Hi BA users, another year has started and I’m already depressed about my future that brings me an existential crisis that kills me my motivation to continue on this very sketchbook among other things, but not doing anything (for me that’s staring at something nostalgic for a long time to reexperience a fading memory) doesn’t give me progress. I don’t know how this year will go, at least until it’s finished, so might as well make this sketchbook when I can at an appropriate time.
You might find:
3D works made using Blender
Concepts for the 3D works above (probs paper)
My thought process (may be unrelated to my works)
And so much more! ←Bold claim
January (recent events)
It’s been a pretty busy few days, no more work till 08, and much to prepare for my return to my parent’s prefecture. Been shopping around the city, looking for good clothes (mainly 古着屋s for coats) and a bit of a weekend with friend.
Been taking time off this platforum ← and taking more time outdoors. Not much activity until the first weekend after 01/08, sorry for those who wanted more works from me. Horray me, I’m not scared of people!
/ A bit more afterthought:
Flying on the first day of the year was something. Oh, well, what am I kidding! My butt hurt and I just wanted to get home quickly! But the sun was out, and it was definitely welcoming up in the sky. Felt a bit of sadness as usual, and hoping to get back to lonely Tokyo again. A bit of a broken perfectionist of a city it is. Then again, that’s just how a failing perfectionist like me, is. It’s a beautiful place in its own way.
Anyways, here are some pics I snapped before take-off. I only realized how empty I felt as I look back in time, oh how little I’d changed.
This is a hint about what I’m currently working on (since July of last year! Oh the rush!). Rolls-Royce? How bout a hybrid of a few + a bit of my own designs? My initial goal was to finish that Jet Engine project before today, but oh well.
Notoriously late me. No seriously, I’m late for everything. Had a record of going to school late every day when I was 10. Time passes and little do I change. Hopefully, I can wake up a bit more this year and look at tasks with wide-open eyes.
Feeling empty? Well, fill me up with new memories! Hopefully, my data (memory) loss stays minimal.
Oh yes! I am sorry you’re already depressed, but you pulled yourself together and made this space, so that’s something! I’m excited about it, especially since you’re a thinky person, and I know it will be interesting. No pressure though. (Nice pun – platforum!)
What I’ve been hiding since last year’s July. 2023-01-21T15:54:00Z
Hi again. I’ve gone on new year’s vacation and met old friends, etc. Surprising how little people change. But then again, most of them never moved houses, so it’s only natural, I thought. People always look for comfort, i.e., less change and less physical or mental work. I do this all the time as well, thusly. Procrastination at its finest. To kill the roadblock to publishing, I’d like to betray myself here to show you just what I’ve been up to. I still can’t believe I’m not finished with this yet. Original approx. time was a month, and it has been, well, several.
↑↑ Jet Engine “02” based on reference and imagination, at the point of Dec.14 of last year.
The time I’ve spent so far:
= Monitoring this project time by TimeMe =
PROJECT: Jet Engine 02 Prog1
ALL TIME: 12 d 15 h 23 m 50 s
ACTIVE TIME: 7 d 0 h 31 m 18 s
WORK TIME: 2 d 16 h 29 m 29 s
RENDER TIME: 1 d 7 h 24 m 59 s
Mind you that a lot of that “work time” was me flying around it, desperately trying to think up new ideas.
It began as an “ooh, that looks easy to make and cool” kind of mindset, as I aimed at creating something very detailed and of beauty. I began working on this one, about halfway through July of last year.
I made one jet based only on my mind, which was, in actuality, going to be a sonic weapon of sorts, but as I went on making it, I realized that it was better off just making a jet engine. Something that really has some reference out there, and if I just change some places, it can have a bit of originality.
See-through, ooh how cool! The hull is too thick, it probably won’t leave the ground. I have only criticism to give this work, despite knowing that it was intended to be a weapon. Funny how it didn’t change much in my “Jet Engine 02”, and I guess my mind just can’t keep up with the fact that I got it wrong twice, so it just shuts up. I can only say that it was decent for a first attempt while dragging thoughts that are just floating in my mind, that I don’t, in reality, tend to.
I have some other progress renders of the 02, here are some:
It’s surprisingly hard to find blueprints. Ones that have actual numbers and measurements, so some things in my work are guessed, but put neatly within the believable realm. The numbers are pretty neat, too. Except, of course, for the imperfections +/- .000001~.000999mm. If you use millimeters as your unit, it’ll start to happen. Even when you put the exact numbers into a field. The worst part is that it only shows as a 0 until you click on it to show the rest of the digits. One of too many of my pet peeves.
"Pinned Nanometer Nails" in action
↑↑Jul.30, 2022, within my humbled PC.
I don’t really know what the issue is, might as well show it as a “0” so I can feel way better. Just your typical perfectionist, but it adds up, and when you realize, things will be just a little off, it takes you back to the numbers that you can’t fix. If Blender had a system where if you put in 0, it cancels everything after that out after the calculations finish after the number is set, I think you can avoid a few itches. So every bit of rotation caused by glitches (I guess) will be canceled unless you actually put the numbers in fields.
I digress, but the name “Pinned Nanometer Nails” comes from the fact that something big as a nail is pinned down in a nano-awkward way, that seems so tiny, but regardless brings me into a foggy field, making me progress through mental friction, significantly slowing me down. It’s just like my room right now, cold if you turn off the heater, feeling dull and thirsty if you turn it on. There is no compromise decision unless you want to dampen the whole place with a cheap humidifier. The keyword is cheap. My place makes me want to quit everything, and my PC/programs are only pushing me to do so.
