Welcome back to The Hydromecha Monthly! Here’s all the stuff I was working on in February. As always, you can check out the video edition (now featuring a fancy new filter) below:
A Most Musical Month
I was bitten by the music bug in February. I ended up completing three songs, which is three more than I usually make a month. These songs are all on Newgrounds and will be linked below.
Intertidal Zone
This is a prog-rock-ish song I made to use as a background track on the website. It might be a little too exciting for that so I’m thinking of making some changes for the web version.
North Atlantic Current
Here’s another song I made for the website. It’s what I like to call deep sea industrial jazz. It’s probably also a bit much for a background track but I’m still happy with how it turned out.
TIRE IRON TANGO IN THE WASTELANDS OF DESERTIFICATION
Late one October night after working out at nearly 3 AM I threw together a list of 50 metal song names. The Waltz of False Life (a song I finished that same October) uses one of those titles.
TIRE IRON TANGO is another member of COOL_METAL_SONG_NAMES.txt and it’s a heavy metal tango fusion (in case that wasn’t obvious). I’m pretty happy with how the dueling guitars part turned out. I really want to try making a heavy metal klezmer song so stay tuned for that and the rest of the COOL METAL SONG NAMES.
These songs were all made using MIDI instruments with LMMS. At some point I’d like to take a deeper dive into music theory since I only sorta know what I’m doing.
I want to make some changes to the Hydrosite, and one of those changes involves a landing page that shows off the entire monitor I had built for it.
The process for making this new landing page involved cropping out the monitor from a photo, rendering it in Blender on a backdrop, adding a dither filter to it in Krita, and then getting things set up in HTML.
There are some other elements I want to make to complete the new look of the website, so keep an eye out of that in the future.
Bugalo Takes to the Skies
In the newest page of Wonderful and Fancy High School Bait Club, Bugalo’s ghost rockets through the skies of Gerbil Detroit, straight towards a zeppelin housing the Gerbil Dictator.
This page continues the use of the screentones I talked about last time. The page on the Hydrosite is compressed down in a way that they all turn into different shades of gray without any of the screentone patterns showing. Click on the image above to check out the new page. If it isn’t loading, try clearing your browser’s cache.
HazMat One-Shot: P.I. Periscope
I'm gonna try making something for the Newgrounds Jump! Contest in the same setting as Hazardous Materials. You can see a rough sketch of the main characters below. If you’re a returning reader you might recognize Periscope and Amber from the HazMat chapter 2 lineup I showed off back in July of last year.
In this one-shot, Periscope must figure out why the city-state of Plantor hasn’t burned itself to the ground yet. Hopefully I'll have something published by the contest deadline. This is gonna be my main focus for the month. If I don’t end up doing much else in March I can do some behind-the-scenes stuff for this comic for the next Hydromonthly.
As always, I’ll see you again next month with another update.
Welcome back to The Hydromecha Monthly! Here’s all the stuff I was working on in January. For a quick rundown on the headlines, you can check out the video edition below:
(The following two headlines are copied from an update post I made on the Hydrosite when it was updated.)
The Cloudburst Comic Reader
The comic reader finally has a proper name! I've decided to call it The Cloudburst Comic Reader. Cloudbursts are huge amounts of rain that happen in a short period of time which is sorta fitting since the reader procedurally loads up a whole bunch of stuff when it starts. It's also a cool sounding word that's got something to do with water so it's on-brand. :^)
I've made a bunch of changes to the reader (some of which I talked about in the September 2024 Hydromecha Monthly) and to the website overall. We'll start with the comic reader changes.
As always, if you aren't seeing any of these changes, trying clearing your browser's cache.
Chapter & Page Hashes
Previously, the hash in the comic reader's URL only included the name of the comic. This has now been expanded to include chapters and pages, giving you direct links to any specific chapter or page. The new hash format looks like this: #[Comic Name]#[Chapter Number]#[Page Number] where page 0 is the cover, usually. If you want to try it out, clicking on this link should take you to chapter 2, page 5 of Bugalo.
