The Pokémon Syndrome

Originally written in December 2011

Image placeholder:? Professor Oak, a middle-aged man with greying hair, stands in an adventurous pose clad in typical Pokémon Trainer gear, including a baseball cap, a jacket, a backpack, shorts, tennis shoes, and hanging from his belt, a number of colorful hand-held devices. Caption: Lets do this! (Again!) †

Go do something you haven't done in a few years. Preferably something you've only done once. Something you really didn't do so well at. You think this time it'll be different: you're older, wiser, and have as and advantage over last time that there was a last time you can now look back to.

Except that… you don't.

After a while, you'll realize you're doing everything exactly the same! It turns out that when forced to make the same decisions under the same conditions, you'll come out with the same results. This is good: it means you are still the same person you were years ago; but it's also bad, because it means that, like a machine, given the same settings – the same input – you produce the same output; you haven't changed – haven't learned.

I call this "the Pokémon syndrome" because I discovered it playing the Pokémon games.

Sketchdumps are for WiPs

Drawing I was trying to finish for last year's Thanksgiving.
Obivously, I didn't make it in time.

One of the thing that irks me about the school year is how little time it leaves me to use the computer for art. On the one hand, because I take a bus that 90% of the time gets stuck in traffic, I have a practically guaranteed drawing session every day. On the other, if any of those drawings requires a little touch up in the computer to be finished (say, to add color), it most likely never will be finished.

Filmed in front of a live audience

…not exactly because it's the season to be jolly.

You probably noticed my new avatar, which I made yesterday. If you saw it used in one of my comments on someone else's old post, you'll be wondering how I managed to use it before creating it. But the interesting thing about this avatar is not that I've been wanting to make it since July, it's that I created it while Livestreaming.

Resorting to image macros

I've always thought image macros were a rather cheap way to convey an idea. After all, you're taking something someone else has made, and merely changing the caption to fit your own devices. Wouldn't it be so much better if people could make their own things from scratch?

However, as a Computer Scientist, I've been taught that things need to be as efficient as possible, and anything unnecessary that gets in the way of that has to go. As a researcher, I've learned that strong emotions are, to put it bluntly, something that literally gets in your blood and has to be used up before you can continue whatever it was you were doing before you felt that way. As someone who writes on the internet, I know that people need to hear from you, and that these are the things they want to hear about. And finally, as an artist, I'm supposed to know that the best way to channel these emotions, is by creating something out of them them.

So yesterday, when I became so-furious-with-myself-I-just-could-have-killed-something at discovering what was wrong with the program I was writing, I made this:

Annoyed kitty image macro copyrighted by thekraidster567 ^{[it is?]}
Text by me

Review: The Paper Wings podcast

Text-only version

Sometime in March, I was pointed to the Paper Wings Podcast. Hosted by Lora Innes and Chris Oatley, The podcast brands itself as “the show for visual storytellers” to “help [them] find the time and energy… to finish their personal project”. However, I didn’t think this was my kind of thing because, at the time, they were focusing on what people should do if they wanted to become full-time illustrators for a major corporation.

In June, I was pointed to it again, so I skeptically returned to the site. This time, their focus was on how to make time when you fell you had none. “This is exactly what I need!” I thought, so I downloaded the podcast. Ironically, I didn’t have time to listen to it until about three weeks later. See, I don’t have a portable mp3 player of any sort (that includes my cell phone, which won’t even let me download new ringtones to complement its default three horrible buzzings) so the only way I would be able to listen to it would be when I had my laptop out. Unfortunately, whenever I have my laptop out I’m writing in it, and I honestly can’t write and listen at the same time.

Father's Day Special

Huh, I was so sure I had set this up to be posted automatically on Sunday. C'est la vie.

Avatar Story: Winter's End (Part 1)

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Seeing as it's already June, I really should shed those winter clothes, shouldn't I? But to do that, I need to finish telling the Winter story, so let's get this show on the road.

Avatar Story – Winter's End Part 1: Gift Horse

This was supposed to go up on the day of the Epiphany (January 6)

Stresssss!

I haven’t felt stress –at all– for a very,very long time.

3 new avatars

Take a good look at this image. Okay, I know there's not much to look at, but try to guess what it reminds you of. I'll give you a hint: it's something on this blog.

Now a Deviant

"Hey Diddle Diddle (because, let's face it, if a cat was given a fiddle, this is probably what he'd do with it)" was the first (and up to now, only) thing I drew specifically with the purpose of uploading it to DeviantArt.

So, yeah, I've created a DeviantArt account. When I started this blog, I was focused on telling two stories: the avatar story and the (as of yet unbegun) Jane's story. Every drawing I made, was a means unto that end. I was trying to work professionally; keeping to the clean, computer-made look. Whenever I did draw something on paper, it was as reference for when I "inked" it later on the computer, as happened with Jane.

But Christmas changed that.

What I gave my mother for Mother's Day

Text-only version

So, yeah, I sketched this in pencil, colored it on the computer, printed it, and gave it to my mother. It was wonderful to hear her laughter echoing through the house!

About "text-only version"s

I've recently gone through all my old posts making sure the ones that can't have the alt text put as mouse-over text (mainly because if you put your mouse over them, that would get in the way of reading the speech bubbles) have a link to let you see the alt text through Google's wonderful text-only caching. These are seen as a link to the "text-only version" at the top-right of the post.

But why? Why did you do that?

The Japan relief effort

Text-only version

Ye Irish facepalm

St. Patrick's Day ended, and I was unable to make the last image for my St. Patrick's avatar. My schedule, my sleep debt, my phone, and certain callers all got together and "decided" to make this impossible.

Christmas story: Epilogue

This one was supposed to go up on Holy Innocents Day at the latest… which explains the coat in my apology, but not the pendant.

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Pro Crass Ti Nation (or, the stealthy joke you probably missed)

In panels 8 and 9 of my apology, Jane comes in to whack me with a book.

"I can see that. The question is 'why?'"
Well, she's an avid reader and the rolling pin was not at hand.
"What? No! I mean why does she– You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

The thing is, having decided she was going to hit me with a book, for it to really look like a book it had to have a title, and a back-cover description. The first thing that came to mind was calling it "Light readings: an anthology." This thought lasted about five seconds, when I thought that it would be infinitely more funny if she would chatize me for not focussing on my work if the book were titled "Procrastination."

Christmas Story: Part 3 (take 2)

Let's try this again. It literally took me all day to draw the last panel (because, well, I'm with my family and you know what day it's today) but it's all good because I got it done before midnight

...right?

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Modularity

Unless you're also a computer science major, you're probably still puzzled at what I meant when I said

Forget modularity
Forget reusability
Forget modifiability

To keep it simple, these are the three things any well-written computer program's code must be:

• Modular means that it is separated into the different parts of the program, each doing only what they're supposed to do.
• Reusable means the code is general enough to be used later in a different program
• Modifiable means that the code is structured and commented in such a way that it's clear what each individual part does, thus allowing a hypothetical future coder to change it.

In the context of computer-drawn art, modularity means that the character can, for example, be separated into his individual body parts (I can, for example, select just the head and rotate it alone) and from the background. Reusability means that his expressions aren't too specific to the situation that I can't put the same image in a different setting without it being an appropriate response. Modifiability means that if an expressin appropriate to the situation needed doesn't exist, I can take an existing one and change, say, the mouth.

Of course, none of this is possible when the art is a scanned pencil drawing, unless you're penciling on acetate cells.

Christmas story: Part 1

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"Sitting on Danger"

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