I’m proud of myself, mostly because it turned out pretty nicely as a Dalí picturesque ness, but also because of how I dealt with my perfectionist being a gatekeeper to my endless possibilities for the fact that I’m not skilled enough to tackle such tasks. I still hate imperfections though.
Bit off-topic, but I’m also working on two other projects, one is a ”電柱”, a Japanese electrical pole that will go nicely with the scene I have in mind for my jet engine here, and also a car with a front face that I saw in my dream:
Said dream
Which was a dream, where me and my imaginary friends (I have a lot, enough to do a barbeque party with now, meat fibers. ←which is a Mark Zuckerberg joke where he’s having a BBQ with his tiny friend group, meaning I don’t actually have that many friends. Trust me, my weird sense of humor doesn’t stop there Please don’t tell anyone) are running from a typical huge tyrannosaurus rex and finding a multi-story parking lot, where we find a lot of unique looking vehicles, ranging from farm tractors to SUVs to supercars, with faces that have a lot of oval-shaped headlights. I picked the fast-looking pickup truck, which I decided not to make, instead, I’m making a typical sports car because it’s easier. Later iterations are to be not promised, but you can dream.
After the said dream, I began another rant.
which I also have decent progress on (this rant) but will only probably show after I’ve finished. It will also go very neatly with my clean jet engine test room/old shack/you get it, everything else. I hope it doesn’t turn into one of those “supercars” renders with a background that doesn’t make sense, with a character in front for no reason. I really liked car renders, despite how everyone says how easy they are to make, of course until they began doing only that. It’s every child’s dream to make their own car, and now, mine too. But in my mind, following instructions from someone else to make something yours and unique, gives me the sense that they never really cared about uniqueness in the first place. Call me strict or hating, but really, does that render really make you feel like you’ve made something yourself? Publishing it and calling it yours is different from making it yourself, says a person who’s trying to make a typical test chamber for a jet engine, but see, no one I know makes that. It’s my knee-jerk reaction to things that everyone does, that makes me breathe less and cringe so hard that my spine starts to vibrate. I really hate being the same as others, don’t I? Even if the job becomes so much more tedious, I’ll do it my way. Ijust,Ijustcan’t.Ican’tbreathe.
Sorry for my lack of stable ground, I’m like this all the time, only really knowing what happened in the past decaying memories, that also have enough dreams and false memory to stray far from reality. Reality!?
What was I talking about? Oh yes, well actually, I can’t decide. I’m trying to cramp in details worth a couple of its own topics, and my mind is quite messy right now. I should’ve done this, and that, while not exactly happy with what I’ve done in reality.
I should’ve saved that dream car file I was working on. When I switched to solid view, it crashed. Don’t expect any updates on the new file, I’m gonna head out for a moment. The headlight proportion was just right! I can’t believe I didn’t just make a messy save in my Blender folder where everything else is neatly organized, felt like it would be tedious afterward, never thought it would crash with a seemingly simple command! ←making it very tedious indeed.
↑↑As you can see here, a human mind can have many errors and contradictions while keeping it seemingly very “foggy” so that it can rest at night, full of dreams that can relax and organize memories, that will also replace some memories, making them false from time to time. Drunken society is drunk because everyone does the same thing every day, putting themselves in a gray zone thinking if they really should be doing what they do, but they say it’s an unspoken rule or whatever to justify their social needs, which is to never leave the herd. I’m drunk because I can be on a single thought, expanding beyond the horizon, stretching it beyond recognition so that even if the ending conclusion is a horrifying reality that I’ve conveniently avoided due to personal complexes and conflicts against my personality, I can sleep well and dream again.
I should be full of ideas at this point, from dreams and all, in the shape of a ton of sketches and pictorial books, ready to use as assets, but I don’t write them down because it starts as a messy mind dump, and the more I draw and write the more I stray from my original idea. The mind indeed, was a very foggy place whether I make it intentionally foggy, or not. Am I not in control?? The wall between my imagination and reality is a hard one to get things through it.
Speaking of walls, I listened to “Comfortably Numb” - Pink Floyd while staring at the image at the top, and it fits pretty well. The dreamy mind fog goes along with the song title, as well IMO. Not only just that song but with songs from “Goodbye Cruel World” to “The Show Must Go On”.
In fact, I listened to all of “The Wall”, despite it being a prog rock album that changes its tone as it travels through its worldview, but hey, I never understood people who pick popular songs and listen only to them, because you know what? The album is supposed to be one long story! By the way, I got recommended this album when I said that the school system we have today lacks even the potential it can have, but recently when I actually listened to the full album, I realized that this album was only a fraction when it came to telling how school was back then, more so about the world they lived in as a whole. But my father (he was probably just laughing at me, considering how real work can be, but I’ll take the more likely and “like him” chance that he was trying to slip into my age to feel what he did back then) and I weren’t entirely wrong, since art such as music can hold up for a long time, being translated and bent into reality as we change a society that brings its merits and downsides, fitting metaphors and such into new problems that conveniently looks as if it were a Neo Natzi version of the original. Which, is part of the album’s story, as you will see… (I think) (In my mind)
Sorry about that. I also had a fever during my vacation, which indeed made me “comfortably numb”. ←They really nailed the “my hands felt just like, two balloons” and “A distant ship smokes on the horizon” parts.
