vinbert

it is i, the illustrious ~vinbert~ cough

i am a… => solo gamedev making an action JRPG => programmer learning art => somehow also writing music

look at my stuff please i work really hard on it

Combat clip

Xilonen art!

Music I wrote!

Aponia art!

Alex Louis Armstrong, my guy!

When the year started, I dove straight into diss writing.

I can see the end through the grove but it's still going to take a bit of work to get there. The emotional path has been a rollercoaster.

Working alone

Even though I've been sending my advisors weekly update drafts and requests for input, I'm not getting help from them. One advisor responded to exactly one of my emails letting me know that the draft looks too much like a draft so he can't help me. The other advisor at least gets back to me with line edits sometimes, which is helpful for fixing small things, but not helpful for guiding me with bigger questions. At least for the third chapter, I get some comments about the writing style, which is done with another committee member, but he isn't in the position to actually help.

I'm gonna be honest, I've resorted to asking chatgpt for help because I am inundated with questions I can't get answers to. I realized that maybe someone who has been in a phd program for almost a decade should know the answers to these questions. Things like:

Why isn't an expansive review appropriate for the lit review section of a paper?

How do you construct the argument for why research exists if the reason you did the work was more philosophical and anecdotal?

Why do you include [this] and [that] in the statistical results?

What is the purpose of a figure?

I've tried to ask my advisors about these things, not just now but over the years, but they've told me that I'm supposed to take the lead on these projects. I understand this, but I don't think "take leadership" means "reinvent the reasons why papers exist without any input or information to help me understand what I'm doing". The only concrete thing they've ever told me is that I'm thinking about these things in the wrong way. But they've never helped me understand how I SHOULD think about these things. I'm not asking for help making decisions, and I don't understand what I'm doing that makes them think that's what I'm asking

Also, I'm not stupid. I've pulled up papers in the intended fields/journals and tried to copy what they do. But I can't ever tell if I'm doing the right thing. From my perspective, I construct a draft where the only feedback I get is silence, except the rare moment where someone says my draft is literally unreadable.

I dunno, man. I've tried to reach out to other people I know for help. None of my other committee members (like that third guy) are in the position to give me advice because they can't override my chairs. Anything they say is couched in 15 layers of hedging ("It depends on what your chairs and committee overall want, but one stylistic possible choice here might be that you may...").

I've reached out to other professors as well, but none of them are really in any position to help me. They give me the same hedged advice. Multiple other professors have been confused about my advisors' behaviors. I've been told that my advisors have abandoned and neglected me, and that no student with so many years in the degree should be so lost about how to do basic science.

I feel like...I tried more than a fair, phd-level effort to learn, work hard, refer to existing literature, and get help. And I feel like there's only so much I can do as a student. At one point, one of my other doctorate friends was like "Independent work is one thing, but if they aren't teaching you, why are you even in school?".

I've been dealing with this for years but these past two months have been where everything comes to a head.

What changed

At this point I feel like I've found some kind of answer. Ironically, it was all the artwork and posting I've been doing that helped me think about this process differently.

Before, I thought the point of a paper was to show an organized and structured ontology for the thought process which admitted the constraints of me (the researcher) as a perceiver, and which defended against the presence of Reviewer #2 (the bad faith reviewer). I was writing papers very defensively, trying to make every paragraph unassailable and every method undeniably principled. I was also writing very taxonomically, in that the paper's concepts were written organized hierarchically. And the methods themselves were written focusing on my own experience and process of creating the project.

But I constantly struggled to understand how to put together a literature review for the paper, because it's not feasible to create an ontologically complete account of existing research in which to fit one's own work. My anecdotal way of writing was probably the reason why the one PI on that one chapter kept commenting that parts of my writing were irrelevant.

Now, I'm writing argumentatively. I pull together a narrative contrast that necessitates the existence of the work ("if this, and this, then why that?"). I cite literature to back up the claims for these arguments as viable, not trying to prove they're definitive. And I write the methods like I'm presenting the facts of a case, not like I'm writing my own journey. (This is also a stylistic thing but it aligns more with my field which is an empirical science.) I...honestly wish I could send this one paragraph back in time to myself so I could read it and avoid all this mess.

