As I've been accumulating more and more art supplies, I was starting to realize that things had gotten a bit disorganized and it was becoming more of a hassle to find the things I was looking for, so I started thinking about how I wanted to organize my drawing tools. In this blog post, I'll go over what my goals were in organizing my supplies, what I've settled on, and why it works for me. I'll also go into a bit of detail about the specific tools I use in case anyone's curious, but I'd like to remind anyone who's looking for advice about what to use for your own artmaking that I am very much an amateur at this, so you probably shouldn't listen to anything I say. Also, this is what I've found works for me, and you might find other things work better for you. That said, let's get to it.
Misc
Re-watching the Star Wars prequels
MiscCommentSo, I bought all the Star Wars Blu-rays. I'd been holding off for an official re-release of the unaltered theatrical versions of the original trilogy, but since it looks like that's probably not happening, and the Harmy despecialized editions have satisfied me as far as that goes, I went ahead and bought them. It's also been a really long time since I've watched the prequels (I've never owned them on DVD and only owned Episode 1 on VHS, so I don't think I've actually seen any of them since Episode 3 was in theaters) and I've been curious to see if they're as bad as I remembered, so I just marathoned the prequels today.
Going in, I was expecting them to be bad, but decided I was going to try to get as much enjoyment out of them as I could. With that in mind, here are a lot of words about my updated opinion of each Star Wars prequel:
Android icon set
MiscCommentIt's been a while since I've posted any updates here. Work's been kicking my butt lately and I've been too exhausted to get my creativity on. I'm going to force myself to sit down and start drawing things whether I feel like it or not, so hopefully I'll have some more art to show soon.
In the meantime, I got a new phone. My old Nexus 4 was slowly dying, so I bought a shiny new Nexus 5X. A new phone means a new theme, so I created a new icon set for the app folders on my home screen. The icon set I created for my Nexus 4 was designed to match the default theme in Beautiful Widgets, but for this new set, I followed Google's material design guidelines. The center graphics in each icon are based on Google's material icons set.
It's a small set that only includes the icons you see here, so I doubt anyone but me is going to find it very useful, but if you want to use it, you can download the images here. If there's demand for it, I might expand this icon set in the future, so while I won't make any promises, if you want an icon in this style that isn't included, let me know what color and graphic you want, and I'll see what I can do.
Ira Glass on taste, creativity, and getting past your disappointment in your own work
MiscCommentI think I'm going to print out this quote and tape it to the cover of my sketch book so I'll see it every time I draw something that isn't as good as I want it to be.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass
New PC
MiscCommentI haven't been as frequent with updates here this week as I'd planned, because I've been busy building and setting up my new PC.
My old PC had a Core i7-860, and it didn't have any modern connection features like USB 3 or SATA 3 (which was holding my SSD's performance back). My old motherboard was also on its way out; on-board audio and ethernet had gone out a while ago (and the only PCI ethernet adapter I had was a 100 mbit adapter, which made transferring files to my NAS slow), it recently started having issues keeping my CMOS settings intact (replacing the CMOS battery didn't help), and it was starting to have trouble recognizing two of my RAM slots. So yeah, it was definitely time for an upgrade. I've had that old PC for like 6 years, which is by far the longest I've ever gone before upgrading a CPU, so it had a good run.
Here's the parts list for my new PC:
- Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Titanium (with window) +two extra fans
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170X-UD5
- CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K
- CPU Cooler: Scythe Kotetsu SCKTT-1000 (with Arctic MX2 thermal paste)
- Power Supply: Corsair RM650i
- RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 4x8GB (32GB total) DDR4 2666
Parts salvaged from my old PC:
- EVGA GeForce GTX 780
- Corsair Force GT 480GB SSD
- Crucial M550 960GB SSD
- Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 1TB hard drive
- Pioneer Blu-ray RW drive
I have to say, I really, really like the Define R5 case. It's a bit on the large side, but it looks really nice, it seems sturdy and well-built, it's super easy to work in, and it's very quiet. In fact, I'm pretty sure if I had one of the current generation video cards that turned its fans off under low load, this PC would be completely silent, because I think that's the only thing in this case making any sound at all, and it's not making much. That Scythe Kotetsu CPU cooler isn't messing around, either; at idle, my CPU's temperature is 25C, and while playing games, I haven't yet seen it reach 40C, all while remaining nearly silent.
Here's a gallery of photos of my new PC, inside and out. I've included a photo of the inside of my old PC so you can see what a rat's nest of wires it was in there, to compare it against the really nice cable routing features in the Define R5. Being able to run the cables behind the motherboard really makes a big difference.
Now that I have it all set up and have most of my software reinstalled, I should be able to get back to creating things again, so hopefully I'll be updating this site more frequently.
Is this thing on? *tap* *tap* *feedback tone*
MiscComment*ahem*
Welcome to my little corner of the web.
For anyone who somehow found their way to this page and has no idea who I am, hi! I'm Aelussa. That night elf you see in pictures around the site is also Aelussa: my namesake, my main WoW character, and a focal point of most of my online identity for the last decade or so. That fact should probably be more embarrassing to me than it is. (Don't tell her I said that. She has daggers, and they're stabby.) Oh, you can also call me Chris. Real names are a thing people do on the internet these days, I guess.
I'm trying to be an artist and a game creator, and I created this website as part of an effort to motivate myself to get off my butt, stop slothing around, make more things, and finish the projects I start on. The idea being that maybe if I have a place to show off the stuff I make, I'll be more likely to keep making it. Will it work? Who knows! There's only one way to find out.
You can navigate the site via the menu bar at the top. It's a bit content bare at the moment and not all of the pages have things on them yet. I'm working on it. In the immediate short term, most of the things I put up are probably going to be sketches, drawings, and Mario Maker levels. (Please star my levels if you like them.) Longer term, I have some bigger game projects I'm working on that I'll talk more about when I have something I'm ready to show. I might also use this blog for writing and discussing topics I'm interested in when inspiration strikes. If you're on Tumblr, I'll probably be re-posting everything from this blog there (because this platform makes it easy to do that, so why not?) and I'm also going to try to be more active on Twitter than I have been.
Okay, now that the introductions are out of the way, time to get to work. I just hope you're not reading this a year from now and this post is still the only thing on this site.