Consider this a diary/journal, where I put down random day remarks whenever something happens in my “being an artist time”, with doodles and ideas in my mind that in fact are paired with the daily happenings, so I don’t really know why they make them separate. I’ll put a more detailed art-breakdown worthy work-in-progress kind of timeline-based topic. A probable good example would be @piranha4D’s last year’s entry, Piranha4D's Learning and Practice 2022. But making all projects separate, and I’ll probably link them here for the progress report.
To make it simple for TL;DR peoples:
Finish the Jet Engine 02
Make a scene for it to be showcased in (one for the clinically clean test room look, and the other for an old storage room look, ←I’ll put the 電柱 within this one, I think.
Finish the 電柱 (Electric Pole with cool-looking modules and electrical lines, 電柱 maniacs will love it)
Off topic but also finish the third project named “dream car” for now, and I intend to make it a separate scene, possibly a multi-story parking lot, where I found it in my dream.
Not in order of course, just the way it goes smoothly as I can make it.
The thoughts about time:
During the making of this “Jet Engine 02”, I felt like I’m losing time at a very fast pace. It told me how my job was restricting greatly my “artist” work environment, how that keeps me away from basic human interactions, and how its repetitive nature, coupled with my age and long hours, makes me feel myself skimming across the face of the timeline faster than everyone else. I don’t seem to be making enough progress to do all the artistry works that I have in plan (with more to come, obviously) while keeping up with my life, trying to find someone to be with, trying to find the time for my basic needs of human interactions (this one, friends), and still having the time to relax and do nothing.
This thought only makes me more depressed as I said in my this original topic, as I slide into a new year where the famous virus and war and other world events such as people being very reluctant to spend their precious time with each other increasingly as time passes, still being a worldwide problem, making me worried about the current situation of myself. More than offending others, more than the virus itself, and more than the typical modern world problems such as global warming, which seem to attract the attention of kids in their teens. The more I try to tackle my problem with time and how I use it to my advantage, trying to enrich the time spent on whatever, the more I feel like I can’t possibly do anything to change my stance, my position as a worker who will die for his company. When it comes to anything I do including my job, I take it too seriously as a professional and perfectionist, as I see the immediate problem being the eyes that go all over me when I walk down the street. As I started my new journey beyond childhood, I began to think as one worker in a quiet society where no one talks about the obvious problems, where everyone tries to think otherwise, just trying to live life. As a mobile traveler type person, I find that very alarming and self-deprecating as well as the actual destruction of my mental self. It’s the exact opposite of what I want to be, a free person, only restricted by his own goals and finish lines. But I know very well at this point that reality is not what everyone wants, and that people will kill to be in my position. But what people don’t talk about, is the sheer time that’s spent, staying in one place and going through every day as they did their last.
Change is what I live for, and the difference and distance from others are what I aim for. I will always be on the “creative side” where people try to change reality by inspiring others with their art, never going with them.
As I am running with all my strength facing the opposite way from what I want to be, as time carries me, I can only feel so helpless. It’s not the fact that I need to do something else, it’s that I haven’t done anything else. It’s the fact that I’m such a weak person, that despite saying all this, I’m still on the side of drunken society. This thought only reinforces itself as I live on this unhealthy life, where I keep my problems to myself. This time, I can only hope for time to solve itself, while I get enough self-confidence and money to travel off. Being broke isn’t the tragedy, it’s being stuck and can’t widen my view to see other things as solutions. As 岡田斗司夫 said.
Forgive me, for I have nowhere else to say this, and please take this as an excuse for my long absence, as well as my notoriously late work. Until I find a good enough solution, I need to suffer more. The fact that I haven’t changed, is the very fact that I, as a human, instinctively think that this is the safest place to be. I haven’t suffered enough. That’s all.
For those who’ve already gone through this state, I know that this is only my problem, and please, just talk about how beautiful my Jet Engine 02 is, even if it’s not finished. I’ve already thought of what I can, so take this as a journal, from a person long gone. Like reading someone’s book long after they’ve passed, taking it only as an event that took place, not as a problem. I only see this place as that, not a mental clinic. It’s just my thoughts, and I know they’ll pass, I just wanted them to pass already, so hopefully, this makes me embarrassed when I upload it, it means, that at that point, it wasn’t such a huge problem after all. If I still feel the urge to fix something then, well, the fact stands that I haven’t suffered enough. I want to say only time will tell, but that’s what I’m losing. I really need to go outside, I’m already talking to myself again.
This is off-topic, but it was necessary IMO to connect the dots I’ve scattered like the child that I am.
For the phone users:
There. Now I feel much better. Don’t you? I mean I’ve stared at this thing for longer than any of you at this point, and I still feel relieved. I guess dreams are the only places I can feel most comfortable. Oh, wait… What in hell am I doing when I need to…!
Anyways, I’ll finish my rant for today here, and I hope you’ve enjoyed your reading time haha.
More on the Jet Engines and cars and poles later, as I will make a detailed post about the process of how to make them, a real reader’s time-worthy art-breakdown that will be! Until then, ta-ta.
Hannibal Lecter was a great series! Okay, I’ll stop. 2023-01-21T20:58:00Z ←Wow that was long.
Aha, now I see @joseph what you said about paragraphs, I can’t leave a line empty to separate text into blocks when in “Hide Details” mode! Okay, note to self.
I did enjoy my reading time; it was nicely thinky. And the jet engine – that is indeed beautiful, what a lot of intricate detail.
If I were to monitor how much time my blendering takes I’d probably stop working altogether, it’d be so depressing. I have to basically ignore that time flies faster and faster the older I get so that the negative feelings of how much I waste don’t debilitate me. Because heck, whether I fret about it or not won’t change the speed of passage at all, it just means I waste more time fretting. :wry grin:. If only that knowledge stopped the fretting…
Thanks! Lol at my age thinking about time should look pretty pointy, like looking at a scared animal that’s being petted nicely.
