Texturing and Bad Layer Hygiene

Lately I’ve been obsessively working on texturing a model I whipped up in Lightwave a couple of months ago. It has been a long and painstaking process that has taught me much about texturing and painting. To the right is part of said project (not all textures are current versions), a rundown corridor that will be featured in more work to come. Eventually. Today I had an instance of bad layer hygiene that led to hours of work being lost. I’m taking a little break from this now.

 

For those that are interested in the software I use:

  • Lightwave (3D modeling)
  • UV Layout (uv mapping)
  • Photoshop (texturing)
  • Daz Studio + Iray (3D rendering)

Jim Is Ep10. My Friend Darkness

This episode of Jim Is was meant to be another short and blunt installment, but then I was having fun stretching it out, and adding extra cheese.

To read the first episode
To brows all episodes

webcomic Jim Is Episode 10. My Friend Darkness. Tragedy cuts down blue depressed guy as he recovers a taste for living.

Jim Is Ep9. Pointless

Not much today. Haven’t felt like doing ANYTHING. But I did yard work, the epitome of futile work for someone that doesn’t give a shit about yards. It’s now 4am. I can’t sleep.
To see the first episode

Jim Is webcomic episode 9: i could do anything... but there would be no point

Jim Is Ep7 pt2. The Void

Finally back from the future to deliver the second installment of Jim Is Ep7. The project has been a little more ambitious than most of the other strips, so I wanted to procrastinate a bit more. There is a part 3 still to come.
To see pt1 first
To see the first episode

Jim Is_webcomic_ep7pt2. The Void

More depressing haiku and other joy

Today’s super depressing haiku is delivered by Yellow Smiley guy as featured in the hit webcomic Jim Is. JK like five people have read those. Yeah, I wrote a bunch of these as a laugh, so be prepared for more jabs of eloquently executed gloom on days I don’t get around to more substantial blogging.

yellow-smilly_delivers_depressing_haiku._Witness to the void Cold fuligin penetrating Soul withered to black

As an afterword, I’m feeling great. Today, anyway. Yellow Smiley might be sounding-off in the gloom, but today I’m sickeningly positive.

Coffee vs Death

Woke up around 2pm this afternoon. I lay there a while contemplating… There were things that should be done. Big things, small things. Stupid things mostly. Maybe suicide was the best option, I thought.

Stuff doesn’t need to be done when you’re dead. Life becomes so much easier. No absurd places to be, no absurd conventions to follow. No one to put on a brave face for. Just simple, infinite oblivion.

comic: jim laying in bed contemplating death vs coffee

There was no one around to come bumbling in on my business. Surely it would be easy…

Eventually I decided to get up and have coffee instead. Put some music on. Talk to friends. Slowly the day appeared a little brighter, but still so many unresolved issues. Huge, sinister incorporeal issues that have no clear line of attack. Things that should bring me joy and comfort, twisted into something I can’t even face.

Put them off another day. Enjoy the small things. The coffee, the music, the friends. Smile and laugh a little. Today is here, so enjoy it.

And now I’m enjoying a fabulous cheap wine. Life is horrible, but it’s also ok, and also fantastic.

I can do anything!

Seriously, I can do anything! This is the sort of mind frame I’m often in by the time I should be going to bed. I’ve usually managed to achieve a small victory, finishing a few small tasks, or even something a little more weighty, if it was a particularly saucy day. I’ll be making plans for the next day. I’ll be organising. I’ll be getting ready to attack a bigger task. “I’m going to work on money tasks,” I say to myself. “I’m going to go back to uni,” I might say another night.

I’m telling myself that 4-5pm will be exercise time, and that I won’t drink an entire bottle of wine (or two) just because. I feel like life is finally under control, that I can actually do it, that after 3 long years in the wilderness I have finally reached the fucking light at the end of the fucking tunnel.

comic - man enjoying sunrise

And then the next morning I wake up like the above. Except not at all like that. All that progress from the day before is gone. During the night I’ve ended up at some earlier backup point. I wake up feeling like a pile of shit. That I can’t do anything. That my life is fucked. That everything is pointless, even if I did momentarily feel like doing something.

comic man in prison looking at fadded sunrise

At some point I drag myself out of bed. On the best days I’ll manage to shower, breakfast, and even put on clothes. On the worst days I’ll just sit in my stank and drink coffee (which is admittedly pretty fucking glorious). Little by little I try to get back to where I was the night before. Some days I get no where.

After a while I get to wondering why I’m still here. That surely it’s only a matter of time before I do something rash. And why not? Life is without meaning, all suffering is futile, and any joy is transient. Why not get blasted and go play by the cliffs, or get to working on a serious heroin addiction? Why not?Against It all, I’m still here.

I’m still here because there is that little something that says, I am a unique fucking snowflake! I can do this, damn it! Life may only have whatever fleeting value and point I bestow upon it, but I’m going to do it my way.

So, while every day isn’t waking up to the heavens beaming warmth, love, and joy down upon me, I can work my hardest to live how I want to live, and achieve all I can.

Put on your pants and join me.