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19/10/2023
London

Hi there! Hello! Welcome! My name is Richard, I am predominantly a visual artist. This is the first, actual entry in this new blog, an exhaustive post about fun stuff, about what I am doing publicly: What I do: 1, Among other things, I paint and draw via traditional methods and via a (non-display) digital drawing tablet. see some of my work here: https://richardkramen.com/artwork/ 2, I make music again via analogue methods. I "released" my first "new" song. see here: https://richardkramen.com/music/ 3, I also have an illustrated novel / comic / video game project (mainly in the freezer). This is, apart from life events, supposed to be my "main project". see here: https://richardkramen.com/devblog/

This I put on hold for a long time as I was rewriting it and outlining main elements, aiming to create something more remarkable than what I had in mind before. Let's see... 4, And every now and then I modify games. More often programs, and even more often, just about daily, my operating system and digital desktop environment. Yet, video games. Ugh, what a topic... A non-stop electronic cabaret of "amazing!... useless!" Anyhow, here I merged and combined other modifications, did photo-manipulation on and re-painted textures, made new normal maps for them and adjusted attributes to make different variations in armor and clothing, different textures for clothing (glossy or matte, cut outs and adjustments) and new faces for the characters. This way the characters and their setup are unlike anything before in this game, mimicking South Korean-style video game trends, giving a whole new look and feel to gameplay: © Copyright 2006 - 2023, Lo-Fi Games Ltd. - Kenshi 5, And I do full-stack webdesign (that means I do everything-everything, markup, code, security, webmail, design, logos, all all...). See all these web pages i am linking in this post. 110101 very code 010101 very computer Updates! Updates! Updates! YAY! Recently I just finished a massive overhaul and update on my main website: see here: https://richardkramen.com/artwork/ With hidden features revealed this Halloween! the technicalities of it: - First and most of all, I made a full fallback, no-JS site to support it. Without flashing effects but fully functional and responsive: safe site - No external help or libraries, while it still uses some of Skeleton and Normalize those were for the previous site make up, to tone down the remains of a Wordpress theme, I will eventually remove them. They are absolutely great tools though, use 'em if you need 'em. - That's right, no Wordpress, it was just getting in the way. I can't seem to like them anymore... - Inline SVGs and CSS tricks by me. Lotsa digital acrobatics. I explored a lot in the context of how can we use less and less JavaScript and just do it all in HTML and CSS. I have to say, you really do not need JS for a very good, modern website. Blame me. - Yet, I got very confident with scripting around, there a few things which are hidden at the moment but real cool to use. HTML Canvas is pretty neat. - Custom PHP/CSS gallery with keyboard control. I can't think of a simpler, lighter gallery. - Lots of home-baked JavaScript programming. :) I mainly used Stackoverflow questions and comments to guide me and I figured everything out the best I could. Hurray! Current works in progress, current workingsss: This is the tallest ever image I've ever done, at one point i will do a full-size print: This hare is an assistant you will bump into here and there, a recurring character in my work, "within universe" and on websites etc. I updated my setup from its mobile state to something more permanent. Traditional drawing equipment not pictured, traditional stuff in another post later: -> -> As I was mostly busy with building the website(s) for a good while, I have not posted much online (except some silly "stories" on mainstream media) but stacks of art grew in kilograms here. I have managed to fill a few sketchbooks again. A "best of", compiled, touched up version may see light one day. I have prints available! Some stocked, some to pre-order: check here!! The End thank you for reading! Although, I have a few statements to make if you are curious: There will be no advertisements here ever. There are no "cookies", there are no analytics. I oppose anything about "AI" generated imagery and text. I oppose anything about NFTs I oppose anything cryptocurrency. I do not intend to sound obnoxious and delusional, I aim to keep myself in check... Yet I just can't seem to delete these lines. Sadly it is a world where we must stand tall, be strong and wield what we are. Well, as much as I know, defending our own skills is standard practice that dates back forever, so this is me doing it, I feel I must speak up a bit. I am a highly talented, expertly skilled visual artist. This is cause I have honest, deep interest ever since I remember. I am a well-experienced, confident, thoroughly trained, workaholic visual artist with a great arsenal of skills. As I kept adding to and refreshing what I do. Refusing to give up, I am still bursting of passion and I can not be stopped apparently. I must be indeed mad and crazy passionate as I seem to just keep making art, I keep creating. Regardless all the discouragement, regardless the zero support, regardless the zero income from it, I do it. In these times, this is something to cherish. I am happy and slightly proud of it. Let's do some good. RR█░░░░

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development blog


2024-July-01
entry 032.