Thanks! I too, for my lack of reluctance, feel that these things are indeed magnificent. I’ve always wanted to fly, and these things, look like they’re from a dream world, bringing me in…
I’ll make sure to add clouds to my scene!
The “Vehicle in my Dream” Project 2023-02-11T08:59:00Z
Another explosive output from me, as I’ve come to the point in a project again, where I make it halfway or less through it and look and go “Hey, that looks good! Aand now I’m out of ideas.” As far as my designing goes, I don’t see the whole picture most of the time. You’d say blocking out roughly, in the beginning, is a good way to start, but how would you do it without even the silhouette in mind? Well, I can’t. I’m so confident in my design that once I dream up part of it, I assume it’d be easy to fill in the empty spaces. But obviously, I can’t, and therefore use a blueprint of an existing model in real life. I don’t like that approach myself, but what can you do to progress otherwise? Back to the drawing board? I’d say look at its current state from afar, and appreciate what I’ve got.
↑↑Project name “Dream Car 01,” currently being worked on
I know I said I’ll save this for later blah blah blah, but my eyes are artistically dead already so I’d like to take them on a break for recalibration.
I do talk about the dream I saw this type of car in, here in my last post:
But this isn’t close design-wise, to what I actually saw. The only part that I took away from the dream was the individual dual headlights. The dream version had more than just 4, and it wasn’t even a sports car in the first place. But I decided I’d go in this direction because it seemed easier, and quite a bit of fun. The dream ver. had a lot more headlights, and was a pickup, FYI.
Showing this project off this early isn’t really promising for me. I still have the “Jet Engine 02” on hand, and also the environment that goes with it, whilst it also cutting across all the other projects that I’ve put “on hold,” which for normal people, is “kept safely in storage for time to go past its sad sarcophagus.” For constantly sleepy me who stares at the monitor for who knows how long, it’s not much of a big deal, but in reality, as always, I’m disappointed, but enough of that.
All I have to do is do a couple of push-ups and keep a very healthy diet! Keep cool, not cold, damn it!
I’m gonna head out for dinner now, or for me, I don’t know. My time of day has gone around and around.
I’m back roughly 30 minutes from departure, feeling rather soft and awake.
Hot canned coffee won’t keep me up for long, but some Dr. Pepper and some Gin would help when the time comes. I’m now in a “TV listener” mode, where I hear but do not necessarily see the screen. A child watching boring news TV with his parents, that’s what. And it really makes me doze off.
Anyway, watching car stuff stripped from television and repackaged up the internet for reference is, narrow guided. It’s infinitely impossible to make my models pass real-life quality checks, and there is no end to perfecting every millimeter of it (yes). It brings me up to the front to gaze at all the detail I don’t really care to recreate, at all. Yes, I’ve looked at the interiors of your favorite car renders, and not much was inside, really. What I can do though, is look at a wide variety from the old to the new and realize that this isn’t an aeroplane, so it can have some uniqueness and still be functional. Aerodynamics is one thing, and keeping a consistent design flow is another, but combine the two, and then you’ve got a decent start. Though for me it was only a start from head to rear, and it seems to have hit a roadblock.
Now, I know what you’d think. You would, it’s the nose. Feels like an F1, probably not practical in an urban setting. You’re right, it’s just horrible if you want to take it out for a stroll just to go buy some groceries, and that air duct must take up so much space from the driver and codriver. Instead, it’s a concept car. I’ve seen how it goes when you drive something like a Ferrari over a little city bump, and it’s just painful to even hear it. So instead of scraping your carbon fiber body (I know it’s a plastic bumper, just keep me in the supercar production manager’s feeling), I think I’ll make a shorter clam shell for your city car setting. Lightweight, interchangeable with ease, and takes up way too much space in your expensive garage. So luxurious!
I don’t want to put a wing at the rear, but this “boxy” constant line at the sides really begs for one. I’m not going to give it, I’m going to change the body line behind the doors. I don’t like the flashiness of it, but I don’t like coupes as well. Coupes are a bit, well you know, too round and off to the side when it comes to track-ready cars. I’d go through the middle ground, like an F40. I’ve actually taken parts from the F50, and it fits quite well. IMO, not as flashy and pointy as a Zonda, but still on the racetrack compared to say a Honda Today. In terms of design, of course. I’d take the F40 any day over an F1 car. I’d like to make something passable as a toy for the rich, parked in a painful gravel lot for some reason, whilst being able to sit beside an F1 on the track without being intimidated.
I said that making a simple car in Blender is easy and that everyone says so as well, in my last post. It is, actually. You just need to get used to the subdivision surface modeling techniques, which feel a lot off. It was hard trying to connect the shapes from the bonnet to the windscreen since the edge flow was very different. I had to apply the sub-d to the middle piece, and bridge it manually. I can’t quite grasp how people find it “fine” to just move polygons into space without grid snap, whilst clipping through mesh where it’s not visible. It’s just not my modeling taste. Precision is out the window, but at least it can be symmetrical.
Again I will be making a detailed topic after I finish this thing. I will probably try something new with a new toy I’ve purchased recently. Look forward to that. Oh boy! Speed. I want to make a tiny F1 now. Gotta catch up on my preferred progress now.
