Blog Diary

What I've been into - June - August 2024

Wanted to dump some thoughts about stuff I've been into recently, pardon the mess.


Manga

I got back into reading manga consistently for the first time since like, 2017. I generally find reading kind of difficult (I don't have dyslexia but I'd say my struggle is similar) and manga was no exception, but I've managed to find some stuff that's resonates with me enough to be enjoyable, mostly romance manga.


謎の彼女X (Mysterious Girlfriend X)

I don't remember why I started reading this, I think it popped into my head one day and I decided to give it a shot, but I was pleasantly surprised. For those who aren't familiar, it's a highschool romance manga, but the thing that sets it apart from other highschool romance manga is that the main characters can read eachother's feelings by tasting eachother's saliva. Not kissing, just feeding it to eachother. After acclimating to this idea, it's actually a very sweet and honest depiction of teenage love, recounting wanting to get closer to your new partner but not yet knowing how to express those feelings due to lack of experience, so our main pair express those feelings telepathically through saliva. Aside from the drool tasting, there are other instances of unconvential intimacy in this manga that I find really fun and inventive, such as noticing moles on the skin of someone you like and the idea of counting all their moles, and later in the story (spoilers), the muse x artist relationship between pretty girl Suwano and photography nerd Hasegawa. The art is also lovely, Ueshiba Riichi clearly loves drawing elaborate cityscapes and the character's faces are so cute. The manga does drag down in the middle with a silly multi-chapter mistaken identity subplot, a lot of "are they cheating on me?" misunderstandings and overall the main couple's relationship progressing at a snail's pace, but I'd say it's still worth a read. I was first made aware of this manga via Hazel's (unfortunately now deleted) video on Ookuma-chan Flashback by the same mangaka. While I don't think that one is particularly my cup of tea, I'd like to check out their first manga Discommunication sometime.


気になってる人が男じゃなかった (The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All)

As of writing, I literally just started reading this (up to chapter 9) but already I can say the concept and art are so in line with my tastes it makes me feel sick just looking at it. the dramatic foreshortening, the brat green background, the varied and expressive character designs, the futch x gyaru pairing,.. once it's finished it's probably gonna be my favourite of all time.



Games


Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Euphoric 3D platforming, the joy of movement is on full display here and as a diehard Jet Set Radio fan, I couldn't have asked for anything better. I love how they've modernised the gameplay by making movement smoother and hitting the ground during a combo something potetially rewarding with the ability to maintain it by manualing. Once you get the hang of how to keep your combo going and momentum up, going for those "XYZ Tricked" steam achievements is such an exciting endeavor. It's so good that it has drawbacks, as unfortunately it makes the JSR games kinda hard to come back to quickly as they offer far less versatility of movement. If Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is Super Mario Odyssey, JSR is Jumping Flash. Stylistically, BRC is extremely faithful to JSRF. It doesn't try to divert only fall into cringey cyberpunk tropes like other JSR-inspired games have done. The story and characters are appropriately campy. The soundtrack is far more contemporary than that of JSR, trading in the breaks and alt-rock for house and dubstep, but it's still jam packed with bangers.

P.S. Not really related but I need to get this unpopular opinion off my chest somewhere: I've always found Hideki Naganuma's tracks to be the weakest link in JSR's soundtracks, sorry! Also, Guitar Vader are slept on.


Movies


Project X

Project X - A bit of a love it or hate it kind of movie, and I love it. The 80s school comedy "causing highly consequential chaos in exchange for one awesome day but it's ok because you're an upper middle class teen" premise taken to it's logical conclusion, piss and vomit edition. Not a fan of some of the uh... words used and actions taken by the characters (one of the main reasons why one might hate this), but if you do what I do and headcanon it as satire it goes down so much easier, Todd Phillips' involvement be damned. Where this movie really shines is how it works as an experience. Once the party kicks off, it really kicks off. Roughly 50 minutes of cutting between 2-5 second long shots of gnarly shit happening, shot with the flash on, on handheld digital cameras of varying quality, set to the soundtrack of only the most obnoxious (positive connotation) of the "2009-2012 Mainstream EDM Golden Era". Time to breathe is given in little moments of story development between the main characters, which upon conclusion are interrupted by a major instance of property damage, and then it's back into the chaos. It's pure energy, sometimes it almost makes you feel like you're there.

Cinema.



Music

This is going to be a bit of a lightning round since I've been listening to a lot of music but I don't really know how to write about it. I'll link to places where you can listen for free, so check them out for yourself!


