three albums

i straight up listened to almost no new music this month. i did add a bunch of new albums to my monthly playlist but most of them were kind of disappointing after a listen or two. im giving myself a break! vacation! if you really desperately need something, heres a sonic 3d / jet set radio vibes track i found on soundcloud:

halloween

i have a terrible habit of only getting my best halloween costume ideas on the 20th of october, but i also have a terrible habit of following through with whatever stupid project that's popped into my head. some friends had gone to a gig wearing wizard outfits and the concept of making one of the giant 100 gecs cloaks appeared before me, brought down from above and heralded by a choir of angels. "that shouldnt take that long", i thought, incorrectly.

_{the cloaks in question}

my initial thought was to do laura's (purple) cloak because cutting stars to sew to the cloak would be markedly easier than the music notes. my brother (a professional costume designer) thankfully told me i was being stupid and to just use fabric paint for the designs. i switched over the dylan's (yellow) cloak because it would behave better with paint and also give me a good excuse to make the iconic star hat

people recommended this pretty simple (and very cheap) simplicity pattern for the cloak. it's apparently a bit of a universal pattern and has a lot of use as a jedi costume alongside the tunic that's also in the bag. i haven't actually sewn anything in years but i found it pretty easy to pick up again. i also don't own an iron at the moment so don't judge my creased ass fabric

the whole garment was close to six metres of fabric which initially surprised me, but made a lot of sense when i saw the whole thing put together. the construction itself took five to six hours, but i haven't sewn in a couple of years so a not insubstantial element of the time was relearning how the machine worked and general inefficiency in my technique

next up, the music notes. i made a couple of cardboard templates and outlined them with sharpie. i initially filled them with a tulip fabric paint pen but the amount of bleed was pretty intense, and those pens do not hold very much ink, so i swapped to tulip soft fabric paint instead. thus began a 10h+ journey of painting at the dining table late into the night, but i think it was worth it

last up was the hat! i got the biggest pieces of yellow paper that spotlight sells and glued them to a really big piece of cardboard. my compass doesnt go the full 25cm radius so i picked a centre point, marked about fifteen points per quarter revolution, then sketched in the gaps. i also put 14 even points on the inside with a cute lil X=(πD)/14, extended every second point out to the outside of the brim, then joined the dots

and here's the whole thing put together! the photo sucks immense ass and the cloak is incredibly creased but yknow, you get the idea. i'd probably put some kind of clasp and even consider adding a lining if i was to wear the costume again, but i got my two nights out of it and thats what's most important. the whole thing folds up super small which is an extra bonus. it'll probably get dragged out again at some future event

metaphor refantazio

atlus's new not-persona game came out last month! my satisfactory obsession has unfortunately impeded my play time, but at least on an aesthetic front they have absolutely knocked it out of the park again. The changes to the persona / smt formula also seem hopeful so far - each player turn is split into three "actions" which can be used by each character in the player's team. skipping a turn only uses half of an action, as does a successful super effective strike. personas are swapped out for "archetypes" which just work like a classic jrpg job system. theres also an overworld combat system similar to the insta-kill from persona 5 but with more depth for encountering stronger enemies (and available from the beginning of the game)

straftat

i absolutely despise how the player characters look in this game, but you're thankfully going so quick that it's rarely an issue. straftat is a cute little 1v1 arena game with titanfall style slidehopping and wallriding, as well as an extremely quick time to kill. the game is somewhat intentionally visually unappealing in a y2k way and theres a (small) atmospheric dnb soundtrack which blends amazingly. oh, and the game is free, with a $7 map pack as a one time purchase. i've had an extremely good time slotting straftat into the end of a night on voicechat with some friends and i'm glad the movement shooter still seems to be going strong

dandadan

yeah look, this was always going to be good. science saru love making cool out-there animation and dandadan is an out there story. almost every episode has left me absolutely buzzed, and i've also loved swampjawn's breakdowns on all the little extra details that i might have missed

negaposi angler

i describe this one to my friends as "ikiru but about fishing instead of civil service" which isn't entirely correct, but does cover the broad strokes. i expected to watch two or three episodes of this show and then give up, but it has been surprisingly engaging and i've been on top of each weekly release as its come out! the show's main character is debt ridden and recently diagnosed with brain cancer, but instead of moping around and continuing his sedentary life, a lucky encounter introduces him to a group of friendly fishers and the convenience store they all work at. the story so far has mostly been deep dives into each secondary characters' lives / personalities and there hasnt been loads in the way of core plot movement, but i'm completely bought in nevertheless