BTW, I’ve got some progress in my real life as well, and I’d say that human interactions, whilst being essential, are quite overrated and fantasized at times. 2023-02-11T11:35:00Z
Really? I don’t think that designing a realistic concept car in Blender (or any software, even Alias, which seems to be a main choice of professionals) is easy, though that’s not really based on my own modeling experience which is limited to very low poly cars. Sure, they are easy to me now, but they’re so far from those realistic renders I see other people post of cars that they’re not really in the same world. I probably could follow a tutorial for an existing car now, but I don’t know that I could invent a car.
It’s kinda interesting to think about how to do it though.
Blocking is meant to allow you to a) define a composition by laying out the major shapes of your scene, or b) outlining your object roughly so you have a starting mesh with an approximate shape, which you then refine bit by bit. Even if you don’t have a definite outline in mind, you can probably rough out the shape to a really basic degree – an elongated blob that’s longer than it’s wide, and wider than it’s high. And then start pushing vertices around to make it look better – it’s funny coming from me who’s scared of sculpting real things, but I am not scared of pushing a few vertices around. I am not good at inventing something from whole cloth, but I am good at changing something bit by bit so it’ll be closer to what I have vaguely in mind. I’m more of an editor than a creator. I often switch into sculpt mode just to roughly shape something organic. I wonder whether sculpting the concept wouldn’t be a good way to get started; didn’t traditional car designers use to work in clay? They’d start with sketches, of course, and I am skipping over that step because I can’t draw.
And then when your sculpt looks vaguely like what you have in mind, then you can retopologize it, or overlay it with curves that’ll be easier for fine control.
As to what amount of detail to put in, or where to go from where you are – I think you might be suffering from a lack of defining your target audience. Maybe that should just be you? You’re not a car designer who has to come up with the next best-selling model in a very competitive market. It doesn’t have to be realistic in that sense. It just has to be real enough to represent your dream to yourself. If you want to make the inside look like an Art Nouveau grotto, by all means. If you want it minimalist and barebones, heck, why not. Make it a car you would love to drive on ideal roads that also don’t exist. It’s the idealized hyperrealism of so many movies where people exclaim how “realistic” it is – but no, actual life isn’t ever like Hollywood imagines.
I don’t know what I am talking about, of course. Just thinking out loud. And I like what I see of your car so far; that nose is something else, and I really like the headlights. It looks FAST and SMOOTH, like it’ll slip under the wind.
Thanks for the thoughts!
Yes, I was talking about following someone’s tutorial. It’s surprisingly hard for
me to fill in the empty places and add curvature to a straight body, and without distorting mesh, on the technical side.
I used ortho projections of vector art instead of blocking as a lot of people seem to do, and it works if you get the scale right
The front is the only place that came to mind, and imagining the back gets quite cloudy. I could put some huge nitro tanks on the top, but I’d want it to look slick.
I always try to do all of the designing in my head, which is a huge load on my brain’s memory.
I need a pencil and a piece of paper, or maybe I should do the tires first. I’m just lazy when it comes to drawings. Might have to do it anyway at this stage though.
I like your car design; it reminds me of the Speed Racer car and Dragonball, for some reason.
Are you seeing the design in your head? It always impresses me when I hear about other’s ability to visualize things never before seen, completely in their head. My visualization ability is so-so, however I have been improving with practice.
I find that doing something like @piranha4D mentioned really helps. And I would add: metaballs then convert to mesh, sculpting to shape, booleans to quickly add or subtract volume (booltool addon is a must, it’s included), and remeshing using the remesh modifier or sculpt-mode remesh. Also, as you mentioned, drawing.
I’d want to say yes, and that I can create shapes that I’ve never seen before in my head, but really, it’s all reference from existing things in real life. Shapes like circles are a good place to start. Put two side by side, make another circle within them, and you’ve made simple eyes. I can visually move the inner circle to make it look like it’s moving its iris, but that’s about it. Smooth curves between designs of the front and rear end of a car can only be done once I’ve made a base iteration in 3D or as a sketch. It needs fine-tuning to match the height for example in the front and back to connect it, whilst keeping a smooth stylish transition. I can visualize it in my head, but cannot put it down to paper in a single stroke as I’m not that fluent in translating it over to the real world.
Dreams
are a place where I get a ton of material from. Salvaged from different memories, interconnected in a huge mind storage network. It really is something. It’s like a huge library with columns or genres separating and organizing things. Flashbacks are another thing, that occurs when I’m listening to say a song I heard during the event. Music for me has a very strong association with the place, emotions, and events in the shape of memories. In fact, I automatically link musical structures with events, as I’m listening, such as driving down a long straight highway in America while the sun is going down: Western-ish folk stuff such as “Half of my Heart,” as well as linking similar music together, so that listening to a solo might move me to a song in a completely different genre, similarity only being the note arrangement. I often recall songs I haven’t heard in many years in this way, it really is a weird awesome experience.
An experience worth storing → Storage unit → Link with existing memories categorized in mood, shape, time period, color scheme, and more → Reused in dreams as “assets,” emotions, characters, environment, etc. → Store worth dreams to re-experience it as a sequel to the original dream → More times it goes through this cycle, the more it gets refined with each iteration, whilst salvaging the things that don’t really belong there (rarely happens nowadays).
The more times it goes through the dreaming phase, the stronger the memory, therefore, easier to put down on paper without picking up noise from real life as I’m drawing (such as being influenced by my own drawing that I cannot recall the original design anymore). But the original memory fades as I’ve edited it to make it better for myself (false memory). You can manually go over your memories to lose less information, but memory loss is inevitable. When I get used to the dream I see, I can go in and control what I do as a character of course, until my mind says “Oh, he realized, time to give him reality” and then abruptly ends it. But don’t forget daydreaming! Simply no end to my dreaming abilities.
