"Blender isn't beginner-friendly," "Substance is hard" no they're honestly fine. *3D* is hard. They have a rep for being hard because they're what most beginners will touch when entering 3D. Maya/ZBrush/C4D/Modo/Houdini will kick your ass just as readily.

Hacker

Any place you wanna go, he’s the guy that can get you in.

Social media breaks should occupy the same priority in people’s minds as exercise, sleep or eating fruit/veg. It’s genuinely bad for you to be stimulated all the time. The way our brains process info and regulate emotions requires you to be bored occasionally.

First time a Windows update was so bad I had to roll it back. It demolished my wifi/bluetooth reliability and apparently it's mangling SSDs in some cases. Maybe skip the August update!

Nice to go out on a slow Sunday after finishing a big project and no-lifing it all month. Melbourne’s lovely today!

So many people will say they'd do anything for their child, even kill for them, yet magically cannot accept someone who would cross a border to give their child a better life and look down upon those who do.

We all might have our own small qualms with Bluesky but X is quite literally not real

You practice so that your worst is still good. When you're exhausted, don't have enough time, the brief is slim, the anxiety's peaking and you're in over your head, at least you can still make it good enough. You draw a ton so when the time comes you simply perspire good draftsmanship.

www.paypal.com/paypalme/zar... It never feels great to posts these things, but I don't have much money and due to my job having delayed pays and I just started I won't see money until late August. Since my apartment burned down I need to get new clothes and such, and I can't afford it right now.

I art directed my studio's contributions to the new Valorant map! We played a major part in concept and pre-production art for this location and I had the pleasure to direct some incredible artists. Very proud of how this has come together! youtu.be/6U7nx6p0P_M?...

American worldview is so prevalent that the world can’t help but see itself through that lens. It feels like some US folk believe I live in a tin-roof shack in the desert surrounded by spiders. Because America presents it that way in its media, the rest of the western-influenced world agrees.

Practice/warmup/speedpaint/whatever you call it

This is two massive entertainment corporations with no morals pursuing the only two things they care about: profit and protecting their IP. This has absolutely nothing to do with protecting artists, despite what they’ll undoubtedly claim. I welcome the great news nonetheless 😌

Don't miss this set if you're at Furality! Poster illustration by yours truly

it burfday

Happy pride! Waving my two flags with aplomb

Many lesser-used VRChat furry avatars seem to suffer a similar problem. Either the whole head's truncated or there's not enough rear skull volume. It's so common it's become a pet peeve of mine lol.

Hardcore suidae

Ice course

Last set of concepts I painted for LAX.

Some more concepts I painted for the now-cancelled game LAX.

I have a somewhat extrovert personality but an introvert social battery, and oh BOY is my body reminding me of that this week. Nice to have the reminder that not being incredibly sociable isn’t such a bad thing when you’re someone who needs the alone time.

Absolutely stoked that we dodged a Liberal (Australian Republican) term and the potential of a Trump-fuelled curtailing of our civil liberties. Congrats to Labor for the landslide win, and thanks to Trump’s absolutely abhorrent international relations for ensuring it.

Baring (CW: faux gore)

Had a lovely picnic in the city with other furs for Good Friday. Great vibes and good weather 🌇

I’ll be avoiding travel to the US for at least the remainder of this term. It’s simply too much of a risk and I can barely handle the travel/jetlag as it is. See you all online 😔

I don’t follow anyone on Twitter so it’s pretty much unfiltered algorithm garbage when I do visit. For the last week it’s been a constant slew of disdain for the AI Ghibli slop. Makes me feel like maybe we’ll be alright 🥹

I have been a bit quiet so I wanna take this moment to shout out one of my favorite artists and show off a commission he did for me a couple of years ago I absolutely still adore this art piece by Logan Preshaw and if you're not already doing so please give him a follow: @wickedinsignia.bsky.social

Just found out that for the last 10 YEARS I’ve been paying $15 monthly to Hightail for an account I completely forgot I signed up for. I’m sure I’ll laugh at this when I get over the $1800 that trickled down the drain.

🎤

Radiance

I fiddle with making realtime assets a lot but usually don’t wind up with much I can show. Trying to change that this year! Made this building for fun, textures mostly by me and rendered in Godot’s compatibility renderer because I wanted to test that out.

The Electric State might not be what we wanted it to be, but in this day and age it probably would never have been made if it tried for that. A film of that nature is a rare treasure and the industry isn’t generally conducive to it. At the very least Simon is happy. Maybe that’s enough for anyone.

Each frame of Flow took 0.5-10 seconds to render. That’s genuinely so nuts. This’d better kick off an era because the industry would benefit so immensely from it.

Checking the chassis

A win for Blender, indie films and international cinema is a win for everyone. Huge congrats to Flow!!!!

Worker (transhuman, augmented)

These new noise-cancelling IEMs are so good it took a few minutes to realise the guy directly behind me on the train was shaving his head. What an endorsement.

Hacker

Worked on this as an art director, great to see it finally get a release year and trailer! In an industry that's currently collapsing in on itself, every finalized release is a major achievement. youtu.be/4wlttElgLg4?...

Hey, artists, in case you were wondering if your work matters: I'm a scientist working on climate change and biodiversity, and I would not be who I am today without The Lorax, The Secret of NIMH, Watership Down, The Last Unicorn, and The X-Files. I know I'm not alone. Thank you for all you do.

Every engine with a lightmapper NEEDS specular occlusion as a built-in feature. It’s cheap, uses existing textures and massively improves the quality of baked lighting with cubemap reflections.

Terms like “rainbow capitalism” exist because corporations historically use social causes as a facade to gain public favor. Remember that the next time MSI tries to go furry or OperaGX uses a homoerotic profile pic. Support people, not brands.

The findings are really interesting. AI use decreases exposure to low-stake tasks in a way that can reduce our cognitive abilities and proficiency in performing high-stake ones. This tracks with any art field: lots of low-stake practice and repetition builds the skill to perform more demanding work.

Turns out we’ve been correct on the “deskilling” theory. The state of the film/games industry also correlates with the “replacement” theory. Not sure how much more proof anyone needs that genAI is bad news. Doomed to repeat the “told you so!” of NFTs I guess.

Certainly on track for this again but still hanging onto that "someday"

Unity’s Adaptive Probe Volumes are quite wonderful. Feels like an actually production-ready GI solution without unrealistic goals. My short-term use of it has been really positive. (Image from Unity official)

In its "ideal form" generative AI would replace artists entirely and ensure a total wealth transfer from working artists to the tech sector. The fact it's not doing that right now is simply a setback. I beg you to have zero tolerance for its adoption.

City of Curves