Losing Sight

This year, I’m really wanting to make more art. I also want to make better quality art. To that end, I spent a lot of January trying to learn GLSL. I’ve started using the new renderer, Malt, to give me a lot more flexibility in the way I render. It took me several weeks of learning and experimenting, but I was finally able to more or less replicate my existing watercolour shader in Malt.

It’s quite convenient in some ways. It can do a lot, and in real time. Some of its features, like the linework, were available in Toonkit, but so much slower. I suspect, if Malt catches on and adds more basic shaders to use, it’ll kill Toonkit by virtue of the fact that it can do anything that can and more, and hundreds of times more quickly.

Unfortunately, though, I realised I’ve had a big blind spot. I tried making a Ryou model, but…It’s just shit.

The only good thing about it at all is the hair. I like the hair. I learned how to use curve-based hair better this time. But that’s all. The model itself is very flawed, the topology isn’t great, the normal editing is choppy, the clothing is simple, the colours aren’t good, the shader didn’t come out right….It’s just bad.

I realised, while trying to finish this for the sake of having it done, rather than dropped, that I’ve had serious tunnel vision for a long time, sigh. I’ve been so fixated on the quality and flexibility of the shaders that I didn’t focus at all on the fundamentals.

The topology is inadequate. It’s dense where it doesn’t necessarily need to be, it doesn’t flow as cleanly as I’d like, and it isn’t convenient for normal editing. I’d been leaving it up to the Zremesher, but I think that may actually have been a mistake. I did some practice, and…There really is nothing quite as clean as hand-placed topology.

I tried doing some manual retopology on a head I’d made. I like the result a lot better. It looks cleaner, and because it’s a subdivision surface, I can spend less time on the topology and still have it match the dynamesh properly. It seems I can also edit the topology of an existing mesh, as long as it’s under 15,000 points. I’m thinking that from now on, I might just use Zremesher for the body, and then do the head, and maybe the hands, myself. It would make it much easier to get good topology while accounting for the shapes needed for good normal editing, I think. But it does take a bit more time, unfortunately.

Then my other main problem is clothes. I’ve focused a lot trying to learn anatomy, but not enough on fabrics. How to model them properly, make them look right. I’m near clueless at that.

Then there’s rigging, which I’m incredibly weak at, and because I’m bad at that, the posing is bad, because the rigs aren’t good and the weights aren’t optimal.

I need to do so much learning in these areas….The best shader in the world won’t make a badly modeled, stiffly rigged mesh look good. I don’t know how I overlooked that….I’m really angry with myself for fixating so much and forgetting my fundamentals. I need to change…Basically everything.

So for now, I’m planning to just focus on my models. I’ll do some renders, I think, but only as 3D renders. Not worrying about NPR for now, just the quality of the models, the rigging, themselves. I need them to be better for the renders to be better. I’m so stupid…Losing sight of something so obvious.

I’ll work hard on revisiting the fundamentals for now, and make as many good models as I can.

On this blog, I’ve mostly written about my NPR work so far. But the other reason I started it was to write about how things are going for me in general, too. It’s good to vent about things, or just process, so that’s what this post is for.

I’ve been quite annoyed at work recently. I work in a shop. Obviously, with the coronavirus pandemic, that’s made it more stressful than usual. During March and April, we probably had double or more our usual amount of customers coming in. That wouldn’t be so bad by itself, but since this lockdown, I’ve noticed more….Inconsiderate people. People who think the rules don’t apply to them, like signs saying not to enter and aisle because we’re working it – especially the bloody alcohol section – quite a few customers have blatantly ignored.

I get very frustrated with people like that; it’s like they think they and their…Petty wants are the only things that matter. They aren’t even buying anything important. I could understand at least, if they were bypassing the no entry barrier to get some toilet roll or basic food, but it’s not. It’s always the ones after their alcohol that think they’re more important. It’s making me quite cynical, unfortunately, as if I wasn’t enough already; I’ve really come to think that most people who live near the shop I work in are just alcoholics, and/or gambling addicts. Hell, according to the rumour mill, even one of the supervisors is an alcoholic.

