She's An Icon

Alr, so this is just expressing my thoughts after reading It's a Good Life by Jerome Bixby, as well as after watching an in depth analysis on it.

Honestly, I really really enjoyed this short story, especially as it is in the cosmic horror genre (absolutely one of my favorite genres).

Now, this is the message that I interpreted from the story:

I think there comes a fear in being unable to live. A fear in not being allowed to live. A fear in trying to make the conscious decision to live. And yet what do we do? Often, we take this conscious decision in our daily lives ‐ and we face this fear - knowing that, although unspeakable horrors may yet lie in the ineffable (or something we know and are unable to explain its ineffable consequences), our lives are good because we exist, and even if we're seen as the "bad man" (quote from the story; it could represent a multitude of things, but i see it, in the context of the story, the want to be able to express one's own individualustic desires, thoughts, and creativity), our 'rebellion' from this absurdity is what makes us ultimately human.

yeah looking back on my interpretation, it's definitely absurdist, but hey, absurdism is one of my favorite philosophies, so I'm not complaining!

Anyway, please go read this short story, it soooooooo sooo good it's such a well-written story.

He Has A Question

Looking up how many phonemes exist in different languages because I’m that guy and apparently Hawaiian only has 13 phonemes.

I don’t know what to say about that. That’s not a lot. I think it’s cool you can have a language with so few sounds.

Unfriendly enemies

The word enemy is closely related to amicable, amorous, to enamour, amable, amiable, and amity. All of these words ultimately derive from Latin amāre ('to love; to like'). From its derivative amīcus ('friendly; friend'), the word inimīcus ('unfriendly; enemy') was derived: in-imīcus, literally 'un-friendly'. Via Old French enemi, this became the English word enemy. Click the graphic to learn more.

⭐ Pixel Art Fundamentals - Hue Shifting

This technique is not uniquely specific to pixel art, but it's a very common term to hear when starting out watching those "dos and don'ts" videos. So what is hue shifting?

Hue shifting basically means to change the hue when making your shade darker or lighter. In this context, 'hue' = colour!

You may hear 'you need to hue shift more' when getting feedback on your art, but what does that mean really? Here are some examples:

We can see even with just a bit of hue shifting, we have quite a different vibe for each drawing. In warm / daylight settings, no hue shifting can sometimes look a bit muddy or grey.

If we swap the image to grayscale, you can see that they look much the same:

As long as the hue shifted colours have a brightness that makes sense, they usually will work. You can get quite wacky with it.

But is hue shifting always good? Not necessarily.

Below is some of my art where I intentionally didn't hue-shift at all. You can see it gives them an uncanny, digital, or photographic kind of look. As always, techniques are about your intention, or personal style.

I recommend trying different hue shifting methods! I especially love to use a cool blue or teal for the lighter shades.

Thanks for reading and I hope this helped a little! Have fun with it!!

⭐ Read my full pixel art guide here!

Simple cloudscape tutorial!

Violence isn't the answer. Violence is a question, and the answer is "yes."

Even with a blank map, a lot of people can only name 45-50 of the 64 states.

Label the States [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

Geography Challenge: Can you label all the states? [An unlabeled map of the United States, but instead of 50 states, there are borders for 64.]

I love this fuckin' site.