So it’s just mixing and matching the theme until it resembles what you vaguely wanted Ex: a cool concept car that’ll do this and that!
I often refer to this system as “my own” computer, because there’s so much that resembles it.
CPU: Memory organization and recategorization unit (Handles Sound, Color, etc)
RAM: Short Term Memories waiting to be qualified as Long Term Memories
HDD: Storage Unit containing a categorized Network of Memories
GPU: Vizual Model Generator as well as overall Compositor
I mean, we both use electrons, so might as well.
There isn’t a cooling system onboard mine, so I need to sleep longer than most people. It’s kinda tiring. So-called deep sleep feels so good! That’s when I dream, but somehow dreaming takes away the heat that I’ve built up while I was intentionally coming up with the design I want. They often say it’s a reorganization of memory, it may be so. It feels like I’ve just gone through the dream’s experience, and it’s refreshing. 2x energy recovery of that of an ordinary nap. Easily.
The way I would explain the aesthetics of my dream would be “AI” work. It really is doing the same thing. Harvesting material from the internet and using its imaginative “brain matter” to morph it into a rough shape. You should’ve seen my face when I saw moving AI art from ”バーバパパ” as an animation for the first time.
It is as vague, too. That, coupled with the lack of skill in real life, makes it really hard to pull something out of a dream, but it certainly makes you stronger in the visual department, as well as editing shapes or even generating them at times. The energy consumption is high, still.
I’ve been lazy in real life that I cannot express my inner world well in 3D for example. Lack of skill. Too bad. Should’ve believed in my artistic self a lot more, I think a lot of times. But it’s too late. Still, better late than never!
Technical Correctness
comes from sheer experience. Creating mechanical joints without making them collide with the body for example, or making an air vent that makes sense, anything that might exist in the real world and actually have a possibility to work. Science Fiction. That’s what. I’ve seen some pictorial books and encyclopedias of say Star Wars, and it mechanically might make sense.
This is just getting references from real-world mechanical engineering, sheer determination to collect as much info on how it works, and morphing it to your design to fit the aesthetics. Unless you want to be an inventor, artists exist, because the real world exists. But oh how much joy you get from making something that makes sense, whilst matching your aesthetic desire is just, great.
Go to a construction site, for example. A lot of hydraulic machinery as well as other mechanical beasts. Take a look at their blueprints, really take in the details. Why is a certain piece in a certain place? This isn’t art, there’s an actual reason for it. Do this wherever you go, try to see the inner moving parts. Taking a walk? How about electrical poles? You can do it anywhere. The modern-day is full of all sorts of technology, and it’s fascinating. Go home and look up the inner mechanics. Make it a habit.
Thing is, everyone is doing this in their brains. It’s the core function of what I believe to be the memory-storing/sorting system. Everyone is doing it seamlessly in their lives, and I guess many don’t care about it. But if you care to organize your memories from time to time, you’d realize that they’re in fact connected to each other. Brain cell synapse connections get stronger each time you go over a certain thought process or circuit, and the more you go over it, the more important the brain thinks it is, therefore you can shortcut it quicker next time.
It’s just training as you said, anyone can do it, and it’s nothing special. But the dreams you see and the memories you stored and the creations you’ve made based upon them, are really something special. You shouldn’t think of it as training, but as a daily habit. Make it one. Otherwise, it’ll be very tough, and what kind of mind is it if you want to escape from your thoughts? I thought the mind was a retrieving place.
I’ve had the luck to be born into a family that moved quite often, so the sad feelings each time I left my friends and home, turned into a determination to keep track of important life events by connecting them for better search while going over them from time to time to re-experience a fading memory. Time passes, and my experiences of the past are ones I cannot bring to real life anymore. So I will keep them close, taking care of them, and why not borrow imaginative power from them in the meantime
Diary? Oh, that’s a bit, uh, tedious. I’m always lazy, so TBH my neck is connected with nothing but a thin strand at this point. But I do think that my memory became stronger when I don’t rely on paper as a way of external storage. Hopefully, my storage never gets full, but yeah, not much hope.
I think I’ve overexplained it a bit too much again, but thanks for letting me have a go at it. It was very much enjoyable, trying to phrase things that (seemingly) don’t exist. But well, it does.
It’s really fun to go down a thought process, what a journey.
Oh, interesting approach! I’ve only used them to make clouds and tree leaves (both weren’t so good-looking), so I left that behind some time ago. But I think even I can use it as a base. Thanks!
Thanks for going into such detail
I enjoy hearing about how other people’s minds function.
I think I understand. I too visualize by remixing and combining things I have seen, but it sounds like you have a sharper image in your head than I do. I see new remixed images in my head as if I’m seeing the whole thing through my peripheral vision. It’s like any short clip from the AI art video you linked, but blurry (moving AI art from ”バーバパパ”). On the other hand, when visualizing a remembered image, I’ll have a flash of clarity that quickly dissolves into an indistinct oscillating blur, which is more strictly defined than a new remixed image. I can re-experience the flash, but the details don’t become any clearer. In either case, recall or remix, by sketching (3d or 2d) or intensely concentrating on defining the details I can bring the image into focus. As such, it takes a lot of effort and I’m also lazy, so it’s difficult to make myself do it.
With my recent 3d art, sometimes I’ve sketchily drawn out scenes first, such as the scene from my initial sketchbook post. And in other instances, I’ve done things in a more free-form manner: start with a basic idea or object and see what I come up with as I go.