Procedural Comic & Chapter Buttons
Buttons for different comics as well as the chapters of the current comic now fill in procedurally based on the comics' information. I had the comic buttons hardcoded into the page's html file in the previous version but now they all fill in automatically. I also set this up on the Comics page of the website.
Other Changes
There were a few other changes under the hood that should make adding comics easier than the previous iteration. I've also made a few aesthetic changes that you can take a gander at below.
Old
New
Website Updates
I made some pretty big changes to the homepage along with some smaller ones across the board. Check out the before/after below:
Dithering Upon the Horizon
I’ve been messing around with some dithering effects in Krita. I find it looks better using lower-res images (so you can see the pixels more clearly). You can achieve this look by adding a Filter Layer and setting it to Palletize.
I’m planning on using this look for some website assets (first image) and for an animation I’m working on (second image). At some point I’d like to overhaul the Hydrosite using this fancy schmancy new look. I’m also thinking of adding a landing page with a zoomed-out view of the monitor.
Dithered website updates and the animation will be out when they’re done.
Bugalo
As is tradition, there’s a new Bugalo (Wonderful and Fancy High School Bait Club) page out with this new Hydromonthly. Check it out on the Hydrosite by clicking here. If you don’t see it, try clearing your browser’s cache.
I wanted to try out some new screentone brushes I had downloaded (from here) and I’m pretty happy with how things turned out. I’ll probably stick to this sort of style for comics in the future. The final image file on the Hydrosite is scaled down from the original resolution, which helps get rid of some weird artifacting that occurs when you zoom out on the full-res image.
Scorpion Scratchbuild Progress
Here are some progress pictures of the giant robot scorpion scratchbuild I revealed last time. The pattern on the interior of the mouth (purple thing in the last two pictures) was made by spraying wet paint with isopropyl alcohol.
As always, I’ll see you again next month with another update.
Welcome to the first Hydromonthly of 2025! Today we’ll be talking about 2024. Well, more specifically some of the stuff I was working on in December. As always, there’s a video version you can watch here for a quick rundown on the headlines:
Hydromodel - Inverse Kinematics
I finally got around to giving the Hydromecha model IK bones. The old version of the rig was just a bunch of FK bones with rotation limits to keep things looking all robotic (If you don’t know what IK/FK means there’s an explanation below). This was an okay setup but it quickly become a pain to try and pose things with how many pieces make up the limbs.
This new control scheme has the old FK rig copy the rotations of some IK bones (with the limits still intact) which lets me pose things much more easily. The arms each have two sets of IK bones: one for the actual arm and one for the shoulder pylon. Things can get kinda wonky depending on how the arms are moved but it’s a small (and slightly amusing) price to pay for convenience. I’ve got some ideas kicking around for a proper animated video with this model so stay tuned for that.
This video shows off how I would pose the model before with just FK bones:
These videos show off the IK rig:
If you’re unfamiliar with FK/IK, posing Forward Kinematics (FK) limbs has you start from the shoulder/hip and then move your way down each bone till you get to the hand/foot. With Inverse Kinematics (IK) you start with the hand/foot and then the computer figures out how the rest of the bones should move to get there. There’s more to it than that but that should cover the basics. Check out this video by Doodley for some more info:
Secret Santa Slayer
Now onto something a lot less technical. I did an art Secret Santa with some friends back in December and I ended up drawing Slayer from Guilty Gear for one of them.
I really like wacky perspective/focal length chicanery and wanted to do that for this drawing. I used Blender to create a rough reference image to help me figure that out.
Bugalo Breaks the Sound Barrier with Cigarettes
Yeah you read that right. Bugalo throws some cigarettes so hard it causes a sonic boom. This page includes even more funny perspective stuff. You can read Wonderful and Fancy High School Bait Club over on the Hydrosite by clicking the below image. If the new page doesn’t load, try clearing your browser’s cache.
Coming Attractions
I definitely wanna get back to working on the comic reader this month along with some other website updates. I also just got started on a new scratchbuild I teased a couple months ago. There are a few other things I have in the works but I’ll wait until they’re actually done before talking about them.
