skill—engaging writing, legitimately funny jokes, or especially, a real ability to work with pixel art—really stood out. (Unsurprisingly, these authors tended to skew a bit older.)

The obvious one to mention is Bob and George. Bob and George wasn’t the first sprite comic, but it was the most influential. Conceived initially as Mega Man-themed filler for a hand-drawn comic about superheroes, it quickly became a merging of the two concepts, with the original characters made into Mega Man-style sprites, full of running gags, humorous retellings of the Mega Man games, elaborate storylines about time travel, and robots eating ice cream. It was generally agreed, even among sprite comic haters, that Bob and George was a pretty good comic. Worth mentioning also are 8-Bit Theater, which turned the plot of the first Final Fantasy into a spectacular and hilarious farce, and of course Kid Radd, my second favorite sprite comic. (More on that later.)

But even if you weren’t looking for greatness—there was something just damn fun about them. The passion of sprite comic authors was clear, even if their ideas didn’t always cohere. To this day, I think the sprite comic scene has the same appeal pulp art does—it’s crude and rough, full of garbage to sift through, but every so often, something deeply sincere and bizarre shines through, and the culture of its authors is a fascinating object of study in itself.

Okay, full disclosure: I was one of the people who made a sprite comic. I’ve written about my experiences with that in more depth elsewhere, but yeah, I was on the inside of this scene, rather than a disinterested observer, and from the inside, maybe it’s a lot easier to see the appeal.

Still, let me make this claim: even with all their flaws, sprite comics were doing some incredibly interesting things, and Homestuck is heir to their legacy.

TAKE ME DOWN TO RECOLOR CITY

One of the problems people always had with sprite comics was the sprites themselves. They’re the most repetitive thing in the world. You just keep copying and pasting the same images over and over again, maybe with a few tweaks. That’s not really being an artist, is it? It’s so lazy. Re-drawing things from different angles keeps things dynamic, develops your skill, and makes your work better in general. Right?

I’m mostly in agreement. Certainly I think it’s fair to rag on the Control-Alt-Delete guy, along with other early bad webcomics, for copy-pasting their characters while dropping in new expressions and mass-producing tepid strips. And to be fair, digging through bad sprite comics often felt like an exercise in seeing the same slightly-edited recolors of Mega Man characters over and over again. You got really tired of that same body with its blobby feet and hands.

(It should be noted, though, that there were folks in the sprite comic scene who could pixel art the quills off a porcupine. I salute you, brave pixel art masters of 2006. I hope you all got into your chosen art school.)

All this said, I think the repetitive and simplistic nature of sprite comics was often their biggest strength.

THE POWER OF ABSTRACTION

In his classic work Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud makes an observation about cartooning that has stayed with me to this day.

McCloud notes that simple, abstract drawings, like faces that are only few lines and dots on a page, resonate with us more strongly than more detailed drawings. This is because our minds fill in what’s missing on the page. We ascribe human depth to simple gestures and expressions based on our own emotions and experiences – and this makes us feel closer to these characters as readers. Secretly, simple cartoons can be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling. If you want your readers to fall in love with your characters, draw them simply, and let them fill them in.

Video game sprites work very well in this regard. They have that same simplicity that cartoons do. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a huge part of the success of SNES-era RPGs was simple, almost childlike character sprites drawing people in. I think sprites did the same for sprite comics.

Here’s the weird thing: Bob and George worked. Despite four different characters being variations on the same friggin’ Mega Man sprite in different colors, they immediately began to seem like different people with distinct personalities. For me, George’s befuddled, helpless dismay immediately comes to mind whenever I picture his face, while with Mega Man himself it’s usually a wide-eyed, childlike glee. I would never confuse them. This, despite the fact that the only actual difference between their faces is that George is blonde. It’s pretty clear what happened. The personalities the author established for them through dialogue and storytelling shone through, and my brain did the rest.

Sprites, in short, were a canvas upon which the mind could project any story the author wanted to tell. Even the most minute differences in pixel art came to stand, in the best sprite comics, for wide divergences in personality and ideals, once the reader spent enough time with them to adapt to their style of representation.

Wait a minute, haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Character designs that focus on variations on a theme, with subtle differences that nonetheless render them instantly recognizable?

Oh, right.

Look at what greets us on the very first page of Homestuck. An absurdly simple cartoon boy, abstracted to a ridiculous degree—he doesn’t even have arms!—followed a whole bunch of characters that follow suit. Though many other representations of the characters emerge, these little figures never quite go away, do they? Why is that?

Simple: they’re very easy to manipulate. They’re modular—you can give John arms or not, depending on whether it’s useful. You can put him in a whole variety of poses and save them to a template. You can change out his facial expressions with copy and paste. You can give him a new haircut and call him Jake. It’s all very quick and easy.

