Several Creatures

I drew some beautiful pink creatures late at night, so here they are. The parade of beings. 

You can really tell that I drew this restful dog first because of how extremely scribbly she is. I was trying out a really loose sketch and ultimately really liked the look of it, but I tightened up the look (not on purpose) for each subsequent creature. I like this first one the best. That big, unexpressive eye.

Then, I was thinking about that butt-in-the-air stretch that cats love doing so much, and essentially drew two versions of it, on a cat and on a dog. Although neither really capture that lowwww curve of the front legs that goes with it.

Oh well, either way, they're stretched.

Lastly, a bunny on her bottom, looking back at something that must be there. Who knows what it could be. 

More 3DS Photography

There's a magic to some 3DS pictures, a kind of realm one can enter where it all makes sense, the particular, faraway look you can find within. As part of my ongoing beautiful obsession with the dear Nintendo 3DS camera, I bathed myself in an ominous pink light and invited the sparkle of its "sparkle" mode to enter seamlessly into this girlish landscape.

And there is something about those flat sparkles, bubbles, stars, and hearts that really does add a sort of cartoon magic to the scene. Here I am, gazing resolutely as time turns and the stars dance. All is as it must be.

I really wanted to use the 3DS's sparkle mode in a way that would make those little decals feel natural and normal. I wanted a way of incorporating them that would make it feel like, yes, of course little sparkles should be there. And what better way, I thought, than a great BLAST of pink light? 

Somehow, it was the perfect choice. 

Screenshots from my Phone

A text exchange I had in August of last year.

A few days ago I saw this Instagram reel from bycrafticharli about her "screenshot journal". It's a journal... full of screenshots she's taken. Wow, I thought. Impeccable idea.

There's something deeply enticing about a physical journal filled with screenshots, flapping in the breeze as all screenshots should. I myself am guilty of taking a lot of screenshots of things that interest me, stuff to come back to later, and this is tragically responsible for a chunky percentage of my phone's storage. Alas, I am a mere mortal, and I too have screenshot disease.

Now, I'm not sure if the beautiful real-life screenshot journal is something I can reasonably commit to doing, mostly because the level of printing involved would be a bit of a nightmare in terms of ink use (which we must always diligently avoid), and the time costs involved in printing and sticking and annotating would also be, I think, a pain. I just don't have the TIME for all that. I need to play three hours straight of Donkey Kong Bananza, eat a bowl of pasta, and then crack open Sally Rooney's Intermezzo, after all. And that's before I dare to do any 'work'. 

What I can do right now, though, is share some of my screenshots directly with you, my loving blog audience. Behold, my curious interests:

#1: Senseless Optimism & Nuns of the Tundra

I try not to spend too much time on TikTok because it really can become endlessly addictive way too easily, but what I like about the platform is its ability to bring me perfect music from various small artists. 

Some favourites among my TikTok finds are MARiMARi, vi0let, Calvero, and Hemlocke Springs, but here are two I still need to seriously check out: Senseless Optimism, a wonderfully frenetic indie rock artist who makes these awesomely complex tracks and videos where... there are three of her. And then there's Nuns of the Tundra, a crunchy rock band in the vein of Queens of the Stone Age.

#2: I smoked every Chinese cigarette so you don't have to (DO NOT DO IT)

This is a video by Bodega Kat that showed up in my recommendations. It horrified me, yet it made me laugh, so I screenshotted it.

#3: Rumble Roses

PlayStation Park is one of a small selection of Tumblr accounts I follow who post gifs of various PlayStation games, and sometimes I'll be intrigued by a game and screenshot a post. This was one such incident, a gif from Rumble Roses, which is, as it turns out, a PlayStation 2 game centred on women's wrestling. It includes a mud wrestling mode, which seemed unique and interesting to me.

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And that's all for now, although as I'm sure you can imagine, there are many more screenshots lurking. This is merely a smattering. 

Wikigatcha is Evil

I have made a terrible mistake. I've discovered Wikigacha.

