dubiouslog

just finished rescanning some stuff, which means that I can finally launch

it’s better than the old site!

just this, now I can go offline again

I’m constantly chasing this chimera called perfection. This is no secret. There are very few things that bug me more than not feeling pleased enough with my work. Especially if it’s a website. And especially if we’re talking about the website whose main function is to look beautiful and captivating - my art site.

It’s a few weeks that I’m working on remaking it, and so far I’m liking where it’s going. I won’t go into details because I’m not one to write wall of texts regarding stuff only I care about, so here is a picture of Sheila that will go on her page:

Which also means that all of my characters are getting illustrations in the same style as this one. I should be able to have all of them ready by next week, though I don’t know when the actual site will be launched. On the 26 I’m seeing Jacopo after about four months and he only has a one-month break, so I don’t want to spend that time working on my stuff. Now that I think about it, I should have the site almost ready before I leave and then let it sit for a while, and then when I’ll get back to it I’ll be able to catch any eventual mistakes I’ve made throughout the whole process. Sounds good.

okay, so I just made a huge update over at Spark Needle. it’s so huge that the updates box took over the page, thus why I’m pimping it here. besides, the notes page for the new episode is…just…is. Let me state once again that I thoroughly enjoyed that drink. Fruit liquors. Mmm.

There are some news about Hydride and his character development, but I don’t really feel like writing that entry now. Have a Daevion instead:

And a fantasy self-insert I created to play around with Redbolt. It’s nice to just mess around without worries.

BOOBSPIKES: THE ULTIMATE ANTIGROPE MEASURE
also an amusing weapon

now I’ll be working on birthday gifts because half of the known universe is born in June. Someone please explain me why September is so fascinating.

MEWTWO MEWTWO!

…no, it’s not ready yet. But the fanlisting side is open!

Look what I finished today!

This is one of those websites that I planned to made ages ago (literally, as in 2006/07) but, for one reason or for another, never saw the light of the day. Today, this project lives :>

There are also some new drawings…

…but this is not really new. I drew this a month ago and forgot to scan it |)

Same for this one…

I seriously have no recollection of even drawing this. WHAT.

Nevermind…

I’m currently working at the Sableye shrine, which will be named Lithovore. If I manage to keep up with the schedule, it will be ready in ten days max, hopefully less so that I can work on Mewtwo. However, yesterday I ended up working on something else, namely the revamp of the weasels fanlisting. It’s now online. As you can see, it’s no longer just a fanlisting; it’s more of a minitribute - a weasel manifesto, if you wish. Actually, the revamp has been ready for about a month, but I never got to upload the new version because I never felt like making a top artwork for it, then I remembered I already had a weasel illustration lying around and used that one instead. I know, I’m beyond stupid.

Have some mouse doodles:

hello there
why are you in this pose

This is a random weasel I drew earlier, after uploading the new layout for the fanlisting. experimenting with colors, of course.

I spent the last three days making a fanlisting for the flash game Luminara. I’m dead serious.

you know what’s amazing? my consistency is amazing. I just remade a website which wasn’t even on my last to-do list.
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

well I’m way more pleased with it now. the layout uses the same concept as before, just that now it’s an actual layout instead of a blue background with a pic on it. also, as the banner should show, now the website is no longer just a fanlisting, it’s a fanlisting with a one-page tribute in which I make a series of somewhat weird yet perfectly reasonable deductions while still managing to spam a sexy picture of Spenser with his sexy Fearow. EVERYBODY WINS

Seriously though, I really like that pic because of the way Spenser’s left leg is still completely legible beneath his pants. Interesting Fact about me: I have a fetish for wrinkles in clothing, especially pants. Once I was in a train and there was this hot young man sitting in front of me and all I could do was staring at his crotch because of the wrinkles in his jeans. 8D

anyway, after this I’m going to finish revamping the weasels fanlisting, the finished site has been sitting there for something like five days because I didn’t feel like drawing the top image and then I ended up working on Soaring Dread because I’m stupid.

(why do I always try to save the draft on wordpress with ctrl-s?!)

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what direction I’m taking in my personal development. When I think about it, my mind jumps to when I was nine and I made a drawing about how I saw myself in the future: taller, with boobs, and working as a comic artist. When I was a kid, it was more like a distant thought: “and one day, I’ll be publishing my own comics”. Now this goal is fully in my reach, and all I have to do is keeping those stories running and my technique sharp and sharper. However, when I was nine I had no idea I would have developed a plethora of other interests. I could have never seen myself entering the website-making scene, running Angeltower Page and later Blind Dreaming and studying the web and how it works. I’ve always loved videogames, but I would have never thought of gaming as becoming such an important part of my life. And I just didn’t care about finding someone to share my life with.
I expected my life to be a lot more linear. I could even say that my dream life was a lot less interesting or fulfilling than my current life. I’d like to work as a comic artist, sure, but also as an illustrator, a character designer, a web designer, a writer…Mostly freelancing and flying solo, of course. I might accept some very special group projects, but only if I feel like it.

Now, it comes by itself that if I want to work as a freelancer I’m going to need more exposure, and I think I know what to do in order to obtain it. First of all, I’m needing a proper portfolio and for all my personal websites to look their best. This leads me to the next point: currently, not all of my websites are up to my standards, both in terms of presentation and content. If I am to get in the spotlight I cannot allow my work to be just OK, it must be as close to perfect as possible.