This’ll be a giant robot scorpion eventually.
As always, I’ll see you again next month with another update.
I don’t have a lot to talk about from this past November so this’ll be a quick one. As is tradition there’s also a video edition you can watch here in case you’ve suddenly developed an agonizing allergy to reading:
Cubeguy: The Animated Character
Cubeguy’s animations are all complete! I handed the .blend file off to a friend and then banished him to the gamedev mines to get things set up as an actual playable alpha. No clue when that’ll be, but I’ll keep you posted. Check out the video below for a compilation of all the animations I made for the character:
Some of the animations could use some work, but I’m gonna save that for later unless we find something egregious in-game that needs to be changed immediately.
The Bugalo
In accordance with the ancient laws of this land, a new Bugalo page has been unleashed upon the world. Check it out on the Hydrosite by clicking on the image below. If you don’t see the new page, try clearing your browser’s cache.
I was playing very fast and loose with the sketches and inking on this page. I’ve been enjoying inking using the ‘ol pixel brush but I really gotta draw more so I can get better and more consistent with it. I used to draw exclusively using that brush before I knew anything about inking (which you can see evidence of in my very old drawings here on Newgrounds).
Miscellaneous Mentions
In other news, I am now a Certified Associate in Project Management. A lot of my time this past November was spent prepping for the exam for that certification on top of some unrelated family stuff.
I’m doing a secret santa art thing with some friends so you’ll see at least one new drawing out in December. I also wanna get cracking on the Table Knight module this month. I had initially set a deadline for myself earlier in November but the CAPM cert took priority. Unfortunately I’m not getting paid to work on my cool fun projects so I gotta focus on things that’ll help me in my dayjob.
As always, I’ll see you again next month with another Hydromonthly.
As always, there’s also a video edition of The Hydromecha Monthly for a quick rundown on the headlines:
The Waltz of False Life and Other Auditory Escapades
I got back to making music this past month and finished a new song called The Waltz of False Life. It was loosely inspired by a couple of songs from Galaktikon 2, one of my favorite albums, plus some other prog metal stuff.
Initially I made the song using the GZDoom soundfont so I could use it in ANTARCTICA, but then I started messing around with some other soundfonts I had laying around to make a less-compressed sounding version. I also went back to an older song I made, Catacomb March, and gave it the same treatment.
Lights, Camera, Scratchbuild!
I now have the means to make better scratchbuilding videos using this new setup. This way I can actually show the creation process of builds instead of just showing stills like in the Plague Machine video. The camcorder is hooked up to a tablet so I can see what the camera’s seeing without having to take my eyes off of the table (which I shamelessly copied from Greig Johnson Making’s setup).
I’ve got ideas for another build that I’m hoping to get started this month. ETA uhhh idk maybe a month or two from now? We’ll see.
Here’s an incredibly early vaguely proof of concept sneak peak at what I’m building next:
This is gonna be the mouth to a big robot scorpion sorta thing. I’m gonna use bread clips to make the Chelicerae (funky looking claw things scorpions have in their mouths).
Behold, The Cyberpenguin
This is a new monster I made for ANTARCTICA MUST FALL (Doom mod I’m working on). Right now it’s using some placeholder sprites but it’s functional in-game and has SFX. It attacks by ramming into the player at high speed, sending you flying backwards. It doesn’t deal a lot of damage, but its knockback can be pretty crazy.
At some point I gotta make a model and sprites for the Cyberpenguin like I did for the Snowdemon and Surprise Elemental.
Here’s a closeup of the placeholder sprite. It’s a photobash of a penguin (duh), a snowmobile, a jet engine, and a snowplow train. Expect the final model to look something kinda like this.
Cubeguy Crouching Normals
Cubeguy’s crouching normals are finished along with some jumping-related animations (see the video edition for those). There are a whole lotta other animations I gotta finish (like the air normals) that I’m hoping to get cranked out in November.
