The gap between this and my last post is larger than usual, but not for lack of news... in fact I've felt very busy, nearly overwhelmed, with everything going on. To mitigate that overwhelmed feeling I stopped working out... it helped a lot with my productivity, but I'm feeling quite fat and out of shape :-/

Here's the latest scoop:

1) Music: I'm no musician, but I went through a phase where I messed around with garage band and made a couple tracks... what do you think? It feels like the musical equivalent of "paint by numbers" using all the GB built-ins, but I tried searching for some unique "me-ness" within the constraints.

I like the buildup and the confident ending to this one, but the middle goes off the rails with freestyling a bit.

I was kinda vibing on the uniqueness of the Metroid intro music for this one, with distinct tones separated by lots of space. I think the timing is ok, but someone left a review saying the notes were out of place/off-beat...

This is probably my favorite. I really dig the classical "bass" strings as the underlying rhythm. The core melody really reminded me of the sounds of "Bollywood" movies (not that I was intentionally going for that though...). Again, I like the "wind down" ending stripping away tracks back down to the melody.

I tried telling a story with this one. I explain it in response to one of the comments but, it's like: Evil lurks, Heroine attempts to confront it, Heroine is defeated and her heartbeat extinguished.

It was a fun experiment, but I feel somewhat handicapped by not having real good musical foundations. If I did, I could see myself getting heavily into music creation.

2) Art! I sketch on my iPad to decompress sometimes. Also, on days where I feel like I haven't accomplished anything, or I've failed, or I'm frustrated, completing a drawing gives me a boost of that "accomplished" feeling I crave.

A friend on FB requested this and I really like how it turned out. Having a bit of direction and forcing myself to use some reference really paid off in the final product. It's one of my more original/interesting/technically adept pieces of late.

Crabs will always be one of my favorite things to draw. I love the crunchy, alien, shell texture and odd proportions.

Oh, I also like drawing turtles and tortoises for the same reasons :-D

Here's another tortoise-ish thing. This reminds me of "Slash" from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This jellyfish was a crowd favorite. I really enjoy "line" in my art (if you hadn't noticed!) and while I was perusing google images, the reference for this jellyfish "spoke to me" about the potential to do interesting things with "lines." I think the unique coloring also appealed to people. This one pushed me out of my comfort zone a bit.

This was my attempt to ride the "wave" of crowd approval from the previous jellyfish... but this one was not as well-received even though I think the transparency had a lot of interesting challenges in the rendering process.

This was another attempt to push myself out of my comfort zone of human faces, blobby cancerous tumors (aka: COVID-19 pre-cognition), and crabs... It was a real challenge, but it was ultimately very fulfilling to see it all come together. I could really dig a job just drawing people's food for their mommy food blogs.

I had to get in on the political waves. I ended up really emphasizing Trump's jowls and his "deep fried" skin tones. But, one element I think really interests me, is the BG. It's very "golden" and feels almost old-world religious gold-leaf to me. It also reminds me of the cubist aesthetic depicted in Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase

Gotta even out the political spectrum! If you cover each half of his face his expression changes! (Unintentional, but somewhat appropriate...)

3) Immersive Bible App: I finally finished my work with the Immersive Bible app! I'm proud of the art direction I did and the logo/brand I created. Unfortunately, I did it so well (and charged so much) that they just took my style guide and hired a college design student to do all their day-to-day work. That's ok though, I've been up to my chin in projects and was glad to have this one off my plate. If you recall, I put out a search for an animator to do one of those new cool "After Effects" animated logos that you see on just about every insurance company commercial or tech company commercial nowadays (oh, also the "loading" screen to Gmail).

I found someone, a girl who recently graduated from design school. I liked her portfolio and saw a lot of potential. However, when I started giving her feedback (in a direct, but not mean way) - she got offended and bailed from the project (this was pretty stressful cuz I was sub-contracting to lighten my heavy work-load). Sooooooo... finally I just bit the bullet and did it myself. I learned a TON in the process!

The idea is that you have a light-weight, vector, html-5 animation, that is cross-platform-friendly. Here's the final web-friendly "Lottie" file I created: https://lottiefiles.com/share/k7CEPh

4) USAxe Club: My biggest side-hustle has been USAxeClub. If you haven't heard yet, Axe Throwing is this trending thing that's like bowling, but more edgy and cool. Axe Throwing venues are springing up all over the US in bigger cities. I have a friend who served an LDS mission in Lisbon, Portugal. He decided to move back there and open an Axe Throwing business because the fad hasn't caught on yet in Europe and he wanted to be the first!