Despite the pandemic, the lockdown, people have continued to come in several times a day to get their fix, buying multiple bottles of booze, or cans, or sets of scratchcards, cigarettes….Those people really make me dislike my job. I don’t want to help people continue their addictions. And I just really dislike having to serve people that think they’re more important than everyone else. Because of that, I’ve been developing more of an attitude recently; when a customer got angry at me for telling him to stand behind the line that marks a 2 metre distance, I just said “Whatever”. Not exactly great customer service, but I’ve really exhausted my patience for that kind of person.

We’ve also had a significant increase in threats towards staff members, and general shitty attitudes. I haven’t experienced much of that, though, at least directly to my face. I think it’s because they don’t see as a woman though, sigh; it’s the female members of staff who’ve been getting the most of it. Probably because they’re most likely cowardly men who feel more confident picking on them.

So work has been quite tiring recently because of all that. I have some time off soon, which I’m looking forward to. I hope I can use it well, as well as relax a bit. My colleagues are mostly good, at least; recently, I’ve been getting on well with one who I talk to about films and other media when we’re on shift together. He writes films and wants to work in that industry, so I can relate a lot with discussions about different things we look for in media, thoughts about generically popular stuff, etc.

On another note, I’ve recently been trying ZBrushCore. I got very frustrated with 3DCoat. I’ve been trying really hard, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a good enough surface quality. I upgraded my RAM, which helped get better performance, but it couldn’t let me get high enough to use voxel meshes at a high enough resolution to hide the jaggedness, so they’d never stand up to a close up. I realised, when it came down to it, the problem was the mesh type. It uses triangles, which are very hard to get a smooth surface with, and don’t crease well. So I thought I’d try Core; last time I checked it, it didn’t have Sculptris Pro, its version of dynamic topology, so I didn’t get it. I find ZBrush’s dynamesh-focused way of making a mesh very awkward…It feels unnatural to me to have to do the whole model at one fixed resolution, limiting how much you can detail it, having to do it all at once. I find it much more natural and convenient to just do what I want to whatever detail, without having to worry about resolution while I’m sculpting. Obviously, the final mesh needs to be even, but it’s so awkward having to think about topology while sculpting. It’s said to be easier because it forces you to focus on forms, primary, secondary, tertiary details in order, but I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.

Core is a lot cheaper than full ZBrush, which is sitting at like £900, basically. I’m quite enjoying it so far; it’s a lot easier to get a good, smooth mesh, though I’m having difficulty adapting my sculpting style. I’m used to using a flatten tool that levels area to block out a lot of shape, like slapping on a bit of clay and scraping off the excess to make a plane. Core doesn’t have that kind of brush, though it does have a somewhat similar brush, except it doesn’t level it.

I’ve been doing some sketching. Recently, I’ve been trying a more traditional style of sketching; just sculpting everything without thinking of it as something that needs to be ready to use on a retopologised model, like sculpting the eyes onto the mesh rather than giving it hollow eye sockets with separate eye objects.

They’re very bad, but to be fair, they’re sketches and I’ve been trying to get used to a new program. I found the navigation very difficult at first; I wasn’t used to the way ZBrush does it at all. Looking at them all now, though, I really need to vary my faces up. They all have the same cheekbone shape, and the way it makes that sort of 7 shape from the corner of the eye to the chin. And reference more, of course. The ears are only good on these because they’re a ZBrush asset, haha.

I’ve still got to totally get to grips with it, but I am finding it a bit easier now. When I have the money, I think I’ll buy it. I feel like I can make the mesh quality I need with this, since it generates quad meshes instead of forcing triangles on me. Although, I’ll still use 3DCoat for retopology, UVs, texture painting and normal mapping, since it’s good at those and Core has no such functionality.

Anyway, I’m trying to improve and get back on track with my sculpting. I want to get better and make more, and my watercolour shader is just waiting to be used.

I think I should make more posts like this, though. It’s good to just ramble about things sometimes, and talk about WIPs without feeling like I have to talk about some milestone.

2020

So, I’m slightly late, but I decided to make a post about last year, and what I want from this year.

2019 was a bit of a positive year for me. It was difficult, personally, with some things that have been going on in real life, but I think for my art it was a bit better. I have a terrible perfectionism problem. Even with fics. But I was able to make a little bit of progress on it last year. I started writing True Sound, and did several chapters of An Unconventional Union already with Yan. I also wrote several more chapters than are currently released.