A few things popped into my head while reading your Dreams section.
First:
Do you experience your mind storage library as a visual in your mind? If so, can you go to a certain location and retrieve a certain memory? Is the location static and the process for retrieving it repeatable?
Second:
It sounds like you might be lucid dreaming. Is that the case? I’ve heard that lucid dreaming lessens the quality of ones sleep. I have never done it myself, but at times I’ve wanted to try it. I only occasionally remember my dreams.
I agree, consciously focusing on how real things work and look, then transferring that to the mind’s eye is good practice for artists. I’ve have not done that with such a specific purpose. I will try that. It’s important that the things one creates appear realistically functional. And it should help direct the visual imagination to be more functionally accurate.
I have never gone through a conscious comprehensive memory organization process. It’s an interesting idea, if a bit daunting at this point.
I think it’s that visualizing things instead of keeping them as words is a lot easier for me. It’s like a language you speak. But I’m not really good at explaining with words, and in a fluid place like a mind, fast translation is what I want before the image dissolves, as you said.
I can put it as a neural network, a library, or an office metal drawer, whatever seems more accurate at the time because I can either visualize it as a storage or a network, although a network must be a bit more accurate, in real life.
About the memories, I put them into large categories such as “nature” or “city” for example, or sort by location, and time of day, and that’s where I’ll begin. So for example, if I’m feeling down and not doing well mentally, I can either visualize a huge white hospital in heavy rain, one in my dreams for example, or, I could picture a sunny spring hill with deer talking to me. I guess I skip the part where I “look” for it, it just comes up as a defense mechanism, almost. I mean, that’s where it started in the first place, I believe, a place to wander off to when real life gets either boring or stressful.
Retrieving a specific memory is very hard for me, but I could try, and I think I have. Music as I said, is a great way, maybe the best actually, although finding the song might take a while. When you link your memories up with certain things you keep for a long time, you can “put” your memories into that object or song, and it brings back the memories when you (at least I) look at it or listen to it. It’s a memory recall button, sort of. I’ve collected things all my life, others will see them as old toys and junk, even trash, but that’s what’s holding on to my memory. It’s a lot stronger than say a diary, but the lack of details that you didn’t care to remember and accuracy might be poor and will get poor, over time. You can significantly extend the time that it stays accurate of course, by going back to it.
As for music, when a song I heard years ago suddenly pops up in my head “in front” of me, triggered by similar sounds I heard in real life, or maybe I revisited a genre, it just swoops me back into the memory, and it’s quite a nice experience.
Sometimes I can, other times, I cannot. For me, I can’t decide if I’m going to be conscious of the fact that I’m dreaming, although it happens often when it’s a dream set in an environment I’ve dreamt in before. Re-dreaming a dream happened very rarely for me when I was little, but nowadays I do go back into it to continue my abruptly cut-off dream more than before, which I cannot consciously decide to do, as well. And so the case of me knowing that I’m in a dream has increased. Although I try to pretend like I haven’t noticed yet, because then my mind will cut it off; instead I just keep on trying to escape a monster as the “script” goes, trying to go with the flow. I feel like most of me doesn’t know that I’m dreaming, whilst a small part of “skeptical me” kinda gets that such a situation would be critical in real life, therefore giving up or knowing that it can’t be a reality. Dying in a dream wakes me up, so you get the overall direction I’d like to take things when I’m in a dream; to live longer.
Lucid dreaming? I guess. But it doesn’t take long for a dream to end when I start controlling things around me with my “mind power” lol. My mind doesn’t like me altering the course of dreams that much.
Yes, when I’m in control, I think I get a lot more tired. It’s fun, but just like an exercise in real life, it gets exhausting (obviously not physically). Because I guess it’s not a “dreaming” dream anymore, you’re just playing in your imaginative world, you could do that when you’re awake. Seeing things move and being repackaged and sorted out by the “mind” while sleeping and resting, like watching a factory operate in awe as a child coming for parents’ workplace day, might be the real rest we need to take when we’re dreaming. Not playing around in cushion peanuts all the time, but seeing our parents put back our toys if you will.
Ok, I think I get you. When you speak about your mind storage network as a library or filing cabinet, you are visually representing how information is organized and associated in your mind. It is to illustrate the concept, both to yourself and others. It does not go beyond a visual of a concept into a well-organized, anchored realm that can be explored and searched for specific things in static spots. You can call up memories and visuals based on their relation to certain conceptual categories, but what is called up is not really in your control. However, you do have ways that allow you to relive certain memories, sometimes involuntarily.
Lucid dreaming doesn’t necessarily mean you are in control, only that you are in some way aware that you are dreaming. It sounds like you have a very good dream memory. Like I said, I rarely remember my dreams, which seems to depend on what sleep cycle stage I am in when I wake. Of course, the dreams often seem so nonsensical when conscious that I wonder how I didn’t notice. I think I’m on auto-pilot when dreaming, which is something I experience in real-life sometimes. Snapping out of auto-pilot (being aware of the script) in a dream must trigger the functioning of conscious short-term memory.
Dream awareness is fascinating. I would love to experience it someday. I have heard of strategies to make lucid dreams more likely that I may try.
That sounds similar to a learning technique called “method of loci” – people also call it “memory palace” or “journey method”. I use it mostly for learning things that require a lot of memorization, such as languages, and it’s much more effective than any other form of mnemonic I’ve tried. And I use it for coping with depression, storing positive memories for times when I am spiraling downward – I have a pleasant virtual place in my mind I can walk around in, the closest to a literal “happy place” I can get short of actually building it (now I wonder if 3D modeling it would be useful). I use music to associate with memories too, but it’s not the only thing; all sorts of sensual recall can help anchor a memory – visuals, smells, emotions.