Sprite comics proliferated because they were very easy to mass-produce. Andrew Hussie’s original conception of Homestuck was very similar: something he could put out very quickly and easily, where even the most elaborate ideas could rely on existing assets to be sped smoothly along. We all know the result: an incredible production machine, churning out unfathomable amounts of content from 2009-2012. I’d say it was a good call.

But it goes way deeper than that. The modular nature of sprites always suggested a kind of modularity to the sprite comic premise. George and Mega Man were different people, true, but also two variations on a theme. Was there something underlying them that they had in common? Perhaps their similarity says something like: We exist in a world which has a certain set of rules? One of my favorite conceits from Bob and George was that when characters visited the past, they were represented by NES-era Mega Man sprites, while in the present, they were SNES sprites, and in the future, the author used elaborate splicing to render them as 32-bit Mega Man 8 sprites or similar.

Suppose there was a skilled cartoonist thinking about his next big project, who wanted to tell a story centered around this kind of modularity, a narrative that was built out of iterative, swappable pieces by its very design. He might very well create a sprite comic named Homestuck.

Homestuck is a story about a game that creates a hyperflexible mythology for its players, where the villains, challenges, and setting change depending upon what players bring to the experience, yet which all share underlying goals and assumptions. What more perfect opportunity to create a modular story as well? Different groups of kids and trolls have motifs that get swapped around to produce new characters, whether that’s through ectobiology, the Scratch, or the eerie parallels between the kids and trolls’ sessions. And yet each character can be analyzed as an individual.

This is an incredible way to build a huge emotional investment from your readers. Not only does this kind of characterization invite analysis, the abstractions draw readers in to generate their own headcanons and interpretations. A deep commitment to pluralism is at the heart of Hussie’s character design. Then, too, it encourages readers to build their own new designs from these models. Kidswaps, bloodswaps, fantrolls—these have long been the heart of Homestuck’s fandom. And what are bloodswaps if not sprite recolors for a new generation? With the added bonus that now a change in color carries narrative weight, evoking new moods and identities for these characters in ways that early sprite comics could only dream of.

In Hussie’s hands, even the dreaded copy-and-paste takes on heroic depth of meaning. Even when Hussie moves away from sprites to his own loose art style, he continues to remix what we’ve previously see. Indeed, Hussie talks about how he would go out of his way to edit his own art into new images even when it would take more time than drawing something new. Why? Because he wanted to evoke that very feeling of having seen this before—the visual callback to go along with the many conceptual and verbal callbacks that echo throughout Homestuck. This is at the heart of what Doc Scratch (speaking for Hussie) called “circumstantial simultaneity:” we are invited to compare two moments or two characters, to see what they have in common, or how they contrast. Everything in Paradox Space is deeply linked with everything else. And Hussie establishes this in our minds using nothing less than the tool sprite comics were so deeply reviled for: the “lazy” repetition of an image.

(It’s fitting that some of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous images in Homestuck—dream bubble scenery and the like—are the result of Hussie taking things he’s made before and combining them into fantastic dreamscapes.)

But it all started with the hyperflexible, adaptable character images Hussie created at the very beginning of Homestuck.

And if you need more proof that Homestuck is a sprite comic, I think we need look no further than what Hussie, and the rest of the Homestuck community call these images.

We call them sprites.

THE FIRST GENRE-BENDERS

Was Andrew Hussie influenced by sprite comics in the development of Homestuck? It’s hard to say, but as a webcomic artist in the first decade of the 2000s, he was surely aware of them. It’s likely that he quickly realized that his quick, adaptable images served the same purposes as a sprite in a video game or a sprite comic, and chose to call them that.

One purpose I haven’t mentioned up until now: sprites lend themselves very well to animations. In fact, in their original context of video games, that’s exactly what they’re for: frames of art that can be used to show a character running, jumping, posing, moving across a screen. It’s not surprising, then, that sprite comic makers quickly saw the utility in that.

Homestuck was, in fact, not the first webcomic to make Flash animations part of its story. There were experiments with various gifs and such in other comics, but I think sprite comics were among the most successful at becoming the multi-media creations that would come to be known as hypercomics..

Take a look at this animation from Bob and George. It represents a climactic final confrontation against a long-standing villain, using special effects to make everything dramatic, but ultimately, like many a Homestuck animation, leads to kind of a pyscheout. The drama and the humor of the moment are clear, though. This relies in large part on the music—which is taken directly from the game Chrono Trigger. This makes total sense. Interestingly, it also contains voice acting, which is something Homestuck never tried—probably because it would run contrary to its ideals of pluralism. What I find fascinating is that in sprite comics, animations like these served a very similar purpose to Homestuck’s big flashes: elevating a big moment into something larger-than-life. Another good example is this sequence from Crash and Bass. Seriously, it seems like every sprite comic maker wanted to try their hand at Flash animation.

