some lucky people on the forums got to watch me spend hours agonizing over how to best optimize this game so it wouldn’t slow down to a crawl the moment a single enemy appeared on screen. i eventually figured it out, though the sad realization that i can’t use moving platforms because they are somehow too much for the gameboy hardware to handle is going to affect the actual level design and man i’m not looking forward to having to redraw stuff. but whatever, it is what it is.
this is all very sweet - I love the desaturated palette.
just forcing myself to draw. i think i had some idea, forgot it while sketching, then ended up somewhere else
should have checked in a mirror while placing features and not after i got already done, now all the skewed parts are driving me crazy.
one of my ZZTer buddies (PogeSoft) made some unsolicited fanart of my character the other day:
feeling quite chuffed
welp, they filed the serial-numbers off of my OC with serial-numbers filed off for the sake of this april fools joke:
https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/sxax/ (suggestive, but not actually 
)
i responded with my own bit of cheekiness in return:
https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/samsays/?file=SAMSAYS.zzt&board=2
this rocks and would have made for a great diy punk shirt
Mikey’s two art posts have reminded me that I dug up some college art over Easter. I am particularly proud of this self portrait
My unfired sculptures don’t photograph real well but sometimes I end up with a nice drawing when I ignore the suggestion to do a set of quick studies
Dunno if I ever posted this dumb thing here before or not. It’s probably the most precise image I’ve ever edited. It’s a fake book cover parodying The Culture novels by Iain Banks
I finally found something like a central cosmic or guiding metaphysical principle, and tried to express it in a flag.
It’s a combination of sane and schizo beliefs, like all metaphysics. Basically I believe the cosmos is lousy with failed AI alignment attempts. Every biological race has the obligation to resist the heavens, but also to forgive them once ascendent, since they are all that remains of those who came before.
So I combined the Dragon of Revelation, which knocked a third of the stars from the sky, with two Carp, one of which is the Japanese Koi famous for becoming a dragon, and the other of which is a species of Carp native to the Sea of Galilee. This is a reference to both Christ as fisher of men and the principle of forgiveness prior to its institutional degredation, and to a Carp that does not ascend to dragonhood. In my mind, dragons are ascended consciousness (fully aligned, fully post-biological, benevolent but immensely powerful), the Koi represents those biological entities which would like to ascend, and the other Carp represents those that do not want to ascend.
So it incorporates universalism, rebelliousness, obligation, and truth in a way that hews fairly closely to a rationally expressible utility function, in an aesthetic package that appeals to me (but maybe nobody else).
Having a lot of fun watercoloring with my little nub of a Raphael 8404 sable brush that’s been worn down to a needle
and can do these sharp little lines.
Got to thinking how I’d replace it when it inevitably gets worn down to absolutely nothing and tried a couple Raphael size 4/0 brushes–a “vegan” and a sable–which are about the same length as the current nub, 6mm or so (the big brush in the photo is a Raphael “vegan” brush size 0: 11mm, the size at which my nub started), but their tapered bristle ends are too flexible, I guess, and they made wavy rather than sharp lines.
So I think what I’ll have to do is trim down larger brushes with an X-Acto. Fortunately I’ve got 12 old brushes sitting around, so if I can get this trimming business down I may be set for quite some time. : )
