Cool Idea: Animate Everything

It's time for some small animations. Here are some of me, just having a nice time making videos (I do recommend always making an appearance with a small lamb or other cute stuffed animal).

The truth is, making videos is just my elaborate way of making cute gifs. The gifs are the true outcome. Actually, that made me wonder - are there photo frames that display gifs? Is that a thing? I would like to display many cute cat gifs around my home, please. Perhaps a smiling dog gif above the kettle. I don't think there can be any home decor better!

I have been playing a bit of Animal Crossing (the original game) lately, so here are a couple of gifs I made from that. I named my town "Hell" because I am very original and thoughtful, you see.

There's something about this door closing animation that is somehow extremely #relatable.

Fruit Dream

My face is still here, so I have scanned it again. Sometimes I wonder if a stranger looking at my face can tell what I'm thinking. As if it's a big transparent window you can look through and see all the chicken videos currently twirling around my brain. It's nonsensical, but sometimes it feels as if everything must be visible how. Everyone can surely sense that I am thinking about buying a big punnet of grapes and lying down in my pyjamas to eat them.

But it's not true, my face doesn't betray any of those intense fruit-based fantasies. No one ever knows how ardently I am focusing my attention on grapes. It's kind of a shame, in a way.

Anyway, I love grapes.

Casual Collages

I have done some collages. Here they are, slapped down in a kind of hurried but sparse way. It's nice to have a few journal pages full of collage. Full of glossy, crinkly magazine clippings featuring pristine blue skies and women's eyes always looking a bit suspicious (they are all obviously looking at a big jewel just out of frame that they are going to steal and use to cast a spell).

Also, here's me after doing a collage:

Jeremy Corbyn Collages

Here are some Corbyn collages I made. I found this collection of his old election campaign leaflets through the years (really interesting to look at), and I couldn't resist chopping them up into something a bit silly.

First of all, I loved this signature from a 1983 leaflet, because it sort of looks like he's written "Jeemy". I might call him "Jeemy C" from now on. He's really a very nickname-able person, old Jeemy C.

Honestly, maybe politicians should talk about more about having nice pens in their campaign leaflets. Imagine opening a campaign leaflet to find a lengthy monologue about a Pilot G207 retractable gel rollerball (0.7 mm).

Cat Tongue & Phone Number Bracelets

Hello, and welcome to an exciting collection of images I have gathered, like chaotic thoughts from my own brain piled high on the floor and waiting to be picked up and sorted. Here's a cat I know. He's a big scaredy cat, but he likes to sit in the sit and close his eyes. A good hobby for anyone, cat or otherwise.

He likes to nlem. Look at him. All his power is harnessed in his little tongue.

Here's me being black and white and holding a teddy bear. I had a very unusual medical condition that removes all colour from your life. The cure is to eat a piece of toast, so I'm fully recovered now (and then some).

Here's a couple of music video gifs I made, from OH MY GIRL - Liar Liar (above), and VIXX - Shangri-La (below). I just really liked these shots and colours a lot. Two of my main interests are plaited hair and flowers, of course.

For some reason I've also been thinking a lot about these:

More specifically, the types of ones with letter or number beads that kids make. I found a cool blog post about making a bracelet with a phone number on it (here). This is meant to be an easy way for small children to carry a parent's phone number, but I thought it would be useful for forgetful types, or just a fun way to give someone your number, maybe?

I still can't remember my own phone number, so perhaps I need one of these.

This was all sparked from seeing this picture on Tumblr:

Sadly I can't find a source for this image, but I love both bracelets, and just look at those smiley faces. Extremely cute.

Frogs & Bad Drawings

This is a still from a Freddo-focused video, which you can watch here if you like. I talked about diaries, some of the toys I currently have, and dedicated an alarmingly large section of the video to Freddo, because I love that frog. He's an excellent frog.

Anyway, let's get to what I really came here to post: drawings. Here are a couple of drawings.

I'm kind of trying to rummage about and doodle a lot right now. You never know when you're going to be doodling and accidentally draw something you love. It's the best way to be surprised. And you can laugh at all your bad drawings, which is basically my favourite thing to do ever. Bad drawings are the best, and should be commemorated and loved.

Trying to draw something I rarely draw is always fun too, because I'm pretty much guaranteed to draw something weird. Every time I draw a frog, for example, it's a disaster. A disaster that I treasure. Like this:

So beautiful.

Some Inspirations: Angel's Egg & Game Boy

Recently I watched a very spooky and oddly silent (dialogue-wise) animated film called Angel's Egg. It was a strange and mesmerising experience, full of biblical symbolism and dark blue. The film has an enchanted feeling from head to toe, and is coated in shadows, fossils, and bodies of water.

It was pretty astounding to watch. Haunted by the intimate and visceral connections a person can have with everything around them, even in a graveyard at the end of the world. There's so much to say about Angel's Egg, but I'll leave it at that for now.

I've also been enjoying some old Game Boy games, not least good old Pokémon Yellow, with it's smiling, frowning, laughing Pikachu as your ceaseless sidekick. I just love him so much. Revisiting old Pokémon games always reminds me of their sheer depth and fascinating characterisation laid out in tiny pixel alterations. I love all the bug catchers and the lasses.

I've been playing a bit of the Game Boy version of Felix the Cat too, a game full of such weird and fun design, from Felix's magician outfit to the cross-eyed tree stumps. There is so much tongue-in-cheek inventiveness going on in this game - and it's a lot of fun.

I'm feeling kind of excited at the moment to relax and spend time enjoying things, looking at and finding new things and revisiting old favourites. I found Angel's Egg accidentally. I find lots of things accidentally, actually, or through strange journeys through hyperlinks. Sometimes I race through things to find new thing after new thing, and that's so easy to do online, but it's important to slow down and take things in. I think cutting blog posts back from daily posting is already allowing me to do that a lot more. There's more time to think - about what I'm consuming, what I'm making, and what I actually want to write about.

And of course, the answer will be Pikachu an unexpectedly large amount of the time.

Plans & Scans

Right now I'm working through a sketchbook with weird, scratchy paper. It's thick and very textured, great for watercolour, not so great for pens, and impossible to stick anything to because glue or tape just doesn't adhere well.

I'm lazily painting in it - blobs and forms and whatever I feel like - and sometime in the future I'll be done with it, and I'll have further depleted my paint supply, and the process will get further and further to completion. Eventually, I'll have no acrylic paint left, just an empty drawer where my paint tubes used to live. What happens after that is an exciting mystery. A murky chapter. But those are the plans.

I've been admiring those incredibly small watercolour travel sets you sometimes see in art shops for a long time, and my preliminary hope for when I finish up my acrylic paint is to go forth and use watercolours for some time instead. Watercolours are pretty magical in their own right.

I've also been thinking about my blog and the internet in general a lot over the past six months or so. I'm the type of person who uses the same profile picture in most places for that unified sense of identity, but I'm also the type of person who suddenly posts a Jeremy Corbyn valentine they made in MSPaint, so there are, uh, complexities, shall we say.

The main thing is that I want for this place to feel personal. I mean, it is inherently personal, but what with the daily schedule that has gone on for almost three years, sometimes things are less thoughtful, sometimes I write posts hurriedly to get them done quickly, and sometimes whatever I do post can feel same-y. Whilst I've been happy with how everything has been and with how my posts are generally and across this time, it's come to a natural point now where I no longer want to post on such a strict schedule. So from now on posts will be lesser (to a degree that will vary) and through this I hope to give enough space to each post so that they can feel a bit more rounded, thoughtful, and ultimately a bit more condensed and interesting.

It should be fun and feel nice and free. I'm looking forward to the next however long.

Kingdom Hearts Union χ - It's Good & Cute

I've been a big Kingdom Hearts fan since the first game came out and smashed the intellectual properties of Disney and Square together to create a bizarre yet beautiful whole when I was but a simple eleven-year-old with a passion for the Final Fantasies. The intro sequence was astonishing, and then you get to attack Tidus from Final Fantasy X with a wooden sword on a beach, and talk about how you want to eat fruit. And that's before the heartless appear. It's a great game.

Little was I to know the weird and winding history that the series would take on, as if challenging itself to a river race in a hedge maze. Kingdom Hearts II was a brilliant addition, a game in which you simply have to GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK! We loved it.

Fast forward through a list of confusingly titled games on various platforms, each dumping new plot elements to divide Kingdom Hearts fans into sections of people with wildly varying knowledge of the chaotically expanding lore of the game world, and we have Kingdom Hearts Union χ (that's a cross, not a letter X - fancy!). Originally a Japanese browser game named χ, then a Japanese mobile game named Unchained χ, it wasn't for a while that we got North American and European launches for the game. Nevertheless, you can bet there's even more lore and back story huddling inside this thing and just waiting to burst out onto our faces and eat our brains.

In 2017 it has been rebranded as Kingdom Hearts Union χ, and here we are. I am only so far through the game at this point, and haven't yet reached any real exposition other than the appearance of a cute cat friend named Chirithy, who I love. Regardless, I really like this game. It's a mobile game that feels fluid and inviting in a way few mobile games do. The avatar customisation is strongly reminiscent of Gaia Online, and there is an ability/stat unlock system in the game that uses avatar boards, so you can unlock extra AP alongside a new accessory or hairstyle.

The game has such a beautiful style, making traversing each level a real joy, and making avatar customisation feel worthwhile (because how can I resist making myself cuter and cuter until the end of time?). Gameplay relies on a few simple movements - tap to attack or swipe out a medal for a special attack - but it doesn't feel empty or aimlessly repetitive. You progress through a story world, help everyone out by destroying heartless, and collect lots of munny and new keyblades.

The levelling up systems (for both you and your medals) alongside this make for such a fun game that feels so full of things to do and creepy trees to see, I'm not sure I will ever put it down.

Triple Triad

Every time I replay Final Fantasy VIII I become entranced with its in-game card mini game, Triple Triad, all over again. Every time it is a hypnotic passion and I find myself  trying to press the square button when I am doing normal things like boiling the kettle, writing my own name, or explaining to a police officer what a "geezard" is.

Anyway, it seems now that you can play a super cool version of Triple Triad featuring an expanded set of cards incorporating characters from across the entire Final Fantasy series on Square Enix's official Final Fantasy portal app. I tried it out and it's a really nicely designed and fun way to play the card game. Unfortunately there's a crystal payment refresh/wait system in place so I'm unable to while away the entire day painstakingly acquiring every possible card in existence, but hey, I already got a cactuar card, so that's pretty great.

Confetti Club

I've been really enjoying drawing super tiny things and cutting out some nice little things lately. I always liked to get a good trading card when I was little and Pokémon cards were the new and exciting thing to get banned from the school playground, and having a nice cutout of something feels a bit like that.

So I like to collect my paper confetti, my stars and hearts, and keep making new artefacts and paper creatures imbued with magic. Mysterious friends trapped in pen mark hearts.

Blue Bunnies

Here they are, the mysterious and cute bunnies, who might look a little scary whilst grinning, and who might enjoy partaking in superstitions and crafting luck and charms (even though the only thing they believe in for sure is the power of a good vegetable).