Bugalo & Blender
As is tradition, there’s a a new Bugalo page out. I wanted to include a funny panel with some funny perspective in this page so I used some Blender magic to make a reference. I set the focal length of the camera really low to get that super closeup look.
The gif above shows the camera going from a more normal focal length to a much lower one while also moving closer to the model. The images below give you a better look at what’s going on. You can read Bugalo on the Hydro website by clicking here. If the new page isn't loading for you try clearing your browser's cache.
That’s all for October. I’ll see you again next month with another newsletter.
Here’s the stuff I was working on this past September. I tried something little different for this month’s video edition. I’ll go into more details in a moment, but the main thing is that the videos will be used as quick headlines while these text posts will dive into more details on things. That way they occupy different niches in this multimedia ecosystem.
So, what were those other changes? Well for starters you might’ve noticed I sounded more alive compared to the previous videos. Instead of recording audio by myself I wanted to try a sort of studio setup. I hopped into a voice chat with a couple friends and they helped me not only sound more like a real conversating human being, but they also were a big help with things overall. I’ll definitely stick to this method for future videos.
Jank Fighter - Cubeguy Standing Normals
Cubeguy’s standing Normals are all done now! I made the movements much snappier this time around, which should hopefully help make the moves seem more impactful. The video above shows Cubeguy’s 5A/B/C/S and 6A. (If you don’t understand this notation, it’s using numpad keys as directions with 5 as neutral and 6 as forwards. A/B/C/S are the buttons in the game.) I might want to go back to refine these animations some more later, but I’ll wait till I’ve finished them all first.
The current plan is to give all characters a launcher on C (either standing or crouching), a standing overhead on 5S, and an anti-air on 6A. Cubeguy’s 5C looks like it might also function as an anti-air but we’ll see how things work once the hitboxes and frame data are all set up later down the line.
I’ve also started on some rough versions of his crouching Normals (2A and 2B so far) which you’ll have to check the video edition for. I’ll put those in their own standalone video like the one above once they’ve been completed.
My goal is to get at least rough versions of all the animations Cubeguy needs done sometime this month/early next month so I can hand off the .blend file to get things actually set up in-engine.
Comic Reader Updates
The Comic Reader saw some offline progress this past month, mostly within the realm of trying to make things more user-friendly and adding the features I talked about last time. Adding comics is a bit more intuitive now, but I still have some improvements to make there. In featuretown news, direct links to specific chapters/pages now work and I also added buttons showing the chapters of a comic with their covers/first pages. These changes aren’t live on the website as of writing. That might happen later this month depending on what I end up working on.
The URLs are formatted like this: #[Comic Name]#[Chapter Number]#[Page Number] where page 0 is the cover, usually.
If a comic doesn’t have a cover on a certain chapter, the first page will be shown instead, like with Bugalo below:
I still need to iron out some bugs and implement a few other changes before I’m comfortable with releasing it publicly. I also want to come up with a cool name for the project. I’ve got HydroReader as a placeholder idea but I’d rather have something a little less egotistical. :^)
HydroMonthly Set Models
The models I use on the set of The Hydromecha Monthly’s videos got a fresh new coat of texture painting in September. This includes the desk, monitor, and background. Everything got UV Unwrapped and then those UVs were painted in Krita.
Table Knight Module
I’ve got a good chunk of the detailed descriptions done for the various locations in the module last month. I’ll include a couple excerpts below. After I finish the rest of those I gotta get to work on the maps, NPC stat blocks, items, etc. I’ve got a couple friends working on the art front for this project so hopefully I’ll have some presentable sketches to show you in the coming months.
As promised here are those aforementioned snippets:
King Moe sits in his throne, dejectedly staring at the floor like a man who sold his soul …for a bag of peanuts.
And from later in the module:
All dragons need a hoard, that’s just common knowledge. But not all dragons can afford to hoard gold, especially in this economy.
The Making of The Plague Machine
In case you missed it, I finally got around to making that making-of video I talked about in the last edition of The Monthly. Back when I started working on this thing I hadn’t actually intended to make a video out of it. Luckily I was taking pictures of it to share with friends so I had something I could work with. I’ll have to record some proper footage the next time I make something like this.