Hi! Art first then text: As you can see, I am trying to narrow down what exact style of movement I want. (Got loads more but as much as I detest photo editing, this is also already 7MB in webp-format, which is heavy for a post according to me.) So, yeah, forget the pixel art... I will do all on paper first (especially in light of the AMAZINGFANTASTIC "renaissance" that is happening over the internet... (more on this later) - Not the backgrounds and effects for sure, those I will paint in Krita but the characters and props will start as ballpoint pen and graphite drawings. There are three "ready made" templates I plan on merging (and well, various other free assets are awaiting to be assimilated...) The important ones are: - the one I find most sophisticated and set for "proper" rpg needs, truly impressive to be sorted and tied all together by one very generous person: Cat's Godot 4 Souls-Like Template & Asset Pack - i will extract the vaulting and mantling and rope climbing from this one, but it is practically just a whole bunch of raycasts and license-problematic animations (...dude...), thought that climbing and "shimmy" over the corners are just too neat: Ledge Climbing In Godot 4 - Shimmy Turn and Ladder by Brokencircuit - and this, this one slams me in the face in it's simplicity and look, that negative light as a shadow (now, i haven't thought about it), how intuitive: https://github.com/golddotasksquestions/2.5D_isometric_pixelart_with_height by "golddotasksquestions" So... In my mind, the character(s) are "fully animated". Ideally I loved to make it like a living cartoon - otherwise I don't see much reason for this whole endeavour... THEREFORE - again, I call out for anyone who's interested in working with me. No idea what role, but obviously, I want to take art lead and this is my absolute passion project I am working on for more than a decade (if counting all forms). I need to paint out more stuff, to show what I is the ideal aim, I know. Yet I think the contours are here, I hope it shows. And narrowing down: Another World (dos game) + Kenshi (obviously not as vast) Third person 2D (in 3D, but all art on top is flat/drawn/painted). Ideal would be 3D for sure but I loved to see this done within the decade... Sorry for the compressed styel of writing, the heat here and my amazing life is taking the best of me. Thank you for reading. Have a great time!

2024-June-25
entry 031.

Okay, so, it appears that modifying the camera and applying a 2d sprite onto the 3d template I mentioned took close to nothing. Camera follows fine, character actions and directions intact. Cool. I will dump a wall of art and some progress tomorrow. At least I did something.

2024-June-24
entry 030.

I was thinking of the whole ordeal in a bad way, truly not in the right way. So, as I was requesting the delete of "the main game post" I made on the Godot Forums - just for kicks I decided to check on a certain template I was examining a few times, which one person was developing for a while, one that would've ironed out so many questions and problems for my non-programmer ass - and lo, BEHOLD, yes, they've just updated it... Ah, the amount of irony in my life, you wouldn't know... Yes, I It kept bothering me a lot. Yes, I've been drawing a lot... Merged and organized all my roadmap/plan/todo/howto text files into one and bottlenecked, squeezed and x-rayed the remaining important parts. Graphics-wise - I feel so stupid... pixelart, what pixelart? I could but I am no pixel artist, I excel in traditional freehand and in the transaltion of that to digital. Through the years, I just kept accumulating building blocks and elements, all this large, fat thing needs is a sharp hatchet or hammer and chisel... Also, this project helps me keep sane and going... I get depressed and anxious, as anybody else - but at times I consider just burning all I have. Injured my knee too, couldn't even walk for a week and I wasn't sure it will start healing, something I've never experienced as an adult. So, making some more art... I am some obscure white guy lost somewhere in Europe. The whole internet is f'd, majority of people take insane, obnoxious nonsense as bread and water and I do not even know how to connect with people. I can barely orientate on this sea of malevolent nonsense and I question my own thoughts. I couldn't be lonlier, maybe if I was truly lost at sea. On top of that I most often think video games are utter waste of time and something the world doesn't need at all. Zero ease. Nothing has value - at least not "out there", most things are taken as a bar of chocolate: ah, shiny, yum, throw, discard, useless. Passion, vision - barely alive. Horrid times, horrid, f'd times. And horrid people want to profit on and over it. I feel as if my compass is broken. What do you do in a completely mad world? Reach out to who? Have you catched that fantastic comment by that - "person" the other day? One being: "Maybe some jobs were not meant to be there in the first place." I truly can not say my actual thoughts and feelings about each and every person who does not think this LLM bullshittery is pure cancer. Rot of the mind. And I have that with multiple major things in life. The writing is on the wall, there are very facts we know for certain, yet the majority are setting the world on fire. WHY Release, man... I still refuse to take any drugs. My only vice is coffee. Yes, I know it only enhances this anxiety. Yet, why is that so, that I feel as a sane person in an insane world? What can I do? Drive it into art. Meditation and self-therapy seems to work, to be honest but only to a certain extent. Censoring yourself drives you crazy, fighting it back is tough. What kind of people encourage you to do that? What world tells you to keep smiling and obey? ... I don't hate people, I enjoy people but most of them truly put me off and make me want to leave the planet. So. Art. Artwork it is. Ratscock.