But, if you look at the amount of posts I’ve made here, and on my Tumblr…It’s not many. I experimented more, prototyped…But I didn’t do nearly enough finished works. I was still so bogged down trying to make it “good enough” and being bothered by how 3d it looked. Because of that, I didn’t finish much, even though I wanted to. I’m frustrated with myself for that. I want to do more. I want to be better and show my art and ideas, too. I tried last year to beat that stupid perfectionism, and I progressed, but it’s still there.

This year, I want to kill it. To make a lot more, and post a lot more, without worrying so much if it’s not perfect, or how NPR or 2d-looking it is. Those are my goals, but if I spend so much time trying to get one perfect thing, what will I have to show for myself? One thing.

Another thing I want to work on is my energy. I find for some reason, I’m frequently low on energy. It makes it difficult to do anything, and with the internet and such in easy reach, it’s too easy to end up vegging out for hours. Part of it is because I’m off my antidepressants, I’m sure. But I need to knuckle down and make myself focus, and, again, push that perfectionism aside. I have fics I want to write, and art to make. It won’t do itself. Though I’m told I should also take more breaks, too, rather than being constantly in a mindset of thinking I’m meant to be working. I find it difficult to relax these days. I hate it. I can’t seem to switch off, but being switched on doesn’t mean I’m in the right mindset or have enough energy. It’s like being awake enough that you’re not asleep, but too tired to move.

Still, I am trying. To prove that, I have some work in progress images to show. I started a Ryou model the other day. After spending a few hours, I was able to make his face and upper body. He also has a lower body, but, as per usual, it’s trash. I’m very, very poor at legs and waists. I invested in some videos about sculpting and anatomy that I need to watch to learn more, and get more references.

It’s extremely rough at the moment. I started out sculpting him a bit aimlessly. I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing with his face. I know that I want faces on my Yugioh art to be stylised in some way, but I’m not quite sure how, so I’m just trying to go with what I like.

Now that I look at it, the side is very squished. That’s not right at all.

I think the look I’m going for is sort of psuedo anime? Slightly stylised proportions and shape, but keeping some realistic elements, like realistic anatomy and proportions, and features like noses, rather than more common anime kinds like noses stylised to points, or, on very stylised or chibi characters, that sort of snout-shaped face.

Looking at Yugi’s hair as an example, I don’t think Yugioh characters would adapt to a totally realistic style very well. If he was rendered in complete realism, his hair would destroy it by looking unnatural as hell. It just isn’t how realistic hair looks or works, especially elements like the red edges to it; that could, maybe, be styled as his hair becoming redder at the ends or something, but that wouldn’t hold up from multiple angles. So, I think a semi-realistic style at most is best for him and the other Yugioh characters I want to make models of.

My other problem is that Ryou is very slim. I’m used to doing more muscular characters to learn anatomy, so I’ve made him far too fit just by default. I need to slim him right down until he looks suitably bishonen, haha. But truly, this model is, in its current state, embarrassingly bad. I didn’t reference a lot so far, partly because I couldn’t be bothered and partly because I was in the zone when I was doing it and didn’t want to kill my momentum. So it has lots of problems, like the terrible waist that has no hips, the weird shape from the side, the back being altogether horrible, the lack of ribs and serratus, which I basically flattened to oblivion because they were horrible…He’s too broad, to boot, and too narrow from the side.

I wanted to just power through it before I lost momentum by stressing about those, but I really should correct them before sculpting more on him. If he’s missing landmarks and correct muscle placement, it won’t look better when it’s slim and smoothed; it’ll only be blobby.

It’s really horrible to me, so far. Some work can fix it, and I’m going to try that. Yan encouraged me to show more wips and all, so I’m trying that. I want to show more of them as the year progresses, too. I’d like to get more skilled and able to finish them better and more quickly, though.

Still, this is something, at least. And when I put it through 3DCoat’s basic renderer, it doesn’t look entirely terrible with shading. There’s a lot to fix, but it exists, at least. And this as it stands, even when corrected, should be a far cry from how he’ll look with my shaders and NPR techniques.

So, I think I am making progress. Baby steps, maybe, but still, progress. I want to post more this year, so hopefully I’ll post some updates soon as I progress on him. I want to make a Ryou basemesh to derive our au-versions from, and do the same for other characters as well.

For now, I’ll just try and work on it when I have time, and try to push those negative thoughts out of my mind.

Shine

I haven’t posted here in a long time.