(By the way, it’s a lot harder than it looks!! I envy Hussie his vectorized sprites. Pixel art is a PAIN to work with in the already buggy program that is Flash.)

The result: because of the sprites themselves, sprite comics were among the first works to play around with the border between comics and other media in the way that would come to be thought of as quintessentially Homestuck.

What it also meant was that another genre emerged in parallel with sprite comics: the sprite animation. Frequently these would retell the story of a particular game, offer a spectacular animated battle sequence, parody the source material, or all three. Great examples include this animation for Mega Man Zero, and this frankly preposterous crossover battle sequence. Chris Niosi’s TOME also found its earliest roots as an animation series of this kind. You also found plenty of sprite-based flash games, in which players could manipulate game characters in a way that was totally outside the context of the original works.

The website the vast majority of these games and animations were hosted on?

Newgrounds, best known to Homestuck fans as the website Hussie crashed in 2011 while trying to upload Cascade.

What’s less talked about is that Hussie was friends, or at least on conversational terms with, the owner of the site, hence the idea to host his huge animation there in the first place, and other flashes, like the first Alterniabound, were initially hosted there as well.

It’s hard to believe that Hussie wasn’t at least a little familiar with the Newgrounds scene. I suspect that he largely conceived of Homestuck as part of the world of “Flash animation—” which in 2009 meant the wide variety of things that were hosted on Newgrounds, including sprite animations.

The freedom and fluidity sprite comics had to change into games and animations and back into comics again was one of their most fascinating traits. Homestuck’s commitment to media-bending needs, at this point, no introduction. But what’s less known is that sprite comics were exploring that territory first—that Homestuck, in short, is the kind of thing they wanted to grow up to be.

PUT ME IN THE GAME

I would be a fool not to mention another big thing Homestuck and sprite comics have in common: a character who is literally the author in cartoon form, running around doing goofy things and messing with the story. This was an incredibly common cliché in sprite comics, no doubt because of Bob and George, who did it early on and never looked back. You might have noticed that the animation I linked above concerns a showdown between Bob and George’s author, David Anez—depicted, delightfully, as another Mega Man recolor—and a mysterious alternate author named Helmut—who is like Mega Man plus Sepiroth I think? It’s all very strange. I could ramble for hours about the relationship between Hussie and the alt-author villains of Homestuck and what it all means, but I’m not sure I can nail anything down with certainty for these two. Maybe Bob and George was never quite that metaphysical.

But yes, bringing the author into the story in some form was already a cliché by the time Homestuck started up. Indeed, I think that’s why Hussie’s character refers to it as “a bad idea” to break the fourth wall—he’s recognizing that people will have seen this before, and are already tired of this sort of shit. And then he goes and does it anyway and makes it somehow brilliant, because he’s Andrew Hussie.

Homestuck breathes life into the cliché by taking it in a metaphysical/metafictional direction. I don’t think that was really the motivation for most sprite comic authors, though. Let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.

I think the cliché kept happening because sprite comic authors were writing about a subject that very closely concerned themselves: video games. I’m only kind of joking. The thing about video games is that even though they’re made for everyone, playing through one yourself feels like an intensely personal experience. You develop an emotional relationship to a world, to its characters, that feels distinctly your own. Now, suddenly, thanks to the magic of sprites, you have an opportunity to tell stories about that world for others to read. Of course you’re going to want to put yourself in the story in some form.

When it wasn’t author characters in sprite comics, it was OCs. You know Dr. Wily? Well here’s my own original villain, Dr. Vindictus. You know Mega Man? Here’s my new character, Super Cool Man. He hangs out with Mega Man and they beat the bad guys together. Stuff like that. Most sprite comics retold the story of a game, or multiple games in a big crossover format, with original elements added in. There was quite a lot of “Link and Sonic and Mega Man are all friends with my OC and they hang out at his house.”

What’s interesting, though, is that because these sprite comics were very aware that they were about video games, this was where they sometimes got very meta. It started with humorous observation—hey, isn’t it funny that Link goes around breaking into people’s houses and smashing their pots? But sometimes, it grew into more serious commentary. Is Mega Man trapped in a never-ending cycle, doomed to fight the same fight against the same mad scientist until the end of time? Is it worth it, being a video game hero?

Enter Homestuck. What I’ve been dancing around this whole time is:

Homestuck is a sprite comic…because Homestuck is a video game.

Or more specifically, Homestuck’s a comic about a video game called SBURB, where the lines between the game and the comic about the game blur as characters wrestle with the narratives around them, both those encoded into the game and those encoded into our expectations.

Homestuck presents the fantasy of many a sprite comic maker: I get to go on heroic quests, I get to change the world and become a god. I get to be part of the video game. And then it asks the same question certain sprite comics were beginning to ask:

Is it worth it, to be that hero?

I want to tell you about my second favorite sprite comic, a comic called Kid Radd.