2024-May-04
entry 029.

Sadly this goes back to the freezer again. Actually, I have decided this is not only going to a regular home freezer but into a hybernation chamber - until I bump into somebody who is willing to work with me on this. Developing a video game is a full-time or more like full-life commitment and I am unable to make that in the present or near future. ...Unless somebody dumps a million moneys on me, it is not happening. I am known to rotate between three outlets: visual art and traditional "crafting", music and singing and software programming. - Visual art (drawing, making little sculptures, arranging things) I can not stop, if my hands are tied I do it within my skull. - Programming and arranging things on the computer is how I try to escape the world around me and is absolute luxury (or irresponsible depression etc.). - Music is purely visceral and personal, it is a certain way I 'therapy myself' and ----- I am not able to explain but something I can do rarely and I am repairing my person in the present and foreseeable future. It is a time for that. In short, while I do have some available space and time to be creative, for various reasons I allocate what I have to making music now. There is an abudance of video games so the world is not exactly making a loss here. Hope you are all well in this crazy world. May the positivity of Mark Hamill be with you. Best regards, Richard 2024, May 4th

2024-March-19
entry 028.

I have relocated to my home country for a while as I was facing depression and paranoia. I am okay and in a few weeks, and when I can squeeze time until, I will start posting again. +++

2024-March-07
entry 027.

I redo the whole thing in 3D cause this template I started to build upon, the "25d demo template" is a !"#@**(^&*). Or at least a whole lot of extra work and confusing me altogether. [Edit: AAAAaaand looking into how tedious is it to rig and animate low-poly characters.] [Edit edit: It don't seem to be so scary but I first try a whole work-out in 2D with one character.] #godoting #gotgodot #gogodottodogood #godotingitoutgood

2024-March-06
entry 026.

Started an entry on the official Godot Forum [forum.godotengine.org] if anyone else is godoting, the project is debatable over there.

A little background for this, a little bit of "about me", sorry, steering back towards the game in a second. Here is an "about me" / "what do I do" post from my personal blog which I retired. It opens in a modal over this blog. I come from a working class background with close to nothing to rely on but myself. Yet, at one point of my life I had the choice to start the process for applying to an arts university (in London, UK) but seeing graduated students work and "what they gained", I in the end chose not to go that route, to "just mess around and figure life as I go". Life went on, I have made some good decisions and some smaller bad ones and, particularly, one huge mistake which stands out sharp: it turned out, not properly applying for settlement in the UK really messed and is still messing my life a lot. A way too much of a lotso lotta lot. Being a semi-rootless immigrant is not a fun life. Anyhow. I consider myself a craftsperson, not a real artist cause I have real interest in all forms of visual and physical art, including writing and dancing too but not a very defined direction among them. I indeed dance around and among. I make it as I go. So. Not much to stand on and a troublesome mind and background still has me in a curios uhm setup in life. And I am at a point where I can not lose more. Rather, I hold on to anything I have to stop myself from falling down. Like this little project. So what? So I do this and almost everything in life alone-alone by myself in short. Nevertheless, if you'd be interested in working with me, here is a page to look at: https://richardkramen.com/form/ That's all. Thank you for reading. Respect and love one another. Back to sword-fighting robots and games and such!

2024-March-01
entry 025.