I offered to be his partner and do the business branding/marketing materials, and be the CTO (mostly in charge of the website). However, here's the cool part: We've made a mixed IRL/Web game MMO around the sport!

So, we're using projectors to display digital targets on the IRL boards where the axes are thrown. What this lets us do, though, is project all kinds of stuff, like zombies, tic-tac-toe, duck hunt, etc. But you're throwing REAL axes at the game. The cool thing is that I recently learned to use "Web Sockets" (which requires a node.js web server) for real-time, instant, chat-like, communication between web browser windows (using https://socket.io/) - SOooooooo, you can control and see aspects of the game on your cell phone which can also be connected to everyone else's cell phone/device in the group. It's a lot like the "Jack Box" games that have been trending in popularity recently, but with IRL AXE THROWING! Some of the game concepts are similar to Nintendo DS games because we have multiple screens to work with for showing game state/hud elements/secret info, etc.

Basically, we have this unique axe-throwing gaming platform that now I get to develop a bunch of real-time web-socket apps for. This is like a dream come true for me because the games are simple, but the IRL element makes them SO fun! Kinda like Wario-ware with axes. Oh, and what I'm working on right now is a "league" system that will have user accounts where people can challenge other "league" members for rank positioning, earn achievements, level up, etc. It's a really cool mix of a real-world skill with digital motivations... afaik we're the first ones in the world to be doing this... The first location in Lisbon is doing really well so far, but I think we're sitting on an idea that, if we can pull it off, will be huge.

It's funny because when I was teaching game development, one of the projects I had the students work on was a similar idea where there was a "public," projected, game board that everyone could see, but also private "phone" instances that were communicating with it in real-time. We weren't using web-sockets (just doing delayed polling) but the idea is the same. Basically, I feel like a lot of my experience in life (the Woogi World MMO, my game dev hobby, my teaching experience, my job as a web-developer, etc.) has prepared me for something like this.

Here's a demo of the tic-tac-toe game running between the "projector" (which is full-screened on the axe-throwing wall) and a couple instances of "phones" logged in. This is actually up and running in the Lisbon location and people LOVE it :-)

5) Castle Crashing the Beard HD: This is still moving forward! We're actually really close to being ready to beta test and add sfx, music, and voices. There's a lot of cool stuff I could show you, but I really don't want to spoil it... If you must see something, then look at this intro that I ended up having to hand-code all the animations for so it would still work on mobile devices:

6) This grape from my yard caught COVID-19, and my olive tree grew some olives!

7) We did pancake art one Sunday morning, and I think I could make a career out of it...

8) My boys have been playing Alien Hominid and demanded we 3D print the Alien's blaster, and the final boss' blaster. I had fun modeling these trying to invent geometry from Dan Paladin's loose art style:

8.5) My son, not to be outdone, made a papier mache "Hebi" beast from Super Chibi Knight... I was pretty impressed!

9) Fire: My brother and his girlfriend had a fire at their house. I spent a good amount of time and $ helping them clean up from the damage. One of the big projects was helping them find a travel trailer to live in while they rebuild. It would have been a fun challenge at any other time in my life, but it was "one more thing" added onto my mental queue to deal with. Everything worked out well though and we were able to raise enough money via GoFundMe for a nice trailer for them. They're not totally out of the woods yet though, so if you feel inclined to help out, please make a GoFundMe donation:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/ben-and-annettes-house-fire-relief

10) Family Reunion: About 3.5 years ago my dad committed suicide. I never knew him very well, but I've always resented the abandonment. His suicide contributed to a bit of a tailspin that I've been slowly recovering from over the last few years. Part of that recovery has been a growing desire to connect with my half siblings from his side of the family that I've never really known. Well, I finally bit the bullet and reached out to them and we had a family reunion last month at the Oregon Coast (where they spread his ashes). It was very cathartic and I feel like a piece of me has been restored. I learned a lot about him and his life and personality and his interactions with his relationships and his kids. Let's just say that "genetics are a helluva thing!" He and I are very similar in a lot of ways, but I feel that one major difference is my willingness to confront and work through my demons rather than run from them. Mostly, where my siblings feel a deep loss at losing their father, I feel a "filling in" at having a new family. My new sisters were especially welcoming, and my brothers made me get in the freezing Oregon water with them as a "baptism" into the family. Here's a pic of the last time I saw my dad (I was 15 yo) along with 2 of my half-brothers, and a couple pics with my "new old" sisters from the reunion:

11) Reading: You knew you wouldn't get away without a word about my reading materials! With COVID I haven't been doing audiobooks during my commute at all, so my numbers are way down... I'm reading "Maps of Meaning" by Jordan Peterson which has a lot of great stuff and is helping me re-frame my relationship with spirituality, the divine, the unknown, my higher power, "Big Good," etc.