Kid Radd distinguished itself from other sprite comics of the time by being a completely original production. Its sprites looked like they could be from a variety of NES and SNES-era video games, but they were all done from scratch, and the games they purported to represent were all fictional. Kid Radd used animations with original music, and sometimes interactive, clickable games, to tell its story. It also used all sorts of neat programming tricks to make it load faster on the internet of the early 2000s, which was great—unfortunately, these same techniques made it break as web technology evolved, something Homestuck fans in 2019 can definitely relate to. The good news is, fans have maintained a dedicated and reformatted archive where the comics can still be seen and downloaded.

Kid Radd’s premise is that video game characters themselves are conscious and alive—more specifically, their sprites. Sprites developed consciousness as human beings projected personality and identity onto them, remaining aware of their status as video game constructs while also seeking to be something more. The story follows the titular Kid Radd, at first in the context of his own game, commenting on the choices the player controlling him. He must endure every death, every strange decision along the way to save his girlfriend Sheena. Then the story expands into a larger context as Radd, Sheena, and many other video game characters are released onto the internet as data. They try to find their own identities and build a society for themselves, but struggle with the tendency toward violence that games have programmed into them. The story culminates in an honestly moving moment where Radd confronts the all-powerful creators of their reality—human beings.

It’s a very good comic.

The first sprite comic authors wanted to fuse real life with video games. Later sprite comic authors decided to ask: what would that really mean? Would it be painful? Would you suffer? Would you find a way to make your life meaningful all the same? Despite the limitations of sprite comics, these ideas had incredible potential, and in works like Kid Radd, they flourished.

Homestuck is heir to that legacy.

It takes the questions Kid Radd was asking, and asks them in new ways. It tries to understand, on an even deeper level, how the rules of video games shape our own minds and give us ways to understand ourselves.

At its heart, Homestuck is a sprite comic, and it might just be the greatest of them all.

EPILOGUE

I’ve seen a lot of good discussion recently on how Homestuck preserves a certain era of the internet like a time capsule: its culture, its technology, its assumptions, its memes.

I think sprite comics, too, are part of the culture that created Homestuck. Do I think Hussie spent the early 2000s recoloring Mega Man sprites? No, probably not. But what I do know is that sprite comics were part of his world. The first webcomic cartoonists came of age alongside an odd companion, the weird, overly sincere, dorky little sibling that was sprite comics. Like them or hate them, you couldn’t escape them. They were there.

And maybe a certain cartoonist saw a kind of potential in them, in the same way he summoned Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff from the depths of bad gamer culture.

Or maybe he just knew, as some sprite comic authors did, that the time was right for their kind of story.

On a personal level—Homestuck came along right when I needed it.

Around 2009, the bubble that was sprite comics finally burst. People were getting tired of them, or growing out of them, and blown-up sprites no longer looked so good on modern monitors.

I was more than a little heartbroken. I’d enjoyed Bob and George, read my fill of Mega Man generica, and fallen utterly in love with Kid Radd. I’d been working on my own sprite comic for a long time out of a sense that there was huge potential in them that we were only scratching the surface of. I’d dreamed of maybe someday doing something as amazing as the best of them did. But I was watching that world disappear. I had to admit to myself that my work wasn’t going to continue to find an audience. That I could live with. But it was painful to think that the potential I sensed, the feats of storytelling I wanted to see in the world, would never be realized.

And then, in the fall of 2010, a friend linked me to a comic that broke all the rules, that mixed animation, games, music, images and chatlogs. A comic that crafted its own sprites, just as Kid Radd did, and remixed its images into an ever-expanding web of associations and meanings. A comic that took on the idea of living inside a video game with relish and turned it into a gorgeous meditation on escaping the ideas and systems that control us.

That this comic would exist, let alone that it would succeed. That it would become one of the most popular creations of all time, that it would surpass other webcomics and break out into anime conventions and the real world, that it would become such a cultural juggernaut, to the point where it’s impossible to imagine an internet without Homestuck—

I can’t even put into words how happy that makes me. It’s the reason I’m still writing essays about Homestuck nearly eight years after I found it.

And it’s why Homestuck will always be my favorite sprite comic.

-Ari

[Notes: The image of the kids came from the ever-useful MSPA Wiki—please support and aid in their efforts to provide a good source of info about Homestuck! They need more support these days than ever.

For more on Homestuck’s place as a continuation of the zeitgeist of early 2000s experimental webcomics, this article by Sam Keeper at Storming the Ivory Tower is excellent and insightful.

Thanks for reading, y’all.]

#homestuck analysis #homestuck #homestuck's influences #hypercomics #understanding homestuck #sprite comics #internet culture

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redeyedryu · 5 years

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Cross Dimensional Problems

Chapter 2 - Hmmm... | [Ao3] | 1 | x | » |

Hey look! Another chapter! And it hasn't even been a day! Amazing, I know. Who knows when the next one'll come though.