It’s not that I haven’t been doing anything, but I’m still struggling with perfectionism. I’ve also been spending less time on sculpting recently. I find I’m very conflicted. I often feel like nothing I do is going to be good enough. At other times, I feel like I can do whatever I set my mind and efforts to. What is good enough, I have to ask myself? When it looks like something you’d see on Artstation? I don’t even really like Artstation. There’s no doubt the people you see there are very skilled. But they’re not my kind of things. The 3d art shown there is mostly, from what I’ve seen, trying to be very realistic, and some of them are shockingly detailed, but….They don’t say anything. They just look good.

The art I’ve always admired, mostly, has been a lot more expressive. Impressionist art, rougher, looser styles, things that are more simplistic in some ways and prioritising feeling over pure accuracy to life. Dustin Nguyen and Hwei Lim’s art are examples of that to me; they’re not realistic at all, and can be rough, but they convey the feeling much better.

I can’t imagine their works would be better if they were replaced with more realistic styles. Plus, realism is generic. How do you put your own fingerprint on something that’s just copying reality? If you start to change things while being realistic, you’ll likely fall into the uncanny valley, I think, and have, in some ways, far less options for expression.

You couldn’t pull off Daisy’s expression like that with realism. (Giant Days)

I try to focus on things like these. Getting bogged down thinking that my art isn’t any good because it’s not realistic enough or something…It’s too easy. It’s a trap. I want to show my ideas and thoughts. I don’t have to be on the level of some absurdly skilled Artstation professional to do that. I don’t.

I’ve also been listening recently to a song by Garbage called Beloved Freak. For some reason, it really speaks to me. It seems to be about not fitting in with other people, but that you’re not wrong for that, and have value.

Sometimes we get so tired and weak
We lose the sky beneath our feet
You’re not alone

Recently, my mental health has gone back to being terrible. That’s part of why I haven’t sculpted recently. I hurt myself. I feel like everything is pointless. They wouldn’t be any good anyway, so why bother? That’s what I think at those times. Just to breathe can be an effort. I don’t fit in. I never will. And, as a trans woman, I’m constantly slapped in the face with that. A death by a thousand cuts. So many little wounds bleeding me out. It may sound pretentious, but it is how I honestly feel sometimes; that I’m just being killed very slowly.

My favourite part is at the end of the song.

“So here you stand, beloved freak
The world is at your feet
Here you stand, beloved freak
The world is at your feet

This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

And so you stand, beloved freak
The world is lying at your feet
There you stand, beloved freak
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

It makes me think. My art isn’t “normal”. It’s 3d that doesn’t want to do what 3d is considered to be “for”. Not to be as realistic as possible, or even look like 3d, or sell something, or anything like that. It’s not perfect, or highly detailed, and I don’t consider myself a good artist. I don’t seem to fit in well in reality, either.

But, I still have worth, no matter what my brain says when I’m going through bad times. I don’t want to die. I have my own light. Even if it’s dim and flickering. I can make what I want to make. It’s not pointless. It’s not bad. I can do what I want to do.

That’s what I believe on a good day, anyway.

3D Is Not Bad

I’ve been thinking recently about how I’ve been approaching 3d art, and perfectionism. I’ve know Millie for several years now, and we’ve been talking about headcanons and aus for quite a lot of that time. We’ve wanted to make things, and developed our stories quite a lot. But with my art, and plans to write fics, and in general show our versions myself and not just leaving it to her, I’ve always been tripped up by perfectionism.

At first, it was just realising that, upon taking it seriously, my skills were entirely lacking. Until I met her and we started developing things, my interest in 3d was quite casual; it was something I enjoyed, but didn’t work super hard on, and just played around, really. But that wasn’t enough for showing our versions of the characters, to me; they were deformed, lumpy, they had no recognisable anatomy, or little, and I didn’t know enough to rig them well enough, and, with their incorrect proportions, they wouldn’t look natural even if I could. I was also just using primitive NPR stuff back then, like cel shading and the inverted hull method of making outlines. Those aren’t necessarily bad, but they’re quite simple, and I found them generic; I wanted my art to look like mine, not something anyone could make.