Hello again! To get back on track with programming in GodotEngine properly, I went through a few things: So, it all based on the 2.5 Godot (3.6.3beta) template, mixed 2d and 3d elements, as it allows to use "simple" animation, show a lot and have the capability to utilize engine physics, gravity and overall "3d capabilities". I would of course loved to model and animate the whole thing with rigged bodies and so on but keeping it "flat" is what I have time for if I do not want this to take forever-forever. Hopefully in the future there will be a hospitable planet to live on... and I will be able to continue to create more, maybe a 3d sequel. Anyhow. Before I get to the actual fun part of it all, drawing characters properly, animating them, drawing backgrounds, making props and interactions, I must get through with the "boring" coding part. Fortunately, thanks to the vast busy-busy community this game engine attracted, the resources are plenty and I do not have to figure out everything on my own, amazing people share their work and discuss their troubles on forums and all in all, this is a superior software to work with. Yay. Here is a list of most things I've done apart from the "old code". Will upload a video soon and then some silly pre-alpha to mess with. I decided to disclose my actual roadmap [it is still heavily cropped for brevity], see it at the bottom, after the posts: Roadmap ⌁ Created off-screen point-of-interest indicators by merging two different sources and then managed to fix and trim it down to about 50 lines. Now it all works as expected. ⌁ Got a placeholder parallax background for clouds/depth. ⌁ Drew the rough animations for the first own character, walks, falls and jumps in 8 directions. ⌁ Fixed unwanted sliding of the player again: after about three hours of coding i realized i just need to adjust a slider. ⌁ Experimented with a logo idea, worked it out it in Inkscape. ⌁ Created a transparent boot splash, when the game loads, there is a neat semi-transparent logo popping up, and did some icons for files and folders. ⌁ Discovered this spatial/panning audio function: the sound pans left or right depending on where the source is on the screen. ⌁ Added a screenshot function I am at a dilemma, a problem where I have to decide to go with just a single-player mode or introduce and take on building a multiplayer option as it would make great sense according to my "story" and beyond. There will be party/team-based gameplay either way. Keeping simple but not too simple. Thank you for reading.

2024-February-28
entry 024.

Just a few more images. Photo from 2020: Figuring how the character avatar/hud should look. This is too distracting but looks cool, would take a few shaders: I think I go with small eyes for this character:

CLICK TO REVEAL ALL PREVIOUS ENTRIES

ROADMAP


PHASE 1, mainly programming:port all existing work to the new orthographic setup ⬂ port all existing work to the new 3D setup ⬂ port all existing work to Godot 4.2 ⬂ Core: merge: ➨ "Cat's Godot 4 Souls-Like Template & Asset Pack" by Cat Prisbrey ➨ "Ledge Climbing, Mantling, Vaulting, Shimmy Turn and Rope Climbing" by "Brokencircuit" ➨ "2.5D Isometric Pixelart With Height" by "golddotasksquestions" ⬂New logo ⬂Camera actions ⬂Inventory system ⬂Save/Load system ⬂Implement further character actions stamina, hurt state dashing sneaking, hiding crouching push-pull, invisibility, interactions etc. mid-states ⬂Basic character animations ⬂GUI, HUD, Screens and menus ⬂T.B.S.S. (the boring skill system) test new shaders offscreen enemy/poi indicator parallax background make own basic anims in 8 directions fix sliding again create cool transparent boot splash for no reason\ create cool icons for no reason spatial/panning audio screenshot function 2020-2021: experiment with pixelart styles decide on character sizes decide on resolution and zoom levels sketch first map/level decide on color and mood fix character "sliding" unify shaders, (move on if taking too long) *it didn't add shadows (nope, i'll just draw them, 3d shadows look rather off) pause menu track that credit list! (tutorials used etc.) player attack test movable object get deeper into Godot by implementing placeholder animations modifier keys and animations basic shaders sketch first characters familiarize with Godot

PHASE 2, Art: ⬂ Blocking out colour palettes "uniforming" ⬂ Environment, Levels: draw & paint map falling ground moving rocks rooms ⬂ Character Art: characters (with quirky cartoon style of mine) character animations and effects ⬂Sounds ⬂Shaders ⬂Animated avatars ⬂Cutscene test ⬂Waypoints ⬂Weather PHASE 3, "the rest": ⬂ icons ⬂ music ⬂ text ⬂ posters ⬂ stickers ⬂ promo... onto PHASE 3...


Questions and Answers


Q: What is this?
A: An adventure video game in the making.

Q: Who is behind it?
A: yours truly: RKAWX

Q: What to expect, what is the rough direction?
A: Art and design-oriented digital "play with dolls" "time-waster". The direction is Another World meets Kenshi. Wild take but there you go. ... I pour all my strange ideas into it for a long time now: there is a story and an "universe" behind it all with many details which I was world-building for many years but refer to the inspirations, zero hand-holding. It will look 2d with fake shadows (it is actually 3d with flat art on top). Oh, Dark Souls, of course.

Q: How is it going so far?
A: Uhhh... It will take forever if my life continues as it did in the last years.

Q: Sounds like a lot. Anything else?
A: It is getting done in Godot Engine 4.2. Everything is done exclusively via Free Libre Software on GNU/Linux. Blender, Krita.



comments


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