I started off so well with this blog and Retrograde Online, but as I knew would happen, my interest waned once some of the initial development was done, and I moved onto other things.
I started watching some TV shows and films that I never felt I had the motivation to get into, such as For All Mankind, 12 Monkeys (the show), Oppenheimer, The Zone of Interest, Farscape, and Batman (1966 show) to name a few.
That was, and continues to be, time well spent (mostly). I was entirely underwhelmed by The Zone of Interest. I realise you are not supposed to say anything like because, oy vey, the bad times. However it was still very much a film about a boring family doing boring things. Yes, of course, it shows how a normal family can still implicity endorse genocide, but it was still a boring film, and everyone knows that most Germans during WW2 weren’t actually evil.
Anyway, I started learning how to draw as a hobby too. I felt it was important to spend some time with hobbies that are not digital. I bought some pens and pencils and sketchbooks and books on drawing fundamentals and started drawing. I am not that good, which is a major obstacle to me enjoying something. If I am not naturally good at something, I generally drop it. But I am keeping at it as it is enjoyable learning and doing.
I have bought/acquired a few books to support me in this:
- Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth (Andrew Loomis)
- Drawing the Head and Hands (Andrew Loomis)
- Fun With a Pencil (Andrew Loomis)
- Figure Drawing: Design, and Invention (Michael Hampton)
- How to Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects from your Environment (Scott Robertson)
- Drawing Lessions from the Great Masters (Robert Hale)
- How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way (Stan Lee and John Buscema)
- Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (Scott McCloud)
- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Betty Edwards)
- Perspective Made Easy (Ernest Norling)
So, yeah, lots of energy recently has been directed towards drawing. This does not include the hours and hours of YouTube videos I have been consuming, watching people who can actually draw.
But, now that the initial wave of enthusiasm for a new hobby is over, I am starting to think further on the Retrograde Online game. Maybe it should be resurrected and enhanced. I was having trouble thinking about what to do with it, and where the fun would come from for players. I still do not have much of a direction for it, but perhaps I should dedicate some time to it.
Oh yes, I also have to have an endoscopy soon (darn body) which I am very much not looking forward to. Hopefully nothing bad will come out of it.
This post was mainly a way of saying that I AM STILL ALIVE, and Retrograde had only been temporarily shelved rather than binned.
Not that there are any readers of this blog except myself.
Hello future me, hope that endoscopy revealed nothing at all.
1st April 2024