One thing that's particularly-relevant is how Peterson talks about the Biblical name "Israel" which was given to the patriarch "Jacob" as a new name after he had a spiritual experience at a place he named "penu-el" or "face of god" because it's where Jacob saw god "face to face and yet was spared" - and also had an experience wrestling with "the angel of the Lord." The interpretation of the Hebrew word "Israel" is apparently debated!

One group believes it directly relates to the story of Jacob's "wrestle with God" in which he ended up winning! This group interprets "Israel" to mean "one who prevails with God." And that Jacob's wrestle and renaming is a metaphor for the injunction that everyone needs to wrestle with their relationship with God and win - and thus earn a new name/identity - That we should not just "shelve" the hard questions we have about divinity, but engage with them and even be a bit antagonistic in our search to see "God's face." This video encapsulates that view nicely:

Another group believes that "Israel" means: One who lets God prevail. This is an interesting point of view because I do agree that there is a component of "surrendering" involved in faith. An acceptance that some knowledge is beyond our abilities to perceive/comprehend and the decision to "let go of the rope" in certain tugs-of-war and to cease "kicking against the pricks" (Acts 26:14) This was particularly highlighted in a recent LDS General Conference speech from the LDS Prophet Russel M. Nelson: https://www.thechurchnews.com/leaders-and-ministry/2020-10-04/general-conference-october-2020-sunday-morning-president-nelson-193989

I am fascinated by the two, seemingly-opposite, interpretations of this important Hebrew title. I think it's possible that the ambiguity is intentional as I've learned that Hebrew is a semantically rich language that is often used to highlight double meanings and word-play. Perhaps there's a balance between engaging in the battle/taking responsibility for the search for truth, while also tempering it with a measure of surrender.

The other book I've been reading is "Lord of the Rings" to my boys for bedtime stories. I'm reminded about how very good that book is!

Here's a quote I liked where Aragorn (an unknown ranger/Dunedain, who is actually the future king) puts Boromir (a proud member of the current ruling family in Gondor) in his place after Boromir grand stands about all he has done for the good of Middle Earth:

"If Gondor, Boromir, has been a stalwart tower, we have played another part. Many evil things there are that your strong walls and bright swords do not stay. You know little of the lands beyond your bounds. Peace and freedom, do you say? The North would have known them little but for us. Fear would have destroyed them. But when dark things come from the houseless hills, or creep from sunless woods, they fly from us. What roads would any dare to tread, what safety would there be in quiet lands, or in the homes of simple men at night, if the Dúnedain were asleep, or were all gone into the grave? ‘And yet less thanks have we than you. Travellers scowl at us, and countrymen give us scornful names. “Strider” I am to one fat man who lives within a day’s march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly. Yet we would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so. That has been the task of my kindred, while the years have lengthened and the grass has grown."

Here's a random, non-LoTR quote for fun:

"Anyone can love a thing because. That's easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect"

- Patrick Rothfuss

12) Worthwhile Follow: The creator of "Inktober" has come under attack recently amid allegations of plagiarism/reselling of Inktober art. However, I really like the guy and read his explanation of the "controversy" and accept his innocence. I subscribed to his email newsletter and have really enjoyed his updates. He always has really unique visual references he shares as well as inspirational quotes from his readings. I'd highly recommend following him and subscribing to his newsletter!

A quote from his last newsletter:

"I decided to take up the practice of Kaizen. This is the Japanese practice of resisting the plateau of arrested development. The literal translation is "continuous improvement." One who practices kaizen isn't satisfied with taking on a new art piece or a project that they've done before, but is consistently putting themselves in uncomfortable situations where they must learn something new in order to get out of it."

https://www.mrjakeparker.com/

13) FINALLY, check out this amazing student animation. We need to get this school, GOBELINS, aware of Newgrounds so they can start uploading here:

"I am a nexus of universes. I belong to a class of people--I’m not alone in this--whose hand and eye are antennae, sensitive to a certain type of reality"

-- Jean Giraud (AKA: Moebius)