Charli XCX - Brat

2024 pop album of the year by a country mile in combined terms of quality and cultural impact. I was pretty lukewarm on Charli's music before this, I heard and liked what she had done with Sophie because I love Sophie, along with a handful of her other songs but I wouldn't have called myself a Charli fan. I happened to hear brat on release day and fell in love almost instantly, I think partly because it was the sound I wanted to hear at the time but also it's just really good. So many amazing moments on here. This album is very straight forward in almost every aspect: No elaborate metaphors, synths are loud and clear, hell even the album cover was probably made in MS paint. In the moody alt-pop malaise that is the current state of pop music, Brat is a very refreshing return in spirit to the electropop golden age of the early 2010s, my personal favourite era of pop that I'm old enough to be nostalgic for. I have since gone and listened to Charli's back catalog and found a lot more that I enjoy, but I'd still say Brat is easily her best so far. I look forward with excitement to what she does in the future.

charlixcx · BRAT

What's in rotation
Upcoming releases I'm keeping an eye on
  • Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk - Releases August 23rd Heard the singles and loved them a lot! I'm new to them, so I'm waiting for when this comes out to really get into their music.
  • Confidence Man - 3AM (La La La) - Releases 18th October First heard Now U Do in a store and then coincidentally, again later that same day on a twtich stream along with I Can't Lose You, insanely infectious house music and they're from my city too! Based on the singles, I'm gonna need this new album injected directly into my veins.

Published 12th of August 2024



Failed and abandoned projects - Volume 1

Sometimes things I work on get abandoned for whatever reason or just don't pan out how I wanted them to. Here's a collection of them, with some commentary. I think a lot of issues here can be chalked up to me being fairly new at blender, I've been learning it at a leisurely intensity for a little over a year if you subtract some extended breaks I've taken. This isn't everything I've done, but just some selections that I have thoughts about.



My most recent project as of writing this, from early June 2024. I tried to recreate one of the parfaits from Angelic Pretty's Cream Soda Mermaid print, with a cel shaded look like the original artwork. I think I got pretty close to succeeding here, but two things were holding me back. 1 - I didn't feel like going and hand-drawing the little shell decoration or the text on it, and 2 - I just couldn't get the glass to look a way I was happy with. Aside from doing this tutorial, this was actually my first venture into making something in this cel-shaded sort of style. With some more practice and learning better techniques I could probably ace this. I was really happy with how the ice cream came out, and the soda and ice cubes look pretty good too. I'm definitely going to keep making things and experimenting with this kind of shading.



This one's from a while ago, probably mid-late 2023? I got pretty close to getting something resembling finished, I mostly needed to add some decals to the AC exhaust and add some borders to the tatami mat panels. My main problem I think was I didn't really have a plan for this, so I lost motivation. Maybe with some tweaking I could've imported it into second life or something. Some of the ways I went about making this were kind of amatuerish or unoptimal, and it could've done with more weathering to make it look "real". I'll probably remake this one day if I ever need a game asset or something.



From (early?) May 2024. This is a character I kitbashed together from things I downloaded from Deviantart which, from a legal perspective, shouldn't be on there as they're ripped from games. Not that I care though, here's the links for you to download them yourself. (character base, I can't find the outfit but I believe it was uploaded by this user, hair) I wanted to go for a Y2K kind of style (examples, A B C) but I reeaaalllly did not set up my environment and render settings for that. Honestly I just got kind of lazy. There's bones of something really cool here but it just didn't quite come together in my opinion. My favourite of the bunch is the last one, I love crazy angles.



From late May/early June 2024. Inspired by water-based toys that were popular in the 2000s such as Sea Monkeys, as well as really garish fish bowl arrangements. I didn't have a clear idea in mind, I was kinda just messing around and knew this wouldn't be my magnum opus or anything. Doing the rigid body physics to get all the marbles to the bottom and staying there was kind of a pain in the ass, as if you have too many small objects like that, they'll start ignoring some of the boundaries you've put and you have to go digging in the settings to fix it. As you can probably tell, I love the glass BSDF lol. It does not look like it's made of plastic. if this was something I was taking more seriously, I would've tweaked that. Fish model by 7PLUS on Sketchfab.



From January 2024. I actually like this one a lot, but it's unfinished because I was planning to make the other 4 in this picture. I don't have much else to say about this one. Wagashi is really fun to make in blender, if you like sculpting and making pretty materials but are stuck in art block, I highly reccommend jumping on pinterest and searching for some wagashi to recreate. I didn't have to do any sculpting to make this but a lot of wagashi have details that would be great for sculpting practice.



Oh my goodness I nearly forgot to include this lol. My first attempt at a (99%) original character, from about a year ago? I was completely winging it design-wise, I started with an image from Settei Dreams to build off of, the one thing I didn't make myself. I was following this and this, which are great tutorials but require a lot of patience that I was running out of by the time rigging came around. My character can indeed move, but you can see there are some things I just didn't get right such as the hair and shoe buckles, and I got frustrated and gave up trying to fix them. I also intended to add more detail to her outfit but never got around to that either. In the end though, I'm quite proud of what I achieved with this and I'd like to give character modelling another shot sometime.



If any of these inspire you to make something similar or even rip it off completely, successful or not, please go ahead! One man's trash is another's treasure, and if I something I did encourages you to make art when you otherwise might not have, I view that as a win.


Published 8th of June, 2024

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Random thoughts

I'm happy :)


Listening to
Tove Lo · HEAT


Currently into
  • Listening to music
  • Daydreaming
  • Overanalysing
  • Neglecting my responsibilities


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