Summary: What if I told you that your whole existence is nothing more than a creation meant to entertain people?

What if I told you that you're not even the original, that you're just some recolored imitation?

So. This is apparently a thing that's happening. And you’re pretty sure it really is because those slaps to the face didn't exactly feel pleasant. Neither did the pinches. Your company is probably questioning your state of mind after that display and honestly? That's fair because you're currently doing the same thing.

The proverbial “they” say you can't feel pain in a dream but what if your brain is just really good at playing pretend? It'd make more sense than this—sitting on a thread bare, obnoxious green sofa that doesn't make you think of a very certain event in a very certain game. The skeletons kind of drive that point hard enough, you don't need more reminders, thank you.

Someone clears their …throat? Whatever, the sound is made and it draws your attention, your eyes drifting to one skeleton in particular out of the three—the Classic™ one.

“heya,” he says and oh boy, that is a really deep voice. Very nice, very rumbly. You could listen to it for hours, you think. “what’re uh… what’re ya doin’ down here, bud?”

You purse your lips and squint your eyes, fingers pinching and pulling and scratching at the suede fabric of the couch you are sat on. It’s wedged off to the side of the safety hazard that is the sparking boiler-thing, just near enough for you to have dazedly stumbled over to.

“Hallucinating, I think,” you eventually reply as you continue to fidget. The fingers of one hand slip and you accidentally stab the side of your thigh with a particularly sharp nail. You don't so much as react to the stabbing pain. “Or maybe I'm actually having some kind of mental break?”

You watch (see: blatantly ogle) as the skeleton’s expression shifts, his sockets pinching as his brow furrows, as that perpetual grin of his dips at the corners. He pulls his shoulders in a shrug, that iconic blue hoodie of his bunching and creasing with the motion.

You never did get around to ordering one of those. Too bad, it looks really comfy.

“gonna be honest, kid,” that deep, soothing bass breaks through the wandering of your mind. “wasn't expecting to see a human down here.”

“Didn’t really expect to be down here,” you shoot back. You let loose a heavy sigh, pushing air through your nose as you slouch and violently throw yourself back against the couch. Your arms flail as you rant, “There’re bags of popato chisps and Grillby’s takeout bags and talking skeletons and couches from video games and nothing is making any sense! ” An arm lays across your face, shielding your eyes, as the opposite lays bent above your head.

There’s an awkward stretch of silence, though you're pretty sure you hear the ruffling of fabric, the sktch of someone’s shoes coasting along the filthy floor. And then,

“uh… what?”

Your arms shoot up, fingers splayed, and you glare at the ceiling as you shout,” Video games, Sans! Video games!!” You pull yourself back into a proper seated position and meet the eyes (eye sockets??) of the vanilla bean. Oh. Huh. He’s doing that pitch black eye socket thing. Looks like the edgy bastard behind him is doing it too. Maybe the tall one is as well. You can't tell with Papyrus types--sometimes they have eyelights, sometimes they don't. Oh well.

“What?” Your brows furrow and you purse your lips as you tell them to, “Stop doing that eye-thing at me.”

They don't listen, of course. Just continue to creepily, silently stare at you.

“Stop it!” you demand, and in an effort to get them to cease and desist, bring your hands together in a rather forceful clap. You have to bite your lip to keep from laughing at the way they jolt at the noise.

Sans clears his non-existent throat again, then he shuffles in place, before finally, “how’d ya know my name, kid?”

You quirk a brow.

“What? You're telling me most people wouldn't recognize the brother of monsterkind’s mascot?” Hey, look at that, he really does sweat blue magic. Neat. “Aren't there only like two skeletons in all of existence? Your alternate copies don't count.”

Op. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say ‘cause the voided eye sockets are back again.

“Hey, no! You stop that!” You snap your fingers several times in quick succession and thankfully, it seems to work.

”I mean… Y’all are on the surface, right? This is a post-pacifist ending timeline, right? It usually is in these kind of scenarios.”

And before the sweating Sans so much as squeaks, you hear a rumbling growl, see a blur of reds and black, and then you’re being pinned to the sofa. Underfell Sans is literally right up in your grill, his snarling, sharp-toothed face mere inches from yours.

“th’ fuck kinda shit’re you spoutin’, ya sack a’ shit?”

Oh. This is awkward. Not to mention uncomfortable. He’s practically kabedon’d you, arms on either side of your head, a sneakered foot precariously positioned between your legs.

Kinky.

His voice is pretty nice, too; a deep bass like his vanilla counterpart, though there’s an edge to it that the blue-clad skeleton’s clearly lacks. You think you could listen to this guy's voice for hours too.