Hazardous Materials - Comic Script
The HazMat script had some pretty good progress recently. I have a rough outline for the last bunch of scenes in Chapter 2 that I had looked over by some friends. After I refine that outline and process it into a proper script, I’ll have them take a look at it one more time before I can finally move on to Chapter 3.
Chapter 2 is definitely the longest one I’ve written so far. Its script is a little longer than the prologue and chapter 1 scripts put together, and it’ll only get longer when it’s finished. Chapter 1 is going to be mostly action without much dialogue so we’ll see how it stacks up to chapter 2 once I get to the layout/sketch phase.
For more information on Hazardous Materials, click here.
Bugalo
As is tradition, Bugalo got a new page with this new HydroMonthly edition. Click on the image above to read it on the website. I drew this page on a higher resolution canvas, which helped make the linework look a little neater.
Face Practice
I want to get better at drawing expressive faces (and just better at drawing in general) so here’s some practice from this past month. I was using some stuff from the Venture Bros artbook as reference for the digital drawing above. There are some useful drawing books I found on Internet Archive I’ve been looking through to hopefully help that process of better-getting.
Let Me Cook
We’ll wrap things up with some interesting foodstuff making I engaged in. The picture above shows some really nice loaded fries I threw together last month. It’s like a hamburger detonated over a field of french fries. It includes fries (duh) seasoned with garlic powder, ground beef seasoned with a bunch of stuff, sauteed onions (cooked with the beef), bbq sauce, hot sauce, pickles, cheese, and sundried tomatoes.
I might add a recipes section to my website later, especially if there’s interest. I’ve also been experimenting with a bulgogi recipe (modified from the one my Mom taught me) that uses cilantro (plus other herbs) in the marinade and has you caramelize onions in what’s left of the marinade after the beef has been cooked. I don’t usually measure things when I cook stuff like this but I’ll try to get some estimates if I do end up adding that recipes section.
That’s all for September. I’ll see you again next month with another newsletter.
The Hydromecha Monthly continues its foray into the world of moving visual media, this time with even more movement! Check out this month’s video edition below:
I gotta get those animations set up properly in the Non-Linear Animation editor later. I copypasted things across the timeline as I needed them like an ape xd. I’m also thinking of rendering the lip sync separately so I can just composite it over prerendered body animations. That could make the overall render time a lot faster. Currently the backgrounds are prerendered stills while the Hydro model is rendered separately (along with the table) with animations/lip sync. I’m also thinking of changing the dimensions on the monitor so 16:9 footage fits in it better.
The lip sync is done automatically by feeding audio into Blender, which changes the Value of a Shapekey depending on the volume of the input. If you want to learn how to do this yourself, check out this video (it’s the same one I followed to make my stuff):
Comic Reader Updates
The comic reader on Hydromecha.Website got a major overhaul recently. Instead of needing to go to a separate page to read each comic, everything now lives on a single .html file, using JavaScript to swap what comic is loaded. Individual comics can be linked to thanks to the hash system in the URL. I still need to get individual page URLs set up (so you can link to specific pages), among other things. I still have to go back through a bunch of stuff to swap out links to the old comic webpages.
Stay tuned for a Github release of the comic reader’s code once I get things cleaned up and a bit more user-friendly. If you really want to you can always trawl through the JS by Inspect Element-ing on the page. Check out the comic reader by clicking on the above image. Be warned, the site isn’t optimized for mobile browsers. That’s something I’ll have to mess with later.
ANTARCTICA MUST FALL Grayboxing
ANTARCTICA MUST FALL has been on ice for a little while now. I was messing around with the first map and started getting some ideas for things, which resulted in an expanded graybox. I have a playlist of progress videos, which are just uncommentated gameplay footage for now. Click here to see it. If there’s demand, I can do a video that goes into detail on stuff. I want to make another monster for this mod, so I could also do a video going over the process of going from a Blender model to sprites and such.