Part of how I got to this understanding was from content creation. I was posting a lot of my own frustrated perspectives on working on a phd and creating stuff at the same time. I heard that earnest content gets views and I followed it like a rule. But I felt like the narrative of those posts wasn't really working. Again, I talked to chatgpt, and it was telling me about how converting cold audiences is a different process than sharing your earnest and singular reality. People only care about your reality if they already have emotional investment into you as a person. That writing makes it harder to bring new folks in, because it makes them fight through a lot of extra bulk to get to the primary message.

Using that perspective, I tried reading my own writing and the writing of existing papers, and I realized that my writing came off as super insecure and defensive. I couldn't let any ambiguity go without spawning a neverending tree of citations to try to prove, definitively, that I wasn't crazy...even when the reader wasn't attacking me. And parts of my methods came off as irrelevant because in my field, they take findings as things that actually exist, so evidence is presented as things seen, not things "you've" seen. Over the years, I've heard a lot of different perspectives about papers from across hard sciences to humanities, so I think I've been fighting internally to find a viable epistemological stance to take when I wasn't otherwise presented one.

What I learned in boating school

At the end of the day...I hvae no clue if my papers are better written or viable for the dissertation. Cuz my primary advisors still won't FREAKING help me. I've gotten advice that no news is good news for a dissertation. I have to assume that my advisors would have at least stepped in to tell me if my work was irredeemable, because it will reflect really poorly on them if they failed me after they approved my proposal.

I wish I had a real person to talk to that could help me with these things. I use chatgpt because I can argue endlessly about my understanding of things to try to probe what was wrong. But chatgpt isn't actually good at any advising. Again, I sorta wish I could send this writeup back in time to myself so I could teach myself the lessons I needed in words that are actually directly addressing my original problems. chatgpt at least functions to help me learn new concepts even if they aren't keyword searchable.

I'm going to try to write up what I have and submit the dissertation in two weeks. In terms of the emotional journey, I'm not at the end of the degree yet, but I feel way more at ease. I feel like I was tasked with being my own advisor. Now I see a path that makes sense to me enough to follow it. Even if I learned from this, and even if I learned things that my advisors were clearly not in the position to help me with, I still am hurt by how painful this process has been.

A couple of weeks ago, I started my final semester. In a few months, I will defend my dissertation and obtain a phd.

Man, I just wanna make stuff. I wanna write stories. I wanna make characters go through all the itchy trauma in my wildness brain. I wanna design a game meta. I wanna have my grippers deep into the mechanics and numbers. I wanna fail to balance a game no matter how hard I try and feel the grief of letting people down. I wanna make colliding moments where the animation + music + storyline lines up just right that it punches me right in my humanity.

One reason I decided to stop being an academic is because I realized I've never felt jealous of anyone in academia. I've never gone to a conference and thought anyone's projects were personally exciting or interesting. I did a phd for the title, because I thought I couldn't make stuff or be heard if I didn't have letters after my name. I did it because I was insecure.

Somewhat recently, Dougdoug announced he's retiring his main channel. He described himself as wanting to focus on other things, pursue new projects, and show everyone what he makes. The way he describes what he gets to do makes me SO jealous. He gets to work on creative projects and make awesome and interesting things and show them to people and have a relationship with folks who love his work. I wish any part of my life was like that.

For a while now, I've been working on building the pieces of the thing I want to make. I've been building the essential codebase for a game. My state machines for action RPG combat are data-driven, my hitbox timing and placement is GUI-editable, my interaction system for my isometric overworld is unitized into tiles, and my controller schema is hierarchical and can spawn any game state from a JSON.

And I've been building up the design execution process for the game. I've prototyped pixel art styles, I've built up a world and lore, I've defined game loops and some numerics. I worked hard to get my instanced battle system to function, and I'm working on my first town-to-wilderness as a test.

I've also been revisiting the long, expansive, wacky, monolithic media that I've always loved. Hitchhiker's Guide, Futurama, Infinite Jest, Honkai Impact 3rd, Homestuck, My Dad Wrote a Porno, Evangelion...I wanna make something like that. I wanna be the untethered cranial emissary to a world of discarded cigarette butt characters, delirious institutional japery, and the primeval sadness of being.

