Archive for the ‘journal’ Category

The one about anxiety, chairs and poking around

Tuesday, June 9th, 2015

SO. That video? Kinda stalled right now. Basically, a lot of drama and unpredictable noise have made it SUPER-difficult to find a good solid block of time to record the commentary on the Kiros painting time lapse. (Let me remind you that my “room” is not a true room with doors and walls, it is literally a section of the den with a half-wall, and thus I have no real privacy or means of isolating myself from outside noises when people are downstairs.)

BUT I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN, OKAY? :(

In other news, I have a usable chair again. It’s my old office chair from upstairs, and sinks rather easily because I’m a fatty mcfatbutt (plus it’s a cheap chair), but it’s still way better than a damn shower bench. I still have to stand up a lot for circulation reasons, but I’m okay with that. I recently found out about recliner exercises, this has helped me with I have to sit in my chair for a long time.

Alsoooo… I maaaay be poking around in FFXIV:ARR a bit. Let me assure you that this in no way indicates that I’m affected by the recent drama about WoW and flying and developer transparency (in fact, I’ve been trying to stay away from the forums and even dropped a couple of Twitter followers because I don’t need all that negativity in my life on top of what I already deal with, and the outrage among the playerbase is boiling over from “rabble rabble rabble” to “let’s intimidate and shame people who aren’t on the bandwagon with us” and that’s just Not Cool).

It’s more like I’ve progressed my characters enough where I’m not having to devote, like, two full days out of the week to chain-run LFR on my alts (in addition to daily crafting CDs/Garrison maintenance) where I can actually do other things and play other games like csgo, that you can learn to rank at sites like http://mycsgoboosting.com/guides/csgo-ranking-system. I’m down to two characters that need to run LFR every week, and one of them is two weeks off from being done with that (until 6.2 drops, anyway), as opposed to having to juggle 5+ alts needing to go every week. All that time freed up! (My poor 3DS has been gathering dust since Warlords launched.)

FFXIV has been something I’ve been curious about for quite awhile, but a lot of things have kept me from really acting on it (being tied up in WoW progression, for one, but also just being so exhausted from family drama and the anxiety spikes they cause, it really does take me out for much of the day because that adrenaline and energy spent staving off panic spikes has to come from SOMEWHERE). Some people in my Horde guild play, and they were talking about it during tonight’s raid, which is enough of a nudge to just download the damn client already.

And, like, I pull in enough gold through my Alliance garrisons where I could reliably just pay for my WoW account in tokens, freeing up actual monies to use for my (theoretical-but-probably-happening) FFXIV sub fees.

Having researched the game, it looks like I could actually bring Hikaru back out again (and as a proper tank, no less!) because as you remember, I couldn’t adapt her for WoW– the lore doesn’t exactly allow for Black Dragons that aren’t evil, so Hikaru got benched and Hynderia was made to take her place for the melee/plate-wearing DPS role in my giant pile of characters. And Hynderia’s character has since developed in such a way that there’s really no comparison between the two anymore. (To name one major difference aside from race, Hynderia is very much a lesbian. It was a random idea I had some time ago, and it worked so well. I think it was kind of an “extrapolation” from an accident that happened when writing Ragnarok TWILIGHT episode 2, in which the interaction between Hikaru and Yoshi could be very easily read as the two being romantically interested.)

So, that’s what’s going on. That’s all I can say for now. :P

Instant Ramen Sketchbook – Field Marshal Kiros

Tuesday, May 12th, 2015

My brother is a badass!Well that finished up quickly. Look at this badass. :D

As I said before, I threw out his current transmog and just played with the design. The shoulders are a simplified recolor of the ones Admiral Taylor’s packing (which I believe are themselves a tweak of the Hunter PVP shoulders?), but I more or less just invented the rest. The exceptions are the sword and shield, which are clearly the Grand Marshal’s Longsword and the Royal Crest of Lordaeron.

As for the video render, that will take at least a day or so to put together. Basically, Blastoise has to render one big video of all the capture sessions at its original length (over 10 hours!) before he can squish it down. The software I’m using won’t let me pre-squish the individual capture sessions, so that’s how it has to be.

After the initial export is done, I’ll do the commentary track and lop off the taskbar (it’s a little distracting in preview, since Blastoise has rotating wallpapers and his taskbar is transparent) and punt the whole thing to YouTube.

Still Boiling the Noodles

Monday, May 11th, 2015

It’s taking a little longer than I like, but the painting of my brother’s warrior is nearing completion. Again, check the Twitter feed for WIP screencaps.

I’ve been recording all the sessions so far, and the total collected video is about 9 hours 11 minutes so far. I estimate the final collected raw video will be about 12 hours, and that’s going to be squished down to a 20 minute video. My YouTube account will finally see some action again. :)

Of course, as is typical for any character design adaptations I do, I tend to not bother with sticking closely to the original. In this case, it’s because Kiros’ transmog in-game is far from complete, so I gave him a design that at least keeps in the spirit of what my brother described him.

Incoming Noodles

Friday, April 24th, 2015

Psst.

There’s artwork afoot. Look at the Twitter feed for WIPs because I’m not on a machine where I can crop and upload them right now. It’s about my brother’s warrior. :D

Even better: there will be a VIDEO posted along with the finished piece showing everything from the line art phase. Blastoise is awesome enough to capture it allĀ  without any lag whatsoever, because OBS is awesome! Woohoo! The aim is to squeeze everything into a 10 to 15-minute time lapse video with commentary, because who doesn’t like watching sausage– I mean ramen getting made? :)

The family that raids together, stays together!

Saturday, April 18th, 2015

In my OpenRaid group we have… well, I guess I would call it a “complete family unit.” One of our raid leaders (usually he brings his warlock, and that detail will become relevant very quickly) brings his wife (usually a shaman) and his son (a death knight) with him. They’re all very competent players, and their son is one of the main tanks. It’s just adorable to hear the banter between the three of them. Truly the family that raids together stays together!

SO. We’re in Highmaul and the warlock, Mr. Dingos, used a battle rez on his wife towards the end of the Twin Ogron fight. No big deal, right? Now, the warlock has this add-on that broadcasts a random sassy quote whenever he uses certain abilities (summoning portal, soul well, soulstone, call demon pet), and when he revived his wife, the particular random quote that triggered was:

“By accepting this resurrection, you forfeit your firstborn!”

Remember, that firstborn is the main tank (and said tank is a death knight, so he’s ALREADY dead, in a manner of speaking). Yeah. I think you can imagine the laughing that happened in Ventrilo. It was randomly selected, but in that situation it was just… perfect! XD

Silly stuff like this is why I like this raid group, and raiding in general.

Also, I hope whoever wrote that add-on gets around to expanding its functionality to make it usable by other classes. I don’t have a warlock but I’d really like to use an add-on like that on my mage. Oh, the fun that would ensue! :D