音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

Not excited nor have other special feelings, I merely think it's time for me to leave something before the end of this year.
It has been a while since the previous one, and surely I have got many things that are worth noting, which will become the final compilation for today.

Since late October, I got my third Pilot 2 weeks ago. Fantastic indeed, and now that's three of them, which match my dark blue, red and dark green inks, which also filled my new drawing project with much fun.
I'll definitely make some special posts about that (long story but I'll try to make it brief), though not until I finish at least outlining the drafts. As an archived record here, I'm currently at the last 1/6 of the total of 78 pieces, and I have already used 2x full-length pencils and 1 square eraser (the paper was all from a $10 sketchbook I bought 2 years ago while nowadays its price has nearly tripled), and maybe ~30 millilitres of ink. It would be fun to give it more colours after outlining, but I'm hesitating whether I shall proceed. Eventually they'll be all digitalised, so it seems to be a waste of time -- especially because I don't have more than green, yellow and purple as additional tones. And no, I know that without primary blue I won't have many variations even by mixing them. I might do some colouring for fun and ink-mixing experiments, but it's unlikely that this will be done for all drafts.

I was initially planning to finish the outlining before the end of this year, but I'm still far from the last piece -- blame the extreme cold 2 weeks ago.

As an escape from the lack of imagination, I instead tried some J-RPG that I would be more interested in a few years ago.
"Death end re;Quest", I was mainly attracted by its CG and a little horror touch as seeing the writer of Corpse Party. However, had a quick try of both normal and hard difficulty, I soon got bored in battles and retreated to easy for my peace of mind. After all I've adapted myself to nearly all soulborn titles, and it's nearly impossible to downgrade my gaming preference to turn-based -- unless there is really something special, which wasn't the case this time.

Regardless, at the very, very end, I noticed I found the biggest bug in an already seriously bugged world.

Honestly, I need to admit the story was interesting, which was the only thing that made me finish the game (if there was an anime I probably won't touch the game at all). It was much more fun reading it than running in circles in a cheaply made 3D world. But I wasn't happy with how it developed from the last few chapters till the end. Some people may like this style -- that is, going into the meta-level all of the sudden -- might be better if such meta-aspects could be introduced/more obvious in the middle/earlier second half. Directly jumping in at the very end of the story ruined all the mysterious/thrilling ambience cumulated in previous chapters.

By the way, I have also been thinking about the classical piano piece they used at the very beginning as well as the first phase of the final boss. At first I thought that was Chopin, but later I realised that was actually Satie? It was definitely a famous piece but I didn't bother to verify my guess. Either way, I expected there was a meaning behind using that exact piece, but sadly no. They seemed to merely choose a random classical piece and fitted in their game, yet the piece didn't blend well with other original BGM. A bad example of using classical music in games to make it fancier, IMO.

Still, that's an okay game, and the majority of the story was enjoyable. I also liked the CGs, which inspired me a lot and I believe I can borrow some of the drawing styles. In particular, I have been listing some points for improvement and hopefully they can go smoothly:
1. use thicker outlines
2. use colour trace for outlines
3. bolder shadowing
4. forget to always draw the whole body even if that's not necessary for the final make-up
5. Drawing males? I don't really care.. (； ･`ω･´)

Youtube has been recommending random ASMR videos to me for a while, and obviously I never really knew what kind of videos they were until last night. Based on a quick online search, I concluded that those videos would be a waste of time -- the truth is, I myself have never clicked any as I never hunched they would be of my interest.

From a psychological view, maybe I do have ASMR, but what's the point to watch such videos? To get relaxed? There are many other ways/video types that can do this better. To think of it in another way, anyone can tag their video (of literally anything, sound or drawing being the most common ones in my recommendation feed) with this four-letter combination, so the more important question is, can you trust these self-claimed ASMR videos? It's everywhere and overwhelming, so many of them that I had got a negative feeling toward it.

To be frank, I understand the sound videos as I like rainy days; for the rest (like drawing from sketch), that's absolutely SHINOBI EXECUTION. I mean, watching how pro-illustrators draw is great for learning, but what's the point to watch from the very beginning at normal speed? I'm definitely the impatient type and tend to either skip or play at 2x (or faster) speed. As a result, such so-called ASMR drawing videos will never be beneficial yet can make me more annoyed and anxious. Besides, some say such videos help sleep, but I don't have sleep problems and my preferred sleep BGM is people playing/laughing/screaming in video games.

Nonetheless, even those sound-only videos make me distracted -- as I'm usually more excited by rain/leaf sounds.
And I believe I'm not the only one.

Enough for nonsense videos, YouTube also made quite many great recommendations, including the following:

A truly adorable one of warmth and smiling. No more words needed here. I wish I can have such a life after I retire (I know it's too early to think about it). So my cats aren't fat after seeing these critters.

All for this post. A decent year that was, and some quick next year plans (besides my real work of course):
1. paint work (nothing this year but I promise there will be more)
2. string work (time to retake!)
3. text work (if it can ever happen)
4. language work (as a weekly routine)
and last. wish the death end for scalpers