This is the very foundation of a big project of renovation concerning all of my online work; it will span across several years so that I can focus on university work while I keep on with this project. Let’s break it down in steps.

Phase one

All of the phase one steps are not incredibly complex or time-consuming. They don’t need my full attention, so I can multitask between them and school work. This should be a rough guideline of my personal work from now to a year from now.

1. Clear Bell renovation. It didn’t really made much sense to have a fanlisting with two pages of content, so I’m turning this website into a full Pokémon Crystal tribute which also hosts a fanlisting.
   I thought that would make a good starting point for my project for a few reasons. First, there’s no way the new content is ever turning stale and needing to be rewritten, since we’re talking about information for a game from 2001 and thus pretty static at this point. If I will ever have to touch the content again, it’s going to be for only minor revisions. Second, I still like the layout concept, so I’m not needing a complete redesign; all I will be doing is upgrading some minor details. Actually, most of the layout changes are already online, so if you check Clear Bell right now you’ll see what I mean. Third, my tribute will be targeted to retrogamers and nostalgics, but will also serve as a museum for the years to come.
   I’m currently writing the new content. It won’t be long before I put everything online, three weeks in the worst case.
2. Remake the weasels fanlisting from scratch. There’s not a single thing that’s right about that website, from the name to the layout to the overall feel. Even with such a tormented development, there’s no excuse for that mess. Now, I happen to have a drypoint drawing of a weasel for school which should be on print on Monday; if the result is as good as I intended it to be, I will be using it for the layout. The new layout is going to be either white or in neutral tones. Also, I’d like to change the name of the website. I tried to find another one myself but the results were rather unsatisfactory. So I’d like to get some input from you readers. The winner gets a free artwork :B everyone can participate, it doesn’t matter if we don’t really talk that much.
3. Minor layout changes in the Angeltower Dex. Like remaking the Poké Ball and the Great Ball in the respective styles with a proper 3D software or refining the content styling. I should also make a Master Ball style soon or later. Also, I’m going to upgrade everything to HGSS and rewrite parts of the core code.
4. Minor layout changes in the Super Metroid and Fearow fanlistings. I’m not satisfied with some of the content styling in the Super Metroid fanlisting and I don’t quite like the navigation in the Fearow fanlisting, so I’m going to tweak them a bit. Nothing major, though.
5. New layout for Dark Claws. That website has grown a lot over time, and the current layout is way too small and the content way too understyled to convey how big that website actually is. Plus the layout is also quite old (from late 2007 I think), so it was about time anyway. I’m going to keep the current red and grey color scheme, but with another artwork. Content is going to be fully revised and the URL structure changed. For example, sneasel/shrine.php?page=general-information will become sneasel/shrine/?page=general-information, because directories are cooler. Here we’re already talking about plans for stuff I will be working on about a year from now, so I don’t feel like I can already give more details than this.

The phase two steps are still a secret! I will be talking about them in due time. All I can say for now is that they are going to be the beefier part of the renovation project, each taking from several months to a whole year of effort. They will be about Advanced Blanket, Angeltower Page and the portfolio I was talking about before. :D

There’s also a great deal of work for other people I’m currently working on. I’ve been spending the last few months on the redesign of a website which should be ready in November or December, I will be making a whole CMS-based website which should take a good three months of work, and I’ll be probably working on another website too. There’s so much stuff to do, and I’m still without Internet D:

Now, for something different:

I’m writing about my latest Oblivion adventures but it’s getting very long so I wanted to post this before.

First of all, Swampnova is closed because I shouldn’t be writing depressing stuff. Sad people should cheer themselves up, not mope on the Internet. I should know better than that, but these last few months have been nothing but an avalanche of bad decisions on my part.

Speaking of which, at least I’m considerate enough to not put my private life online, else I’d be feeling rather embarrassed now. Long story short, I’m back with VG again. I was wrong on him, he proved it, and I’m grateful to him for being able to forgive me.
Happily ever after, then? I sure hope so.

In the end, this summer went rather differently than planned, and as such I wasn’t able to work on that Pokémon comic, too bad. However, I think I may be remaking Advanced Blanket’s layout as soon as I can; even though the current one is only a few months old and is not that bad as for what concerns usability and presentation, it feels like it’s lacking something, like it doesn’t even begin to convey who I am. This comes as no surprise when I think of the period in which I worked on that layout, but anyway.
I already have some ideas for the redesign. The concept came to me in a flash a few days ago, it has to do with a huge top image…look, I’ll just post a sketch here:

and this may be a thirty-seconds quickie made with the mouse in a Messenger window but it’s really pretty self-explanatory. I think it’s a very powerful image and it also gives a whole new meaning to the site name - Advanced Blanket, is this blanket nothing but our very skin? It’s also a very personal work and as such it can be easily recognized as mine. I think. I don’t know, it came to me in a flash and I was OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. THIS IS THE BEST IDEA EVER and while the way I pictured it in my head is probably way grander than the actual artwork I’ve yet to make I think the idea itself is just fine.

and another thing yet: I’m considering to open a webdesign blog. There are a lot of things I’ve always wanted to write which I never actually did because I felt like they just didn’t belong on this place, so I thought that maybe it would be better if I started a serious blog which would maybe gain its own userbase instead of boring my four readers to death with uninteresting stuff. What if the world has been deprived of my illuminating ideas because of these restraints? JUST THINK OF IT!
hahahahaha yeah I know, it’s just that I want to write about webdesign, I don’t have any stupid pretenses.

next post will have actual drawings! I promise