Tyrian: Saralya

Today I revamped a somewhat old character, Saralya. You can read all about her (or "it", technically) on the corresponding dA page.

31/12/14 edit: Silly me, never realising nonbinary things could be referred to with gendered pronouns. In the future, I'll stick with "she". Also, no need to go there to read it.

Recently, having learned a lot more about dinosaurs, it kind of bothered me that I'd based a thing that was obviously supposed to have features of feathered dinosaurs on a more traditional scaled terrorlizard and just coincidentally tossed a couple of feathers on it as a random addition. So, I redrew it to look more like what it's actually supposed to be: a feathered theropod.

Again, I forgot to include some of the markings because I wasn't referencing the previous drawing (I have a bad habit of doing that XD) but I think it might overall just have fewer markings this time around because I think it looks a little "purer" and more mysterious that way.

For some reason, I've been having this odd feeling that I've not been accomplishing a lot lately and things have been stagnating, though I'm not sure why. Maybe because I haven't and they have? That's one reason. XD

Well, in any event, I've decided to start a simple but hopefully quite effective project on my Tumblr to combat that called Takumi Draws No More Blanks. This project won't have any specific goal other than to make sure I post something—anything—visual of any quality level every single day. It's kind of a really loose and open-ended drawing-journal type thing.

Most of them probably won't be finished enough to post on this site, but if they're the kind of thing which I'm going to trace over on the computer later or which turn out to be fairly good character drawings for Tyrian/Stablehand, then you'll of course get to see them here too. I'll add the link to the hashtag to my list of "Assorted things" over at the side so you can find it later if you want to.

Andy Baio on sample culture and on copyright as "The New Prohibition"

In the above video, Andy Baio discusses his experiences with copyright, music, and remix culture and how recent events have made him concerned about the future of every single creative person on the internet that dares to borrow the smallest snippet of anything at all without permission, in an era of mass automated lawsuits where copyright holders have increasingly "turned copyright into a weapon".

He asserts that fair use does not exist—at least not outside of a courtroom—because it is not a law and only a courtroom test*, and when settlement letters are so convenient and reliable as a source of income, anyone can be the target of a lawsuit at any time. At the same time, he worries about how far the recent trend to "criminalize creativity" can possibly go as fewer and fewer people can even understand why building on other works should even be unlawful in the first place:

Every time I'd look at this and be like, "Should these be illegal?"
[...] "Does it feel right that these are illegal?"

This is a great video and if you're at all interested in copyright or even fan art in general, you should watch it.

*This is actually incorrect. It doesn't negate his overall point though.

A random assortment of strange and surreal videos

Above: In which North Korea uses the song We are the World (when you consider the song, how ironic is that?) and some footage from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to weave a strange lullaby of doom about the inevitable destruction of the United States.

North Korea returns, this time inexplicably using music and flame effects from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. That's right, one of those quasi-mediaeval fantasy games featuring magic, dragons, and weaponised shouting, not to mention some kind of cool alphabets. (The shouting apparently does not come in until the next game actually, but the series still became really famous for it.)

A bizarre acting experiment which tries to create the illusion of anthropomorphic dogs eating at a restaurant.

A now rather dated news-type program looking into the latest computer technology of the year 1984. As it's a full television program this one is about a half-hour long, but just look at those computers and pay attention to what people wanted in them back then. My favourite quote:

We hear about how fragile ‘hard disks’ are, and I get nervous about banging around that thing with that hard drive in there—is that a problem?

A Chinese string instrument, which makes horse noises that would doubtlessly make Andrew Hussie proud. (Pay close attention from about 1:10.)

TED introduces the world's first truly pattern-free music.

And of course, no bizarre and random assortment of videos could be complete without this:

Apparently in the Metal Gear Solid series there is no such thing as going too far with things—especially if you are one Revolver Ocelot.

Stablehand: Will I live to face another day?

Wow, that's sure a misleading title, isn't it? XD

I'm fine personally. What I have for you is a song about somebody who's a little less than fine. As I said on my tumblr:

Here's a mildly depressing song with a rather funny story behind it.

When I was writing "On the Lift to Ruin", I simply couldn't get enough of Jinfèng's lines, and so I started to write Jinfèng a song of her own. Weeks later when I was in the middle of writing said song I took a moment to laugh at myself and casually think "What am I doing? This is ridiculous. Am I going to write a theme song for Stolen Heart next?".

And then I started to muse on what such a song would sound like, and I had a song pretty much completed within three days. I swear, the silly things ALWAYS get done first and faster. And sometimes even better. XD

The lyrics are here.

1/1/2015 edit: both of these links are outdated. :p

The rest of the "aethereal trio"

My various methods of coming up with new details had already suggested a lot of underlings for Stolen Heart, as well as a rival (his name is Arkturuse, and he's the avian-looking one, as you can see). Yesterday, though, I randomly decided that there should be another major player in whatever it is these weird masked spirit guys are doing, and the three of them should somehow "make sense" together as a whole—since Stolen Heart mostly lacks emotion and there was another one, I kind of figured the other two should be lacking in other things.

So, Stolen Heart mostly lacks emotion (but is pretty good at reasoning), Arkturuse mostly lacks reason and common sense (but has a lot of emotion), and Aiyalam lacks a sense of morality (but is decent at seeing things "as they are" in a harsh, unforgiving reality, aside from the fact he tends to overdo it).

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)