I’ve had my head up in space, at least for a little while. I’m beginning to setup my next part of the ending; still need to add more to the scenery, but I’m off to a good start. I plan to continue tinkering with the building blocks of the universe tomorrow, among other things.
I’ve been chatting here and there about my Linux adventures at work, especially to those who aren’t aware of how much it’s evolved over the years. One of my co-workers was even inquiring about good video/paint/audio software, and I named my current favourites (audacity, shotcut, krita, etc), he was quite happy to see all the alternatives we have nowadays. We both agreed that it was nice to finally live in a digital age where Adobe is no longer the king. We even talked Linux distros for a few, apparently he’s a Mint user. I’ve surprisingly met quite a few old guys that are also Mint users, which is kinda funny and cool at the same time. They have a minty taste for distros. 😛
I’m making progress! Played a lot with camera angles and motion this evening, sped up certain animations, etc. My aim is to male this one of the more ridiculous Portal 2 DLC ending cutscenes anyone would ever lay their eyes upon.
My imagination is a dangerous place.
Did a small bit of clean up today, mainly brushing the floor and some pick up. It inspired me to also clean off my desk, at least to make room to charge the laptop. 😛 I drained half the battery playing DMC5, not bad for about 45 mins of gameplay!
Speaking of gameplay, that was pretty much how I decompressed for the rest of the day. Under Linux I played a bit of AMID EVIL, then I experimented with Yakuza Kiwami. I’m happy to report that Yakuza didn’t crash once, and it also had no problem pulling up my Windows save from the cloud. In fact, from what I’ve gathered so far, the performance was pretty much on par with Windows. I’ll need to analyze it further, and see if Yakuza 0 works properly now. 😛
The last bit of the evening was spent in Borderlands 3, ending my week long vacation away from Windows just so I could slay some creeps with a good buddy and one final London Fog Latte. It’s gonna be fun trying to nod off tonight…
I got that creative itch recently to revisit drawing, and I also wanted to see how easy it was to get it running under Manjaro. So today I killed two birds with one stone, and surprisingly it’s quite a lot easier to setup compared to Windows. The drivers were installed by default, and it was practically working right from the get go! The only “difficult” thing I really had to do was configure it to run on one monitor with an easy shell script:
Now I can shitscribble to my hearts content! I played around under Krita for a bit, just doing different doodles and playing with different brush settings. I’m waaaay out of practice, my drawing hand is kinda shaky, and it gets tired after about an hour. I really need to build up my drawing muscles again. 😛 I’ve been meaning to get back into drawing, but the time was never there. That’s the problem with having too many hobbies, but hey! you’re never bored.
Got more animation done tonight. It feels like I’m breezing through this fairly quickly. I’m almost done with the rough stage . Once I finish that I can begin on smoothing things out. Probably get around to that sometime next week. I’ve got other plans this weekend that may or may not involve photos of the reality kind.
On Monday I picked out the map, on Tuesday I selected the models, got them posed, and for the last couple of days I’ve been working on animation. Since there won’t be any animation during the main video, I figured I could at least tag something strange onto the end for those who stuck around long enough. I’m hoping to finish this sometime by mid next month.
Happy St Patrick’s Day! I had to work, and I wanted to have a special breakfast on the go that’s semi-festive. I was toying with the idea of a shamrock shake themed yogurt parfait, and I think I achieved it! The mint extract when used with some honey and vanilla yogurt makes a good match. Of course, there was also some treasure that awaited me inside:
I added a small layer of marshmallow creme and added a cherry on top. It tasted just like a real shamrock shake, but without the third degree burns to my throat! If you want to make your own this is what I did:
Take a yogurt container, or a jar and add the following ingredients:
Add the oatmeal, then mix in the yogurt, milk, mint, honey , food colouring (or matcha) and chia seeds. Stir until well combined and taste until desired sweetness is achieved. Top with a thin layer of marshmallow creme and a cherry, refrigerate overnight and enjoy the next morning. Keep in mind, that if you do add the cherry on and leave in the jar overnight it will eventually sink into the yogurt. I didn’t care, it was like finding buried treasure. 😛 For added crunch and some added sweetness you can use cashew butter granola. It was one of the more decadent ones, but even with all the added sugar from the honey and marshmallow cream this was still healthier than going to McDonalds. :v
It also makes your breath minty fresh! I’m going to remember this one for next year if I’m working through the holiday again.
I don’t have much to write… All I can take away from today is that people suck, and I should get some proper rest to ensure that I don’t accidentally wander up to the roof tomorrow for diving lessons.
It was a fun trip down memory lane going through this little adventure! I had completely forgotten about the time we did a co-op get together in Portal 2’s single player campaign! I’ve chopped it up right where I want it to be, and I’m probably not going to be adding much to the video in terms of animation. It’s one of those cases where the video footage already tells a good enough story on its own, but that said… I could always tie something on at the end. 😛
With the video editing out of the way I’ll begin building my stage sometime tomorrow. Compared to my last video this project should be a walk in the park.