Wikigacha is a browser game where you can endlessly open trading card booster packs. The cards you find within are random Wikipedia articles, which you can then battle against random opponents, that is, random other random Wikipedia articles (sorry for that unpleasant syntax).

Japanese superstitions are no match for Ultraman Retsuden.

One problem with this game is that the text on the cards is miniscule. Yet my powerful mind directs me to read them anyway, as soon as it detects words. This is troubling. I can feel my eyes being strained within milliseconds. This cannot be good.

What is this, a card for ants? 

The other problem is that, seriously, the booster packs don't run out. There's an ostensible wait after you open ten packs, but you can just watch an ad and almost instantly conjure a new pack. If you have an adblocker installed, you just click a button to do the same thing anyway, and away you go. This both immediately diminishes some of the built-in fun of collecting, and thrusts you into a horrible addiction immediately. It's hard to stop clicking. We have reached another painful, mind-destroying Cookie Clicker style situation. And I am afraid.

Some of my first cards include a list of PlayStation 3 models, the song 'Feel Special' by Twice, and acclaimed documentary Grey Gardens. 

Wikigacha also has achievements, for things like diligently opening ten booster packs, and reaching large number milestones for cards collected. I suppose I will have to get them all.

Well, that's it for me. I have no choice but to keep pulling cards. 

Photographic Flipnotes

Since I've been doing a lot of noodling around on the 3DS lately, I of course could not neglect its Flipnote title, Flipnote Studio 3D. This is the 3DS's number one art tool that allows you to make animations. It has a very particular style to it - you can clock a Flipnote from ten miles away - and it is quite sophisticated.

One of its interesting features is that you can take a photo in it, which will be translated into this pretty dithered style. I've seen this used to great effect for backgrounds of drawings, but here I thought, let's just go back to the basics and make a photographic animation. The number one thing to do when you are twelve.

There is an ultimate simplicity to this that feels so right. I don't even need to draw anything. I can just move my 3DS and make stop motion. Classic good fun. Why aren't we all doing this every day?

Also, I find myself impressed with small file sizes more and more these days. Something has taken hold of me and I find myself thinking things like "wow, only 33kb!" - and that, dear reader, is the size of the Super Mario gif at the top of this post. Is that not impressive? Does that not make you smile proudly? 

Thirty-three kilobytes, darling. That's all he is. 

Weird 3DS Double Exposures

In my experimentation with the 3DS camera, I discovered 3dswigglegram.com, a website which allows you to convert MPO files (the file type the 3DS uses for its 3D photos) to animated gifs.

This is the resulting wigglegram for this image, correctly aligned and dutifully wiggling.

It does this in a beautifully elegant way in-browser, by showing you each of the two separate images stored in the file, and two sliders you can use to align them. This creates animations which can be adjusted depending on where you want the focal point of your image to be, and in the process you get to see these oddly pretty misaligned negative images.

Sometimes these warped and dreamy overlaid images look cooler than the animation or photo itself, and it's really fun to play around with, to shift those sliders around. I love the extremely saturated colours and the stark black in all of them.

They create this wonderful alien world, and I love how two versions of the same image combined like this conjures a sense of wrongness. It's such good shorthand for unease or altered consciousness. Looking at these, I just think: Yeah. That's what it's like, baby. 

They're perfectly crunchy and unpleasant. I'm vaguely reminded of David Lynch's Dune and its gloopy special effects. 

I love them. 

Me & My Mario

Here he is. My dear Mario. I've had him for about nine months now (he is so young), and I simply adore him. You can probably understand why by looking at him up close. His stitching is divine. His material is soft. He's shaped just right.

I think my favourite element of his construction is the little red loop he has on the back of his head. This means he can attach easily to a bag to become a comically large bag charm (this honestly makes me feel powerful).

You can also simply hang him up anywhere you like. If he's naughty, he'll go up on the wall until he behaves better. Usually though, I don't feel the need to do this. It's much more common that I have Mario sitting (or lying down) next to me. He might rest on a pillow while I write, or nestle with me before bed.

He's just my sweet little guy.