A little late on the draw with this news update, but it was mostly done on purpose to make the tutorial post stay up a little longer and get more exposure.
[More info in the "Vectorizer Stuff" tag]
To start, I found-out that July 6th was Newgrounds' 30th anniversary! Can't believe it's been going on for this long AND without it getting corrupted by lousy greedy corpos. Big 'ol happy late 30th birthday Newgrounds! And in a way, thank you @TomFulp for keeping it real. May this website stay up and free for many years to come!
Unfortunately, I found-out about it a little too late to make a gift, but I'm marking it on my calendar. Maybe on the 35th birthday I'll be ready.
Lots of very beefy topics in this update, so strap-in or skip to whichever topic catches your eye (I won't judge because you'll be reading something) because this is going to be a long update:
~~Vectorizer Stuff~~
[Never thought I'd talk about this so soon]
Recently, I participated in the Tutorial Jam with my tutorial on "Vectors made easy-ish"
I was on the fence whether or not I wanted to do it, but seeing as I had made documentation for the Vectorizer before, and I knew this tool like the back of my hand I decided to give it a shot.
At best I get into the top 5 and win a bit of cash, and at worst I get nothing, but more people will be aware of my tool either way. Though, I did have to rush it a little because I had a really busy week before the month ended. Didn't want to chance it during that busy week, so I got it done the day before I left to go work with my mom.
[More details about that visit in the "Life Stuff" tag]
We'll see how the results will turn-out the day after my birthday
~~Art Stuff~~
Here's my recent drawing I did for the tutorial collab
One thing I realised after finishing that drawing is I haven't posted anything in 2 months.
It's not like I've been doing nothing in these two months, but also part of me feels like I've probably haven't done enough...then again, these constant trips to the cottage I've been doing also didn't help.
I know it's not a requirement for me to post something every month, but I also feel like my artistic side isn't "in-shape"
That's just me though.
As for the animation I was working-on, I haven't touched it since the last update. The main reason is that the birthday drawing is getting pretty close, and I still haven't finished it yet, so I need to put away the side projects until it's done.
Doesn't help that my cousin talked me into doing an animation for someone, so you might not see that animation ever again this year...at least I'll get paid for that one.
~~BlackBerry Stuff~~
Since I'm stuck using my old BlackBerry again for a little while, I decided to start tinkering with it a little.
I got a little curious and searched online to see if someone made an archive of the BlackBerry app store (called "BlackBerry World") that got shut-down in 2020.
[yeah, that recent]
To my surprise, not only was there a small group named "The Lunar Project" doing just that, but they also made guides on how to use these old BlackBerry phone in the modern day. It's still far from usable, but I appreciate the attempt.
They even have a Discord Server. Guess the BlackBerry dream never truly died.
Gonna have to join their server soon, as I have some lost BlackBerry apps that aren't in their archives.
~~Life Stuff~~
Been going to my mom's cottage a bunch this month. Practically every weekend there's something to do there. Usually hanging-out with family members we haven't seen in a while.
Lately, I needed to help my mom clear-out a bunch of rocks to make a mini beach area in our cottage. Everything went perfectly with the help of our aunt's big log crane until we hit this humongous rock. It was too big and heavy for the crane, so for almost a week we were constantly burning it, throwing cold water at it, and hitting it with a sledge hammer to break it apart for close to a week.
Even with all that, and the rock shedding a few layers it was still too heavy for the crane. It took so long that me and my mom had to leave the cottage due to us needing to volunteer at the bakery the day after for three days, so my aunt had to finish the job with her kids.
Thankfully, they were able to finally get rid of the rock by blowing it up with gun-powder, and now the whole lake-side of our cottage looks gorgeous.
It's never a dull moment (for better or worse), and it's especially fun now with my Steam Deck as I can continue working on my projects without needing to haul my laptop and drawing tablet with me.
Although, for as much as I enjoy doing these things, I feel like I'm going insane with how little I'm able to work on my stuff, and how I'm usually too tired to work on my projects after a long day of working for others.
I told myself that this year was supposed to be nice and chill, and I'll have half the entire year to work on the Christmas Special. Instead it's been mostly chaos, setbacks, and exhaustion and now I'll only have less than 3 months to work on the Christmas special. I'm back to my old ways again...I didn't want this at all!
I'm hoping next year I'll be better organised
~~Lost Media Stuff~~
In other news I briefly got myself involved in a bit of a lost media search. There's this podcast I follow called the DojoCast. It's a very fun podcast that does many interviews with legendary stick animators.
However, a while ago one of their episodes where they interviewed ACBeam (famous for creating "Bog") got taken down, and even deleted over a 10 second copyrighted clip. The episode was nowhere to be found and isn't archived anywhere, not even in the Wayback Machine (though, the rest of the web page got archived there).
However, to my surprise someone from the DojoCast found it on their hard-drive in the middle of the podcast, and posted it shortly after. Glad to know it was in safe hands, but I'm downloading every episode from now on because I don't want another one to get lost again.
~~Conclusion~~
Overall, July was the wildest month I've had so far. Barely any progress was made on my planned drawings, I accidentally created new projects, dabbled in lost media, fell in love with my BlackBerry again, and I was able to learn a lot more about my extended family than ever before.
Even though all of it was fun to a certain extent, I don't want to have this kind of month ever again. The chaos was too much to handle, and I wasn't able to keep-up with my own projects. Practically spent the first few days of August sitting on my office chair dead while watching YouTube and sleeping for most of the day.
I want this month to be better, I want to do this nice routine I couldn't do properly last month, and I want to finish a project a week early for once this year.
I don't think that's too much to ask is it?
Now enough of me shouting at myself. I hope you had a pleasant read, and as always...
...See you next post!