a_flyleaf | State of the Flyleaf (May edition)

Guess which sucker finished college (part one)? This one. Guess which sucker got their personal website up on Github proper and hasn’t touched it since? …Yeah.

If you look at absolutely nothing else in this post, please appreciate Hte Art: this abomination I cobbled together last week, and a quick animation practice hand from earlier today:

Fun fact: one of the earliest animations I made was a quick hand gesture like this, back when I was starting college and had some time to kill towards the end of a class. Pretty sure I don’t have it saved because it was on the school computer, but I’ve always liked this motion a lot for some reason!
I didn’t use a reference and it shows, but I’m pretty happy with this \o/ If I revisit this I gotta fix the timing on the middle & pointer fingers (move less in sync on the down) and stabilize the arm, maybe add another frame or two on the rest pose, but otherwise this was a good no-keyframes-we-animate-frame-by-frame-and-wing-it test. Critique welcome nonetheless.

Anyway, the fun part: LINKDUMP AND DISCOMBOBULATED RAMBLING.

Yet again I’ve been hoarding links and notes that could make nice little standalone posts on their own. Yet again I instead decide to throw them all here at once like a coordinated human being. Also, frankly, the “Dreamwidth as replacement Tumblr” thing is not working, but I can work with that because for the most part I don’t find myself missing Constant Social Media Connection much :V I have returned to my pre-tumblr “mostly petsite (read: Flight Rising) + occasional bursts of social activity via streams or one-on-one chats” internet socialization habits and they are good.

So, uh, short version of that is that I do not intend to increase my reply speed any time soon over here. I still check, though! Occasionally!!

Right though, anyway. Linkdump.

At one point a few months ago I did a bunch of reading on how internet interaction worked before social media, some fandom-related and some not. This could very well be a nostalgia goggles thing, but from what I’ve read, the grass seemed greener on the pre-facebook side.
Some posts from Anil Dash (who, #noThisIsNotASponsoredMessageISwear, happens to be the CEO of that really cool glitch website): The Web We Lost (haven’t watched the video talk but the article is insightful); The Lost Infrastructure of Social Media; The Missing Building Blocks of the Web.
The Billionaire’s Typewriter is a closer look at Medium specifically and what it takes away from writing published online: design and, ultimately, ownership. Damning quote: “Whereas the traditional typewriter offered freedom at the cost of design, the billionaire’s typewriter offers convenience at the cost of freedom.”
I wanted to recommend assorted writing by Jen Simmons, which I found through her work on the CSS grid, but the link is down at the time of writing. Check her stuff out anyway if you’re interested in graphic design and/or coding! It’s Good^TM

A couple interesting thoughts on art/animation from Felix Colgrave, whose blog I was binging earlier today (hence the gif above):

“If you learn animation in an academic context, it’s often taught with a lot of arbitrary dos and don’ts that are a hangover from old industry methods. [... It’s] like giving an anatomy book to a child that’s never drawn before.”
“If there’s anything in art that registers as a ’guilty pleasure’, it’s probably not guilty. It’s probably exactly what you should be doing.”

I have a notedump hoard of quotes from Storming the Ivory Tower and, separately, Captain Marvel observations from immediately after watching. They are both on my iPad and I’m too lazy to grab them now, but maybe someday. (Or not. See below. Let me know if you’re interested, though ;V)
- edit 7/30/19: ye haw

…Y’know, I could’ve sworn I had more to linkdump, but looking at my notes again that's it? For now. Haven’t gotten into anything new as of late, so guess that’s that!

The only other little thing I had noted was that, say what you will about the KonMarie method as a tidying thing, but two of her tips have honestly made a significant difference in how I approach the little things. To paraphrase:

“No, you will not read it later. The time has passed. It’s okay to move on if the bookmark’s presence in your life feels more like an obligation than something you genuinely want to do.” Something something “books are (not) a personality” discourse. Point is I’m trying to stop hoarding things “for later” that I know I’ll probably never get to. Spoiler alert: they’re not missed!
“If you do/obtain something that you end up not liking, it wasn’t a waste of time/space. That thing had a purpose in your life: letting you know you don’t like it!” As someone who likes my Comfort Zone a lot? Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good point, and such a nicer way to think of it than the usual “if you don’t try everything while you can, you will have regrets on your deathbed and it will suck” phrasing.

Decluttered house, decluttered mind. Not-so-decluttered post but EH it’s a status update. Until next time~!