But, as I continued, I ended up slipping without realising into a toxic mindset of nothing ever being good enough. Even if it was better than the last one, even if it looked about like what I wanted to show, it wasn’t sufficient. I’m still struggling with that. On top of that, I unintentionally sabotaged myself by making more work for myself. I didn’t like using basemeshes and such, so every time I made a character or something, I’d do it from scratch; the only thing I was really reusing were shader techniques I came up with. And that’s good for practice, but it makes it take a lot longer. I was, as a perfectionist, afraid that any errors on my base meshes would be replicated on anything made from it, and, being self-conscious of my art being 3d, and doing a lot to try and find ways to make it look more 2d, I wanted to do things from scratch more like 2d artists do, though at least I didn’t go as far as resculpting everything everytime I needed to make a render, at least.

The problem is, the longer I spend on something, the more likely I am to see the flaws. But, due to lack of motivation, or knowledge, or skill, or any other reason, I don’t resolve them quickly enough to be done with it an avoid seeing more, so I end up in a constant loop of seeing flaws and deciding I have to stop and fix those, then seeing more flaws. I become discouraged and start over, telling myself “This one, I will get right.” But I never do. I’m tired of that. I want to show what I can do. I want to show my style, and renders of the characters me and Millie have come up with together. I want to have things to show for myself, and pull my weight, and not just be saying I’ll do things without actually doing them. I want to be able to look back and see that I’ve done things, and feel good that they’re there, and try to do better next time.

So, I’ve started trying to change my mindset. Instead of thinking, “That’s not good enough.” I’m trying to think “I’ll do better next time I sculpt this, but I’ll use this for now.” And to take advantage of the fact that I’m doing 3d, instead of trying to make everything from scratch. I really want to get better.

At the moment, I’m working on chibi characters. I made a chibi base mesh a while ago, and rigged most of it using a Mesh Deform modifier, so I only have to make limited changes to make them into different characters. My current goal is to make a set of Ryous. I came across a technique while working on it that could allow me to do 2d eyes that can still be properly animated, whereas I’m currently using the method that uses an eye cavity. If I can work out how to adapt it to my chibis, I’d prefer to use 2d eyes, but I won’t let myself stop and investigate that right now. I need to finish things.

For now, I’m going to work on Ryou’s chibis, and make Mariku, Malik and Bakura ones, too.

Dragon Knights And Perfectionism

I’ve been having quite a problem making things for a while.

I like to sculpt, and work on new NPR techniques, and I want to show the ships and characters I like well, but in the end, I haven’t ended up posting anything in a long time. I ended up stuck in a crappy perfectionist mindset, always revising or redoing things, or procrastinating from them because I was afraid of getting it wrong, or that it wouldn’t be good enough. But because of that, I didn’t do anything. I don’t have anything finished to show for my sculpting and shaders. But I was encouraged by my friend recently to try and dial it back, and do simpler things and work my way up, and to try and work on my perfectionism, so I’m trying.

I’ve started with chibis. They’re a lot simpler to model and rig than realistically styled characters. I’ve also been finding they’re easier to shade, to an extent; it might be because they don’t have as many bulges and creases and things that can go wrong and look incorrect. Still, I wasn’t able to make them look the way I wanted them to yet. My shaders need more work.

But, I made something. It feels good to have done that, at least.

Millie and I were talking about our Mirror! AU, in which traits of Yugioh characters are reversed, resulting in very different relationships. Jounouchi and Kaiba (we call him Seto in that au, since he prefers to be friendly and warm) are friends, and we had a headcanon that Jounouchi and Seto game together. Millie also made a cute comic about it. It inspired me to imagine them playing an MMO or something together as Dragon Knights, similar to the Dragoons from Final Fantasy.

Since their signature cards in Yugioh are the Blue Eyes White Dragon (BEWD) and Red Eyes Black Dragon (REBD) I designed them to be reminiscent of those, and similar to the Monster World figures from the manga and Toei anime’s Monster World arc.

My design for Dragon Knights Seto and Jounouchi. I’m not a skilled 2d artist.

Then I modeled and rendered them. I’m not very happy with the render, but it’s something; I’ll have to play with their shaders some more, and learn to make environments. Even a very simple one, like the grass they’re standing in was unfamiliar to me. I’ve spent so long doing characters and being a perfectionist about them, I’ve neglected other areas.

I’m not very satisfied overall with it, but I’m glad I finally did something. I’m grateful to Millie for pushing me to do something like this. I’ll also make a post for myself about what’s currently going right and wrong with the shaders, and what I want to do to improve them. I’ll try and build momentum and make more things, too.