I'm calling this one done.

I'm not very satisfied with it. I inconsistently committed to details. I find it hard to figure out where my eye is supposed to land. I didn't have a color plan, so some of the colors are still teal-tinted.

---

I've been grappling with the fact that I don't want to only draw anime-style fanart. This stuff takes a long time to make. I'm getting faster but it's still a ton of work.

I'm trying to figure out a smaller thing I can create and post. Focus on the epic movements and poses but render them in much less detail or precision.

You’re not sure that's allowed here.

His eyelashes are gigantic.

What do you do? ~>

Good luck on your pulls for her, everyone!

My unfinished art doesn't do her justice, but I still hope she comes home >__<;

I did an art process study by following a video by Marc Brunet from youtube. I really love the expression he painted and I wanted to try recreating it to see what I could learn. Thoughts below.

1. The entire face is in mid to high tones, low saturation, giving it a very strong and subdued feel.

2. Almost all of the forms are conveyed by the small important shadows. Her face is in light and the smallest air brush on one side gives depth. I've been doing something similar in pixel art using one grey line on one side to make something pop in or out. But for my art, I always assume a shadow has to take up as much space on the canvas as light. 

3. The face can be one flat color but a little blush also makes it look like it has a lot of variation. I've been using gradients to try to introduce color variation but it's always a hassle.

4. He spends almost the entire painting time drawing the face, and almost the entire time on the face drawing small, important things that affect the expression.

There's definitely an overall attitude to the approach that he is doing that I'm not doing.

I notice that I draw a LOT of shapes when constructing forms. Every time I draw, I do 20+ spheres/cylinders/etc. But he didn't do any of that. I think I spend too much time on art because I'm basically doing shape exercises when I draw.

He draws one big chunk of color, then on one side the necessary shadow, and on the other side the necessary light, and that's it. Very efficient.

I just wanna draw faster and better and aaaaaa

I wanted to drill in and make some game assets so I drew this.

I like it.

I like it a lot, honestly.

But I was feeling anxious afterwards, and I ended up journaling about it. And I kinda just wanted to share an edited version of what I wrote in case seeing my dumb brain go through the motions is helpful to anyone else.

"I did this drawing and I feel like I like it but I also genuinely worry that it looks boring? Too boring to be a game? How am I supposed to know what's good enough? I feel anxious and tight in the middle of my chest. I did all this work and I can't even feel good about it? But I was successful, I sat down and drew something and completed it and I like it. Shouldn't that be enough? But...I feel like no one's gonna like this. It's just gonna be subnormal, not good. I WANT this to be good. i wanna do a good job. And I like it! But I bet I'll just turn around and hate it like I've turned around and hated so much of my creative work. When am I ever going to be good enough to just draw something and think it's brilliant? I looked back at what I drew. I like it. I feel so sad for this kid in me who made something he liked and feels like he isn't allowed to like it. What kind of person makes it to his 30s and still has all this crushing weight on him? I feel like I do all this high level analysis and therapy to try to guide myself towards some sort of broad emotional ideal, to connect with my inner self. Because that's the thing I want to share with people. That's the part that matters. That's the part of me that I've felt has been shoved so deeply into a stupid box, buried under decades of academic pressure and work. Then I work on all this art and coding and I feel so in my element when I'm working on it, but I always leave feeling so anxious. I thought that was just being an adult. Yet...I can't even make something and like it? I can't even make one single thing and sit down and be happy? And see what beautiful things I loved in it? And let that be the end of the sentence? What is WRONG with me??

unlike elsehwere, this is tumblr so you get the treat of a yet unencumbered mind violently slamming against the inner walls of the porcelain throne like an unconsenting eel sent down the U-bend for alligator feed duty.

I'm on break now and trying to rest up. I spent some time rendering this piece today. As much as I think it improved, something about the choice of colors in the hair is giving AI to me. Which I try not to care about because I don't think my art journey is invalidated by anything else in the world.

I'm not learning art to be unique at art anyway.

