Inktober + Shooty Skies Retro Arcade Anarchy & Nightmare Before Christmas Doodles [OCT2016]

I planned to do it even though I didn’t start from Day 1 of Inktober. I know eventually I’ll get my butt going at my own pace. But it’s scary to do traditional art with tools I have yet to experiment with so I started with my comfort zone:the biro/ball point pen ^o^

Magical Kindness & Vidya games with Matt

Okay, it’s because I’m poor, replacement traditional stuff is pricey, I don’t know what I’m doing & am afraid of wasting it if I use it at all but ahhhh lovelovelove them because they’re so fun to use 

Let’s make a quick getaway

Uhh stick figures are normal right?

Popular, entertaining & charismatic creative peeps

Uhh I’ll just back away over here haha

How I’m going to survive MIGW

Actually what I do with any social thing D:
Mostly quietly hide amidst the rare “being bold” moments.
This is accurate based on past ones.

I guess this is goodbye

80’s Retro Arcade Anarchy Update for Shooty Skies: Concept Art & Studies!
Worked together with Ryan (environment art, implementation and gameplay) and Tim (game design & writer) on this update!

And I got the opportunity to visually design and explore character and enemies for the October Shooty Skies update! And then I made them in voxels!

Aw yeah – all the learning!

I didn’t *have* to do any of this messy concept art but I tried this because I felt it would help me learn and explore fun ideas without fumbling around with voxels.

Especially how I wasn’t an 70’s/80’s kid so I had to depend on everyone else on the references. I also researched the games of that couple of decades :0

And if you want to see this update in the game; well play it!

Disclaimer that it’s free but it has ads and bonuses to help support the developers (I’m a tiny fraction of that)! 😀

Yay the update is finally out there!

Nightmare Before Christmas: Studies & Arting!
Do note that these are just personal studies and fanart illustrations of my own.

I just went really into learning about & doodling the awesome character designs. I did these to help me create voxel character & environment art for the Nightmare Before Christmas World in Disney Crossy Road. 

I do not claim this movie as my intellectual property.

Old Pumpkin King/Nightmare Before Christmas Vector practice from several months ago for a Halloween picture

Phew that’s all! These were created as a by-product of what I worked on (and it’s not everything). I did these for the sake of learning and fun (:

The past month: All the jumble!
So this is just a messy copy pasted summary of what happened the past month…

Social interaction Trainer game
This is what Ken showed me and I half/half relate because of the countless times I wonder back on my own social interactions and ask the “what if” questions. Eye contact definitely is a major part of social interaction. And I have little practice at this social thing :<

Looking at the original game, it’s really quirky, amusing and silly! It sets up social interactions as failures, wholly on just how you make eye contact. Or whether you did any eye contact. And where you were looking. Noting that your character is a straight male trying to get intimate with a lady. And I’m not but hey, that’s what role playing is for.

I relate to the part of wondering about “what ifs”. Whether I’m not giving enough or too much eye contact or in a conversation D: All the potential connections I could have had if I had expressed that effectively without looking too aloof or intense.

But as the developer stressed, you can’t take it seriously.
Just do what you can and get better at it :<

Contours16 Exhibition Opening Night

Originally I didn’t plan to go to the Opening Night for #Contours16 so I’m in my old parka & being awkward & embarrassed D:

Thanks for saying hullo, even though I was there only an hour!
Feeling grateful, embarrassed, weird, happy & disbelief! ^o^

Thanks Scott/@cronobreak & Ngoc/@ngoctmvu for the photos! 😀
I didn’t plan to be under camera though haha
It was sort of…oh…should I take a photo with it? O-okay! ^-^;

More info on the exhibition: contours-exhibition.com

Oh I was taking video of other things instead of socialising hoho
(I’ve given up getting worried about not socialising “enough).
And I’ve edited a shaky video – oh noes!

Do turn on the captions I made because I had to talk fast to catch up to my fast footage haha!

My LeonieTalks Video on Contours as follows:

Olly Moss Overwatch Mei Print She’s perfectly adorable!! Ahhhh! <3 His colourful and masterful ways of illustration is inspiring (and those Pottermore prints & Harry Potter covers!! I can’t afford or have space for those!)

After looking at the expensive Surface Pro 4 (looking at artist reviews, videos, and comparing it to the iPad Pro + Apple Pencil combo – I want this more someday), I realised that it’s not worth it when I won’t really use it beyond the PAXAus panels. Plus the next Surface generation is coming next year with the wacom tech returning and there’s a lot of other issues with it. One needs to buy a lot of other costly accessories to make it worthwhile.

So I looked back at my old laptop. I was stressing out for a day and a half on resuscitating it for the last time (giving it a chance) by formatting it completely to its factory state. Right after that, it felt like it’s finally working at a good speed!

So I started getting an anti-virus program (I got informed after that I should have just gotten Microsoft Security Essentials and that’s it), got windows update running, set up drivers…and at the second round of windows updates it returned to running at its slowest again at 100% CPU. I didn’t even get to do anything performance heavy with the laptop and the fan was going crazy already! Plus the update stayed at 0% downloaded for ages and then stumped at 24% for the whole afternoon…

My patience ran thin and yes it’s too much trouble and time just to get something that has become incredibly slow over the years to work. I’ll recycle it eventually. Need to format it again too.

RIP my old laptop friend.
You were the first ever computer I purchased with my own money and we did a lot together. You were a great workhorse for a long time. Thank you for holding out for so long!

For now my bro is actually willing to begrudgingly lend me his laptop for PAXAus so I can’t break it or he’ll get me haha ;D
Figuring out alternatives to Photoshop at the moment.

And there’s a kind person who’s willing to see if he could rescue it! :0!!

AH LIFE: rambling about “being positive”
As someone who is naturally neutral but gets influenced by the people around her…
(hey we all have to carefully pick who we hang around with…I do have a family member that’s out of my control though but that’s not the point)

When people insist on being positive, for me (and many people) it’s not pretending that uncomfortable and bad things aren’t there and not deal with it.

It’s really a balance of knowing that everyone also has bad and good things happen to them all the time. It’s not just you.

In order to stay positive is to face both good and bad (and the mundane).
Get back up when you fail and make mistakes, learn from it, change it up and figure out what to do next. Be brave to not let the failure, fears and rejection stop you from doing what you do. It’s not easy because sometimes you’re just fed up with everything – so it’s a struggle so make sure you have like minded friends and respected peeps to set you back on course and support you!

That’s what “being positive” means to me.

But what do I know.

Thanks! Keep adventuuuring you!

That’s all for now for October! I’ll update Melbourne International Games Week in it’s own post in the next coming week…there’s lots in this post already!

I’m already sorta dead tired and zombie like anyway right now D:

See you in in a week or two in the bonus post! (: