Here’s hoping 2022 has been good to you all thus far! It certainly has been an interesting year here amidst professional and academic developments, namely a new job and graduate school. A very busy start, but one that’s been quite a good one after nearly two years of not getting anywhere, innit?
So seeing as I didn’t post anything in my last post, it’s time to add things since…holy moly, July 2020? Better late than never, they say.
I’ll split this post into four- one for H2 2020, another two for 2021, and a fourth for 2022.
In July I had yet another flat move, mainly to help a family member out, and made do delivering restaurant orders despite pandemic. Not great, not awful. Plenty of creative opportunities, though!
JapariWrestle 2020 (YT link)
1 Apr 2020 (collaboration with Invicator). Shotcut, PS1/PS2/Wii WWE games, Win3.x in DOSBox, Cakewalk (audio).
I forgot to post this one so I’ll do so now.
So in the Kemofure community I am in, annual wrestling matches are a tradition, and they have little or nothing to do with the franchise itself aside from characters. I took up that responsibility in 2020, as the original creator was unable to do so. Inspired by VineWrestle and the Jerma Rumble in particular, I took a shot at it as best I could with what I had.
The quality is a bit potato, but I hadn’t really done video editing in years at that point, so there was a lot of re-learning to do. Also, I was using a ~2011 custom build for this, so there wasn’t enough power to comfortably handle the games in 1920×1080, hence the 720p max resolution.
Despite the shortcomings I had a lot of fun with this, and as you’ll see later, I decided to continue and extend the tradition.
Final Picnic
16 Aug 2020. Krita, Inkscape (text).
Inspired mainly by Kemofure 3’s picnic mode (wherein players put charas to passively gain levelling materials, using food items to refill timers) and a cover art thing from the Sega fighter Last Bronx. I made an attempt at ambient occlusion, which ended up a bit overdone but I think it was a good attempt.
I guess the premise of this, if it were a manga, would be this. There’s suddenly no more bread, so the characters fight one another to get that last morsel. I guess it ends once someone finally learns how to bake their own bread.
A Sardine Grows From an OPL3
22 Aug 2020. OpenMPT.
I’ll quote myself from the MPTM file’s comments.
(/Iwashi ga tsuchi kara haete kurunda/ – A Sardine Grows Out of the Soil)
OPL3 MPTM cover transcribed and programmed by DX7.EP 2020.08.21.
Commercial redistrubution of the module is prohibited, but the instruments may be used freely in whatever way you see fit. 😉
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I was supposed to work on my own project, but I was jamming out to the original track and somehow decided it was good transcription and 2-operator patch programming practice.
This is not a 100% accurate transcription – the arpeggios and some harmony tracks were improvised,
among other things. I put my focus on the main melody and bass, and made some changes (eg. last octave switch for the final chorus) for stylistic choice.
I opted to limit myself to 8 channels, due to another OPL2-based project using 8 FM channels. However, unlike that project, I also did not include PCM sample channels – it is all FM here 😛
Though with more channels I could add either delay channels, speech samples, and/or replace the arpeggiated chord sequences with proper full notes.
Here’s hoping OpenMPT gets 4-operator OPL3 support soon 🙂
(edit: as of 2022.02.15 that doesn’t exist yet in OpenMPT)
Dream a Dream cover (practice)
6 Sep 2020. OpenMPT.
A cover of the chorus of Captain Jack’s Dream a Dream done as transposing and plugin practice. I’m quite happy with the instrumentation, which consists completely of Soundfont samples that worked surprisingly well for 90s EDM when combined with effects. Voice, on the other hand…yeah, rather than AlterEgo + distortion effects, Chipcrusher would have been more suitable. XD
1. SERVE NO PUBLIC TRUST
2. FREEZE INNOCENT FROGS
3. UPHOLD STUPIDITY
4. [redacted]
9 Sep 2020. Krita.
Yep, Cirno Day meant it was time for another Touhou drawing. I’m not too happy with the inking work or the font choice, latter of which being more Doom-like in all honesty. But the background is quite nice IMO.
Kemofure 3 1st Anniversary Drawpile
26 Sep 2020. Drawpile (with others).
Full drawing here.
The Kemofure community decided to celebrate the mobile game’s first anniversary with a Drawpile, so I made my contributions, even if many are quite small.
Battle Taz (unfinished WIP)
4 Oct 2020. Krita.
Kemofure yet again, part of a parody idea I never finished. Pose was based off the Battletoads arcade flyer. Hands were a bit large, and in hindsight I should have used a different layer for those. But I’m used to traditional where everything’s a one-layer work, so there’s that. XD
I didn’t do Inktober that year or in 2021 as I didn’t feel personally inclined to.
Pingu Slayer Princess
12 Oct 2020. Watercolour pencil, acrylic paint, ink.
The battle of penguins commences, or something! Princess’ pose was derived from an obscure video pinball game on PC (Full Tilt), namely the medieval table. Anyways, why exactly does she need to fight Pingu in what I assume will be a battle to the death? Maybe that’s her way of joining the Kemofure idol band PPP, hahaha.
JapariMania 2020 (YT link)
31 Oct 2020. Shotcut, WWE ’13 (Wii), Soul Calibur 3 (PS2), Cakewalk (audio)
Halloween wrestling wasn’t a thing beforehand, but I’ve since made it one. Quite a bit of the story mode was used to make a few cutscenes, but perhaps I can do better, especially if it’s the PS3/X360 version instead. But that can come another day.
The glacial pace of editing and rendering on my old desktop was sufficient justification to finally get a system upgrade, something I had been putting off for a few years. I settled on a new gaming laptop on Black Friday, which has served me well since.
Untitled (Dhole mugshot / pixellation process)
2 Nov 2020. Krita, Paint.NET (pixel version, upscaling).
One idea to draw a lot of KOF 99-style mugshots didn’t complete, but I got to this point at least. I started with the leftmost image in Krita,a quick digital sketch. Then it was over to demake it in Paint.NET (middle, but enlarged to 5x), which I think turned out well. The rightmost one is a xBRZ 5x-upscaled version of the original pixel art.
Untitled (pencil sketch)
26 Nov 2020. Graphite pencils.
Battle Taz returns, now with Australian Devil with a bat to the side. I quite enjoy those poses. Also have a Dhole and seagull Friend of some sort.
The Queen of Friends ’95
20 Dec 2020. Krita, Inkscape (text).
Now this is a crossover I’d get behind!
This was a bit rushed in hindsight, namely considering I originally wanted to demake everything to pixel art form, and the button layout background is out of line with the buttons. But overall this was quite a fun one to make.
Untitled (alcohol marker practice)
31 Dec 2020. Ink, alcohol marker.
Around this time I saw alcoholic markers being sold for cheap in retail shops, so I nabbed a basic colour and a cool grey set to experiment a bit. I had previously worked with alcohol markers a decade prior, but lacked the skills to really use them well at the time. But I took the opportunity in 2020 to relearn things.
I reckon this was successful, though between the two the greyscale one went better.
That wraps 2020 up. Next post, H1 2021’s backlog! XD