make it yourself ebook

https://makeityourself.org/

this is just kinda nifty! the guy who put it together, NODE, is a continuous source of interesting tech ideas, but this book extends past that to all kinds of diy projects including fashion, furniture and games. it's totally worth having a look over, if nothing more than to just explore the world of online makers

kill six billion demons

(link to the comic)

holy shiiiiit! tom bloom makes the extremely nifty ttrpg lancer and started writing a sci-fantasy comic back in 2013. tom's art style has heavy linework in a way that felt a little almost slightly unappealling to begin with, but it gives detail to their designs that is refreshing after your average manga or western webcomic. the world of k6bd is rich and complicated and absolutely pulls you in, along with some masterful action and breathtaking location spreads. there are six "books" in total, with the sixth close to completion, and i blasted through the last four in a 24 hour span. ive found a lot of webcomics hard to get into recently but this is not that

tinderkell

(link to the comic)

i also stumbled onto this cute little comic the other day! it's got a big prequel vibe which i enjoy, and while it doesnt have the same feeling as k6bd i think it also has potentialy to be a fun little romp!

hiby m300

new audio stuff! these little hiby mp3 players are 250 aud on aliexpress, aka cheap enough that i can get one out of curiosity as my little silly purchase for the month. i love my ipod but its been acting up a little these days, randomly crashing about once a day. it also is pretty particular about the files that you give it - the custom firmware technically supports all kinds of lossless filetypes, it's basically a small phone with no camera or sim tray, and sporting a headphone jack and sd card slot. the player running android means you have loads of control of how you use it - i'm using poweramp as my player and pocketcasts for podcasts, and i can sync music wirelessly with syncthing and scrobble automatically when i turn the networking back on. ive only had it for a couple of weeks so i don't want to make a hard recommendation, but it's treating me pretty well so far!

youtube speed round

this cute little animation is absolutely gorgeous! i think they used blender / some other 3d tool to handle some of the more complicated shots, but a huge amount of hand effort has been put into the lovely painterly feel. i also appreciate that theres implications of a deeper story here, but they leave some of it to the viewers imagination

i feel like ive really cultivated a recent obsession with drawing hands, brobably from bangtanghan and this animation totally tickles that same itch. it's also super long for an indie project! and makes that absolute most of it. i found it legitimately intriguing how these boys were gonna get out of it, and i really enjoyed all the little illustration touches (like using different styles of screen tone to depict different levels of shadow). it's fun! watch it!

this flavour of video becoming a fast favourite of mine; theres either more people making these less produced, more open and genuine thoughts on the internet, or theres been some kind of algorithmic shift causing youtube to recommend them more often. regardless, this video really helped me when i was having a crappy week to remind me what i'm worth and the things i should value in my life

the psx style continues to be really cool! i'd love to mess with it one day!

pudjam667 has a youtube channel now!!! they've been posting their eccentric audio experiments on reddit for a long time, but getting to watch them step through their process is incredible (and surprisingly well produced)

this is less a reference to an individual video that i'm super into and more just general excitement for an upcoming game that looks extremely cool. 3d puzzle platformers are pretty neat in general and i love the gravity manipulation angle here - the developer's use of community feedback will hopefully create an experience that is legitimately challenging without being overwhelming

twitter artist speed round

chee fong

link

chee fong's grasp on lighting is seriously understated, i love the diffused lighting coming from the screens and the way that the pipes start to pale out as they stretch up into the fog

link

i'm endeavouring to do more intentional fundamentals study in 2025, and this is one of the things that really inspired me to move down that direction. birds are super cool! and id love to be able to draw them well

link

i literally just said i want to focus on fundamentals two lines ago, but another big goal of mine is to be able to doodle a bunch of ocs without having to expend immense amounts of brain power and chew up an entire afternoon! so maybe i can call this kind of loose drawing a secondary goal for 2025

🧑‍🔬 NERD CORNER 🧑‍🔬

youtube's been doing some sneaky shit! i normally mess with embeds quite a bit for size, styling and rss functionality, but ive started making some changes to the src itself. check the raw untouched code for the pud makes headphones embed:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Ts-gPltdFi4?si=KS2xvi3nR6QB21cy" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

note the ?si=KS2xvi3nR6QB21cy on the end of the src. this is a source identifier, which lets youtube make links between users that clicked on this video and users that are trying to share it (me). this is a pretty annoying breach of privacy after requesting a nocookie link, but its thankfully easy to remove