Ah, the other senses! How can I forget?
My favorite smells that come up very quickly (with good memories) are:
Gasoline (boiling up an old bath we had, and also car trips)
Electrical Tapes (which were melting in the back of my father’s Jeep)
Some are quite exotic and rare, and I just can’t find their sources of them. It really is a treasure hunt.
It’s almost imprinting, really is fun when you’re a human being who can plan how things will go
Those are the most yoga things I heard in a little more than 10 years lol.
Trying to memorize mandatory things in terms of learning never really occurred to me since I exclusively wanted to use it as an escape. Practicality in other fields is one thing I don’t explore too often when I have a strong definite purpose for a thing. It’s a very interesting take for me!
Guess what this bottle contains ↓ 2023-02-22T22:27:00Z
Ok, I did something completely different today.
I was cleaning up my house and picked up a unique tall bottle. CaN YOu gUesS wHat it IS?
Image editing might be required to make the hint “float up.” Ooh! Reminds me of color-changing paint under different temperatures. Those were exciting. Might be like developing pictures! Activities.
The Compositor. I’ve played around with it with no idea of what I’m doing (not the image above since that reveals things), but it’s refreshing.
Just like cleaning your room. Not halfway there still, but it’s going well. Took apart my Logicool G913 keyboard (they’re a pain to disassemble) and washed all the parts, mostly with soap. That took me 5 hours in total, but now it looks and feels like a brand new one. I need a waterproof one for general use.
My room is still quite messy especially since I didn’t buy much furniture, so combine that with my many hobbies, and there is stuff on the floor that is catching dust. I use huge cardboard boxes for tables, a typical nomadic style of living if you will. I usually moved within 3 years, so why would I even need furniture? But still, I need to cut off a lot of stuff I don’t need.
Taking apart things to throw them away in piles of the same materials is satisfying. But now I have a lot of lithium-ion batteries that are partially expanded but still somehow usable. Naked mobile batteries? Hell yeah.
Killed a few expired boxes of juice, took apart and crushed a few pet bottles, and the catalyst, the headrest pillow. I took that apart, and, now there’s tiny sand-like styrofoam in places I can’t reach. I tried to contain it in a cooking pot in typical Japanese style, but when it builds up too much charge, it begins to cover the walls and “climb out” of the aluminum pot and pours out like dry ice steam. You just can’t get it in, it floats away like some magnetic field (which is probably the case). I poured in water, and now it’s like artificial sand, literally. Behaves just like regular fine sand, only that when you try to wash it off, more “sand” hugs your hand. If it wants to go upwards so much, might as well float to the ceiling, that’ll be awesome.
To be honest, I have no idea what to say, or what I wanted to say today, it was just very refreshing indeed, so, a change of mind, I guess. Listened to some J-Pop from the moment I woke up, and that was also very refreshing as I mostly go prog-rock. Change, it’s very random, not being clamped down with the self-restraining of the mind. The kind that changes your whole day, like a family trip you didn’t know about, being woken up at 4 am. Being a “whatever I want to do” person, that change is what I hope for every other dull day. Normal people, know what to do because their restraining comes first. For me, my profit comes first, so I couldn’t care less about holding myself back; is what I want to say, but in fact, the more I’m not used to the norm, the more I’m aware of people’s minds and get convoluted when I need to decide which position I need to take. Social judgment is my self-restraint, otherwise, I’d be kicked out of everywhere I go at this point. Keeping the normal standard of my local area alive in my mind and giving it a fair piece of judgment is how I dictate what I shouldn’t do. It’s a bit lot of exhaustion. Sometimes I get a striking sense like a virtual bullet through my head, as I wake up to realize that I’m walking down the street, with other people. It’s a side effect met by other harm, but oh well. I can’t really change that. Tbh, I haven’t found a solution to this, ancient people survived in packs, and so do I. So long, nomadic life. What a dream met by an altering reality called human connection for the better good. Getting free stuff from people is nice (once you begin to take the same routine as clockwork, it happens), but it really isn’t my preference for living.
If only traveling was still a way to live. It wouldn’t be much progress for humankind, but I’d be much more happy, maybe. Always traveling in a tin can makes me sick. Sometimes I want to enjoy the way there I guess.
Okay, if you think you’ve found the answer to what kind of bottle that was, you can reply. The hint’s in the image, not this wall of text, lol.
The album I have had on repeat for the last 12 hours or so: “Travelers” by Official Hige Dandism
If the hint is in the image, I am gonna guess wrong – olive oil? There’s no hint of that, but I am getting no hints at all. Bad at riddles, though I consider myself observant. Whenever I think that my nose soon gets stumped on something I really should have seen but didn’t.
I’ve turned from a minimalist nomad into a hoarder, so weird; it makes no sense.
and taking more time outdoors. Not much activity until the first weekend after 01/08, sorry for those who wanted more works from me. Horray me, I’m not scared of people! 
and greetings! May your year be better than the last. Some weird times we live in 
Please don’t tell anyone) are running from a typical huge tyrannosaurus rex and finding a multi-story parking lot, where we find a lot of unique looking vehicles, ranging from farm tractors to SUVs to supercars, with faces that have a lot of oval-shaped headlights. I picked the fast-looking pickup truck, which I decided not to make, instead, I’m making a typical sports car because it’s easier. Later iterations are to be not promised, but you can dream.