The video below is the latest progress showcase for MAP01:
I’m planning on grayboxing all the maps before even thinking about decorating stuff to make sure I can solidify all the gameplay. An even longer while ago I had started mapping with way too much focus on small details and making things look nice instead of trying to make a good Doom level. There are definitely things I’m thinking of changing in the current version of MAP01 which’ll be easier to do with a bunch of simple shapes.
Completion of The Plague Machine
The Plague Machine is done! I’m planning on doing a making-of video for this build sometime next month.
Bugalo et al.
I’m gonna talk about Bugalo along with a few projects that didn’t get a ton of progress this past month.
As is custom in these lands, Bugalo (Wonderful and Fancy High School Bait Club) got a new page this month. Check it out here. In a shocking twist of events, Bugalo may be starting a coherent plotline. The horror.
I made a little bit of progress on the Hazardous Materials Script and the Table Knight module but not enough to warrant talking about them in detail.
I also messed with a couple of Jank Fighter animations I had made last time, but I’ll show those off when I get more of them done.
Closing Thoughts
That’s all for August. The Plague Machine and my own nebulous time management took up a lot of my free time. I gotta try getting a better system in place to get more things done, especially on some of my more writing-intense projects. I usually struggle to get started on stuff like that but once I get into the swing of things it flows pretty quickly.
As always, I’ll see you next month with another wrapup.
I’ve made an amazing new breakthrough in technology this month: video! That’s right, The Hydromecha Monthly now exists as an audiovisual production you can consume with both your eyes and ears without having to undergo the strenuous task that is reading! Check it out here:
As the description says, this was an incredibly rushed production slapped together over a weekend. I had some semi-ambitious plans that had to be cut down a bunch. You’ll notice pretty quickly that my model doesn’t move or have lip sync. I originally wanted to go for a super limited, early Adult Swim sort of look, like Space Ghost CTC or ATHF, but instead I went even more limited. Perhaps even the superlative limited.
I’ll do a deeper dive on behind the scenes stuff in next month’s post. A lot of the models used here were things I had laying around with textures I also had laying around. The same thing can be said about the music. I had the soundtracks to Cruelty Squad and Baba is You on my computer and they fit well enough, I think.
If you’ve already watched the video, the following information should be very familiar:
Helicoprion Portrait
Last month was Shark Week. To commemorate the occasion I drew this: A Portrait of a Rather Dapper Fellow. It’s based off of a very outdated model of Helicoprion from the 19th century that I think looks really funny.
Helicoprion is technically only shark-like (according to Wikipedia anyways), but I remember seeing it in shark books as a kid, so it’s a shark to me, dammit!
Table Knight Module Progress
With all the major story beats outlined, I’ve started writing more detailed descriptions of things for the one-shot module. Below is an excerpt describing King Moe Narch’s castle:
The castle makes the word opulent look like it works minimum wage in a low-income housing environment. Its bricks are carved from lustrous marble with intricately inlaid gold patterns accenting the frame around the drawbridge door. Polished steel chains glisten in the sunlight as they hold a magnificent bridge made of petrified wood etched with the Oldhaven coat of arms.
Bugalo Page
As always, there was a new Bugalo page this month. You can check it out here.
Hazardous Materials Progress
I got a bit more done on chapter 2’s script this month, with more of my effort going into sketching some character designs. As-is they’re pretty rough and I definitely want to go back over these to futz with the proportions and whatnot, but they should give you a good idea of what the characters look like.
From left to right we have: Asbestos, Coal Dust, Lead, Ms. Chicken Wire, Dr. Concrete, Mr. Glass, Amber, Titania, and P.I. Periscope. Periscope’s design goes hard and I think I’ve peaked with him. All future designs will pale in comparison to his ocular majesty.
Jank Fighter Animations
You’ll have to check the video to see these. I finished the rest of Cubeguy’s standing normals so now he’s got a full set for all four buttons (A/B/C/S).