You sink into the couch a bit, entirely unimpressed, and shift your weight to the side, bringing up a hand to push against his arm, and slide to the side, out from under him. Your nonchalance seems to catch him off guard as he just stares, befuddled, as you casually extricate yourself, resettling against the arm of the couch.

“C’mon,” you start, gaze shifting from Underfell, to Undertale, to Underswap, “you're smarter than that. You can pick up on the context clues, can't you?”

“the machine…” Your gaze shifts back to the tall, lanky skeleton still standing towards the back as he speaks. His voice is definitely somewhere in the tenor range, though it’s a bit raspy. It's nice, but nowhere near as smooth, broadcasting quality as Sans's is. “you're from an alternate timeline.”

He sounds so convinced, so sure of his deduction. You? Not so much.

“Mmm… something like that? I guess?”

The edgy skeleton beside you shifts, lowers his arms from the couch and instead just… lets himself flop into the cushions. The action causes you to jostle slightly.

“whadda ya mean, ‘summin’ like that’?” he all but growls, scowling at you.

“I mean what I mean. It's something like that but not quite? Because uh…” You drag your eyes from one skeleton to the next and then back again before shifting your gaze to the left and right. Man, this place is an absolute pigsty. “Because hmmm….”

Sans, the Classic™ one, chooses that moment to re-engage with the conversation. He lets loose a world weary sigh and plops onto the other end of the couch, sandwiching his Underfell variant between the two of you.

“‘hmmm’?” he prompts.

“Yes, hmmm,” you respond, face scrunching up in thought. Well, the cat’s pretty much out of the bag (not that it was ever really in one to begin with) so. What’ve you got to lose?

“It's a game,” you begin and you don't miss the way they all seem to snap to attention. “Undertale, by the way. That's what it's called. Came out a few years ago. Actually just had its what… fourth anniversary the other week?”

Underswap Papyrus, likely envious of everyone else sitting but him, comes over to the couch and props himself against the opposite arm. “so… what. we’re just a buncha video game characters to you?” He appears to be frowning as he fishes a honey sucker from his hoodie pouch pocket and wedges the treat between his teeth.

“Mmmmmmm… no. Not exactly. Sans—the original one—” and you point to the blue-clad skeleton, “is technically the only video game character. Which by the way, congratulations on making it into Smash, even if it’s just as a costume.”

Sans’s expression twists in confusion, a bead of sweat dripping down the side of his skull as he responds, voice slightly higher pitched, “…thanks?” He has no idea what you’re talking about.

“You’re welcome. But as I was saying, Sans is the original, the main branch, as I’m sure you’re all familiar with that particular analogy. You,” and you point to the Papyrus, who quirks a brow, “and you,” you point to the scowling, sharp-toothed Sans whose scowl only tightens in response, “are from AUs—Alternate Universes created by fans curious about different takes on canon. Underswap and Underfell, respectively.”

It occurs to you, then, that maybe you should go at this a little lighter, maybe don’t be so blunt about everything… but. Well… you don’t really know how else to lay this down. You’ll apologize about any existential crises you induce later, you guess—asking for forgiveness over permission and all that. Besides, it’s not like you asked for this situation to unfold, either; it’s not like you know what the hell is going on. You’re pretty much in the same boat as these jokers.

The skeleton seated beside you growls (he likes to do that a lot, doesn’t he?) and twists to face you, the little lights in his eye sockets burning red hot.

“s’what? we’re s’posed t’believe yer a human from sum kinna reality where we ain’t even real? jus’ summin made up fer yer own sick entertainment?”

You recoil at the sheer animosity in his voice, back sinking into the worn padding of the couch’s arm. It’s a miracle you don’t just tumble over the side of the thing, honestly, with how far you pull away.

“Uh… I mean. No? You’re free to believe whatever you want but it’s not like I just decided to break into some random dingy basement in my lounge clothes for shits and giggles.”

He just stares at you, his scowl tightening, his sockets creasing and his face just absolutely scrunching in anger before he’s just. Gone. Poof! Shortcutted right the fuck outta here.

Well.

That was a thing that happened.

You can empathize with the guy to a certain degree but well. You don’t exactly want to spend too much energy thinking about things. Not right now. Like a lot of things in your life, you’ll deal with it later.

Brushing that exchange aside, you find yourself releasing a lot of pent up tension you hadn’t realized you were holding onto (in your shoulders, your neck, back, even your jaw ) and address the two remaining skeletons still sat with you. Sans doesn’t appear to be sweating anymore, though he does look like he’s thinking something over. Underswap Papyrus is much the same, though he’s taken to fiddling with the stick of his honey sucker.

“So hey,” you start, effectively drawing their attention, “got any popato chisps?”

You want to know if they taste any different from regular potato chips.