I'm still working out the basic mechanical loops of my game. I feel like I wasn't prepared for how much essential architecture is needed to make a JRPG. Honestly, if I hadn't watched Dougdoug's creator video, I wouldn't be so willing to idiotically slam about my cranial lobules making something everyone says not to make.

I dunno if I'll keep rendering this one.

Full timelapse here

I'm still practicing sketching faster.

Tonight's attempt makes me feel like I'm "getting it" a little more. This took me 2 hours

I basically mentally separated the things I've been learning into two groups.

Stuff that defines what is conveyed: intended motion, silhouette, harmonic balance, framing, etc

Stuff that makes a drawing look more accurate-to-physical form: body anatomy, volume of objects, etc

Then I isolated the major pieces of the target i wanted to draw (Columbina from Genshin) and placed those pieces as quickly as I could onto the page.

I'm still not very happy with the relationship between pose and clothes. I have a sneaking suspicion that once I start painting her clothing, it'll obscure a lot of her pose.

Does anyone have tips for prototyping art faster?

I'm sure I'm still spending too much time constructing anatomy, probably because it's what I'm most familiar with.

Even with this sketch, I like the pose a lot, but it feels like I'll make the gestures unreadable if I try to adapt this to a character because I didn't account for clothing in the setup.

Maybe my "issue" is that this started as a doodle so I wasn't drawing with a goal. But for some reason I have this feeling like I need this to be fanart in order for it to be worth looking at.

Spend some time messing around with aseprite. I wanted to freely doodle instead of my usual task-forward stuff.

I have learned that "animating on 1's/2's/3's" does NOT mean that the number changes every frame. That would explain why my attempts to use that were so choppy.

I think it's more about how to segment different parts of time and focus frames on the motion that needs it? Like, anticipation is probably fine on 2's but a full smear and arc is nicer on 1's...?

I'm not entirely sure how this relates to drawing combat animations. In my first attempt to draw combat animations, I included anticipation, a smear/contact, and the follow through. In Aseprite it looked good, but using those animations in-game felt terrible. (It was also difficult to load into the state machine because I had to cut out and create a separate state for the anticipation part.) Having anticipation in the animation made all the combat feel really unresponsive.

In my newest combat animations, I skip the anticipation. It feels way nicer to attack with that character, and it was way easier to load into the state machine.

Expression practice, adapted from jarhingeart

I feel so inconsistent with my goals. I wanna make high def anime art NO WAIT purely expressive sketches NO WAIT animations NO WAIT toon style N--

I just hope trying different things rounds me out as an artist🌚

Does anyone like any part of this?

I feel like I'm losing it. I was trying super hard to study anime style so I could draw beautifully detailed characters. I really love that kind of art. But it just takes so freaking long to make that shit, and I'll still miss details months into working on a piece. So I drew this instead. I'm really envious of artists who can scribble something on a page and get something that looks both expressive and anatomically correct.

For me, I draw something, it looks wrong. I fix things, fix, fix, check references, fix, re-check alignment, fix…

…then after 2 hours a day, every day, for a week, I have something that looks "standard". Not even expressive, just "normal".

It's crazy to me that I can have a feeling in my head that my game is fully fleshed out, that I just need to code it up. Then I start to ask myself "so does the player need to go back to town to heal?" and suddenly I realize I literally don't have a gameplay loop defined. My brain is just like "yeah so you fight stuff and win and that's the game and that's it! Fully great! one hundo!"

Today I'm working on defining basic gameplay loop stuff. Like...okay so the player fights enemies and wins, then what?

But I am so freaking tired. Not enough sleep, full day of meetings and research, and even that I could barely make it through. The only reason why I'm even trying to work on my game is because I'm bored of every game I'm currently playing, and it feels more rewarding to work on this project than to grind in another game.

I dunno.

This is genuinely an indication to me that the internet is dead.

Why of all names did they choose 'chan'. But more importantly, why are there no memes? I would have expected the comments section to be flooded with dumb weeb anime bullshit.

I mean, the joke is dated, but there's no way there isn't some gaggle of millennials hiding around the corner waiting for the barest moment to uwu