Plague Machine Progress
The Plague Machine saw a lot of progress this month, starting with something incredibly riveting: rivets! They take the form of tiny hemispherical beads I had to painstakingly glue all over the model. This was followed by a prime and zenithal highlight and then some basecoats. Check the newsletter for more pictures in higher resolution.
Closing Thoughts
I should’ve been in bed half an hour ago so I’ll keep this quick. Making the video was pretty fun despite having to cut a lot of corners. Hopefully I can make it look nicer for next month’s Wrapup.
I briefly showed this off in the video, but I also finally got back to making pizzas this month. Below we have a pesto, chicken, sun-dried tomato pizza along with a plain pizza.
I’m gonna keep on keeping on with the things I’m working on and I’ll see you in the next Wrapup.
A lot of my time this past month was taken up by travel and putting together a new 3D printer/enclosure but I was able to get a little bit done across a bunch of projects. I’ve also updated the about page on the website with the statuses of my major projects alongside some more website buttons of fellow Neocities users.
Plague Machine
Finally made some more progress on this scratchbuild. I still need to finish the terrain paste and I also want to try adding physical “rivets” to the thing using some small hemispheric beads. Previously I used an allen screwdriver to press some hexagonal divets into foam panels for bolts (see Kaiser Hedd Kannon) which are okay but don’t stand out all that well. It’ll be a grueling, tedious task to glue a crap ton of tiny beads all over this thing but it’ll definitely be worth it.
Jank Fighter
I should probably announce the name of that SECRET PROJECT I talked about last time. As written above, it’s called Jank Fighter, a 2D fighting game that’s super early in development so I won’t tell you too much about it. It’s a 4 button fighter (light/medium/heavy/special) being made in Godot. I’m working on the models/animations while a friend is in the gamedev mines.
Below are a couple of animations for Cubeguy, a playtesting character. Depending on how well he plays we might keep him in as a secret character. The first of the animations below is an old 5C (standing heavy) that I thought was trying to cram too much movement into too short a timeframe. It reads much more clearly when I scrub through it in the later part of the video. I do like the way the move looks so I’ll probably gonna recycle it into a super.
Next up is the new 5C. I’m a little iffy on the way the animation ends but other than that I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
I like how this move plays around with Cubeguy’s weird “anatomy” so I’d like to go back and redo the old 5A and 5B I showed off last month to be more like the below image.
I’m tempted to redo the walk cycle and other things but I’ll save that for after I’ve finished everything.
Hazardous Materials
HazMat (click here for more info on the comic) saw a bit of progress this month. I finished writing another scene for chapter 2 but I need to go over it with some friends since I’m kinda iffy on it. I feel like it kinda kills the tension I had been building up from the previous scenes but we’ll see.
Table Knight
I got a little bit of progress done on the Table Knight module I mentioned in last month’s Wrapup. More info on that on the Goblin Base website.
Time to Dye
Just yesterday (yeah that wasn’t June but whatever) I began dabbling in dying plastics for customized Transformers figures. The process involves boiling the plastic you want to recolor in water with dye. Some plastics took to the dye a lot more easily than others and I’m also going to have to go back and re-boil some parts in just water to try and undo some unintentional warping. Dying should help prevent paint chipping on parts like ball/friction joints, things that plug into other parts, and other tightly-toleranced stuff.
Last month I said I wanted to try and fix my sleep schedule and read more and uh yeah nah I don’t think I did either. I definitely want to get more animations for Cubeguy done this month alongside stuff for the Plague Machine.
Sometime last year I uploaded a recording of a labyrinth sorta game I made on a microcontroller. It was unlisted and only shared with a few friends but I figured I might as well share it to the public. It was made during a summer camp a good 7 or so years ago. If you want to take a look at the code let me know and I’ll throw it up on Github.
I gotta get back to doing more electronics projects at some point. I’ve got a funny microphone I need to finish and I also wanna try making animatronics. It would be really cool to make a big scratchbuild that can move around on its own but I gotta get some other stuff done first. I’ve got a massive backlog of stuff I’ve started and I’d like to start knocking things off that list.