#Red Drabbles #Undertale Fanfiction #Reader Insert #Cross Dimensional Problems #Reverse Harem

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wingsofninewheels · 3 years

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When I made my capsule wardrobe custom folder, I mostly just put a bunch of things in it that I think I would own and would work well together, in the hopes that the more outfits I make, the more I’ll be able to see how cohesive the collection is, and be able to prune out anything that just isn’t versatile for me.

But I’m finding that the folder functions are convoluted and difficult to navigate unless you keep a written list of the names of the exact items you want to add/remove, and cherrypick them with the wardrobe search one at a time. It’s relatively easy (if not time consuming) to do the initial selection, but it’s a whole other process altogether to edit that selection later on--even adding pieces of the Interplay of Light and Shadow after I got it was a headache, because the item listing is only somewhat chronological.

I want to figure out an easier way to organize my thoughts, because there’s a LOT of items to sort through. And the only thing I can think of is to make a second NI account and cherrypick the items that I *want* in the folder and add them? But I still feel like I’m going to have to redo from scratch periodically.

Anyone else get a lot of mileage from the folders function, that can offer advice for maintaining one?

--------------------------

Additionally, while I’m seeking advice, I figure I could ask about this as well: Does anybody know if there’s a way to sort NI where the score results show more than top 20? I would expect something similar in the way one can manipulate the Tag Search--for example, I just recently learned you can search for posed items with it!

I like to style my scores, and if an item has close to the same values that I like more--for example, a recolor vs. the base color--I tend to prefer it even if it docks me a couple hundred points. But I’ve noticed in the Stylist Arena in particular, that sometimes all 20 items in the results have the same value, and I’m under the impression that there’s more than 20 items that also have the same value. So if I can use pieces from suits I went out of my way to get instead of using Carrot Bag Rare for everything... Well, you know.

I suppose the simpler question is, are there any other sites besides NI that have the ability to sort by values? There was an app a while back but it only went up to V1Ch9 iirc, but it sorted the entire wardrobe listing by its relevance to the level in question. Cupcake does an immeasurable service to the LN community with NI, but I’m sure there are other unsung heroes out there as well, whose sites likely have a different range of functions.

(Yes, I know I’m extra. Organizing presets and sorting my wardrobe is a major source of enjoyment for me with this game, though.)

#lnduq #love nikki #love nikki dress up queen #adding interplay pieces would've been easier had i pulled up the suit on NI and just searched the items one at a time #but i was in bed and did not want to get up just to have a website up on my laptop

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nealiios · 7 years

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The Derrick: Part II - Making Faces With My Friends

Once upon a time, designers were able to make games without graphics. Dungeon Masters rendered breathtaking worlds full of beauty and danger thanks to the amazing power of IMAGINEOVISION, a game engine that required only the human voice and the creativity of its players. Choose Your Own Adventure books and text-only computer games formalized the process into descriptive chunks of text between which the player had to choose, again without relying on a single pixel to aid -- or to hinder -- the player’s imagination. The power of decision-based storytelling was, and still is, one of the most compelling forms of gameplay available, but the introduction of computer graphics into the adventure genre with Mystery House forever changed the game. In order to attract and hold the attention of a modern gamer, even the best text-based adventure usually requires at least a modicum of eye-candy.

As we discussed last time, The Derrick will primarily take the form of a text adventure. In order to illuminate the people and places of Adams, Oklahoma, I’ll be creating not only the story and design for the game, but also the pixel art as well -- a first in my 27 years of game development. Because I’m not a naturally talented artist, it’s taken me several years to develop my art style, and what follows is a brief exploration of how I’ve developed the approach that I’ll be using in The Derrick.

* * *

I’ve always wanted to be an artist. I’ve envied so many of my friends who could sit down with a sketch pad and a pencil and just DRAW anything they wanted. My friend Kenneth Mayfield valiantly spent many hours trying to teach me, and he let me watch as he worked with an airbrush to create the covers of many of the Starfleet Battles strategy games. I picked up as much as I could from him, and even got to the point that I could paint halfway decent nebulae and planets, but mastery with traditional media eluded me. My hand eye co-ordination was poor, and no matter how long I worked at it, I never felt like I was making measurable progress. I might have given up on it entirely if Photoshop hadn’t come along in the early ‘90s to show me another way.

My first experiments with digital photo manipulation were typical surrealism. I cloned my dad and made him sit in his own lap. I placed myself on the cover of important magazines. I did all the silly things that most beginners did with Photoshop, and learned how to blend out scratches and obliterate wrinkles from extant photos. But not too long after I began to experiment with the tool, I began to see it not only as a way to change photos, but also to create entirely new images from scratch. I could make up for my natural deficits in hand eye co-ordination by zooming in and editing pixel by pixel, and I could undo mistakes with a simple keyclick. The program didn’t give me the talent that I didn’t have, of course, but it did provide me with the confidence that I might be able to grow and develop in a way that I hadn’t been possible with mere paint and canvas.

I’ll be the first to admit that my first fully digital “painting” was terrible. I was no better an artist than I had been in junior high, but it wasn’t a bad place from which to start.

WALL OF EYES - As a whole, my first digital painting was terrible, but isolated bits of it revealed that I might be able to do things with digital painting that I hadn’t been able to master with traditional techniques.

When I got to work on my first painting, I’d had no concrete plan for what I wanted to draw. I started with the face of a cyber-punk girl and worked outward, but everything about her showed off my weaknesses as an artist. She had no structure to her face, the balance was wrong, her proportions were deformed -- from head to toe she was a nebulous mess. I’d also put zero thought into her background before starting, and as a result had to retroactively paint in a wall around her rather than painting her over it (a process that would have been a lot easier if Photoshop had had layers, but that feature wouldn’t come along for a few more years). Slowly the wall took on a kind of life of its own, becoming a rotting wood-plank fence. As the gaps and holes began to appear, my mind began to wonder what might be lurking behind them. It became evident to me that the real subjects of the painting were the eyes behind the wall rather than the girl in front of it. “Wall of Eyes” would name itself, and would later lead to two “sequel” images.

COULD SOMEBODY GET ME SOME VISINE? - Using the power of layers in Photoshop allowed me to “focus” more on fine details of the image.

With the original version of “Wall of Eyes,” I’d felt extreme hesitation at trying to fix any aspect of the image for fear of destroying what few elements I’d liked. The introduction of layers into later versions of Photoshop, however gave me not only a new way to experiment, but it also made me look at the creation process in an entirely different way.

In traditional art, it’s very customary to “build up” an image one layer at a time, painting several coats of translucent paint over each under until a net color or other effect is achieved (a core lesson I’d learned from painting nebulaes). With layers in Photoshop, I realized I could achieve the same effect without running the risk of messing up coats of paint (which would require destroying and painting over flubbed layers.) I could simply lay down different colors and textures and then alter their opacity however I desired. I could also reorder the layers in an instant, and change how they mixed with one another. Ultimately it began to feel more like the process of creating a collage, and it was freeing to realize that I could experiment without fear of messing something up.

My first use of this new feature was to return to “Wall of Eyes” and enlarge one eye that I’d found particularly menacing. Inspired by an old comic book cover, I recolored my “refocused” painting with lurid, pulp comic colors.

THE THING IN THE BOX - Taking center stage, the eye pops even more with contrasting values of heat and cold, and even greater layers of detail veining its malevolent gaze.

As I continued to toy with it and refine, I “cooled down” the fence with tones of moonlight to draw contrast with that hellish eye, and lavished more details on the eyeball itself. Using layers not only of color but also adjustments to saturation, and contrast, and other elements, I arrived at a final nightmarish image of something that none of us wants to find beneath our beds.

When I started thinking about the character portraits for The Derrick, I realized that a lot of the lessons I’d learned about painting could be used in the modification of existing materials. I could take photos of friends of mine and transform them into heavily stylized portraits that would fit the mood and style of the game I wanted to create. My portrait transformation for Delphine Mack is a fairly good example. I began with a photo of my friend Sarah Berry in vintage clothes appropriate to our 1920s setting.

The original image was black and white, and Sarah was posed against a crowded black background that had to be knocked out in order to make room for a different environment. Finding the boundaries between her dark dress and the dark background were a challenge, but it was an important step in isolating her for modification. Next, I began to hand tint the image for a slightly vintage-postcard look, and applied filters to create a paint-like “surface” to the image.

Next I turned towards the creation of a mysterious background, cloaking her in a graveyard-like fog of blue that fits the mood of the game. It felt as though she should be creeping around in graveyards or down at the riverboat dock.

Once the fog was done, I realized that I liked it, but it seemed to compress the image into a single plane, and the color was too monochromatic. So, for a remedy, I created masks to draw a noirish slash of light across her face, while also creating contrasting bands of orange and red behind and below her for a final mysterious effect.

The irony of Delphine’s portrait creation is that I hadn’t meant for her to be a major character in The Derrick. She was intended only to be one of several non-player characters with whom the player could interact during the course of the game. But as I watched her come alive during the creation of her portrait, I began to see her as a daring and brilliant protagonist that would be very different than your usual Lovecraftian hero, and a perfect centerpiece for the tale. Many of the other characters you’ll meet in The Derrick likewise found their narratives while I was busy “painting” their faces, some of which required a great deal more compositing of elements and layers than Delphine. Phineas Book is a great example of portrait that actually required the combination of several disparate elements -- one man’s face, another person’s hands, a suit that was appropriate for the time period, and a theatrical-looking fireplace that provided the perfect backdrop. The fire itself was hand painted for final effect, as were the eyes and other smaller elements of the scene.

#OneMoreStoryGames #StoryStylus #TheDerrick #Art #Photoshop #Games

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