I made some decent progress on things since last time, but there isn’t a ton to show for it outside of the cooking department. Let’s get into it.

Video Progress

In case you need a recap, the upcoming feature presentation will be a strange mix of VSauce and Xavier Renegade Angel wherein I address the heinous accusation alleging that I am a “VTuber.”

I was going to use B-roll of actual VTubers for a couple of shots but I thought it’d be way funnier to make semi-convincing fakes. I’ve concocted two characters for this purpose but I want to leave their designs and such a surprise. I will, however, share their main sources of inspiration.

Both take from Dominions 6 Pretenders and Transformers (which funnily enough also has characters classified as Pretenders, but for completely different reasons), with the second design additionally pulling from ReBoot.

The first false VTuber is based off of the Demiurge and Dirgegun (from the Japan-only Beast Wars II).

Meanwhile the second one is based off of the Carrion Dragon, the Quintesson Judge, and Hexadecimal.

So how do these disparate sources coalesce into coherent character designs? You’ll just have to wait to find out!

Dave The Depressed Demilich - A Short Story

I’ve been working on a short story for the Newgrounds Lit Portal Collab currently titled Dave The Depressed Demilich. It’s set in the same world as my previous short story, Mystery of The Memoryhole Monastery Pt. 2, and my TTRPG system Table Knight (to be released eventually).

I’ll link the new story and the collab in a future newsletter, but for now I’ll share a couple of excerpts from the draft.

Ten years ago Dave had taken out a massive mortgage on the equally massive, twelve-story Gothic citadel that he partly called his own. The Debtomancer owned the rest, on paper anyways. Well not really on paper per se, but you don’t have to worry about those details right now.

Dave’s mortgage agreement had shackled his soul to the world of the living whether he liked it or not. That mortgage was unfinished business, and he couldn’t die until he felt he was finished with all his business. This had nothing to do with him being a Demilich. The natural magic of the world is just funny like that. It works because people believe it works, thus making it work.

---

“You sure that thing’s working?” Cannon Knight nudged the Arcana Counter in Brick Knight’s hands like an annoying brother.

Brick Knight turned a crystalline knob on the stone PDA and pointed it at the cannon that Cannon Knight was using like a skateboard (it had wheels). It beeped.

“It works.” Brick Knight bluntly retorted. He re-tuned the Arcana Counter and aimed it around again until he heard a low-pitched beep. The two Knights continued down the barren hallway of the castle they had spent the past half hour scrounging through.

“I dunno, something still feels off. Doesn’t this place seem a bit too empty?”

“It’s an abandoned castle.”

“No, the town around it was abandoned. Those buildings were trashed and then some. I mean yeah, it’s dusty in here but there’s nothing else. You’d think monsters would’ve started squatting in here or something.”

“The magic thing in here could be repelling them.”

“How much is that worth?”

The duo stopped. Brick Knight pulled a dense, leatherbound, gemstone-encrusted shopping catalog out of his backpack and started flipping through it.

“There it is!” Cannon Knight proclaimed, jamming his finger onto a page. Behind their visors, the Knights’ eyes lit up like fireballs of ionized gold.

The Debtomancer was one bad day away from quitting. Having to deal with adventurers and Mages daily was one thing. Having to deal with their finances was another, much, much worse thing. It seemed like nobody in those lines of work knew the first thing about fiscal responsibility, except maybe Economic Mages and Wizards. But they all worked for The Economancer (as did he). The Economancer didn’t take kindly to fiscal irresponsibility. Merely witnessing him cast Power Word: Audit on some poor soul was enough to scare you into straightening out your financial situation.

As the only Wizard working in the Loans Division (The Repomancer retired last year and there hadn’t been a replacement yet), The Debtomancer was personally responsible for collateralizing and repossessing magic items. Lesser Economic Mages weren’t nearly powerful enough to handle some of the more dangerous situations The Debtomancer often found himself in.

Just last week he had to take a microplastic golem from a Hazmat Mage in a castle full of noxious gasses. Another time it was a Bag of Endless Rubber Chickens from Clown Knight, who put up a fight. Yesterday it was an experimental Staff that could turn inanimate objects into kitchen countertops (and back). It was called Counter Spell. There were also vast swaths of less interesting things like enchanted swords, rings, and amulets.

Sure, they were valuable on paper (and according to The Endless Catalog of Majicks) but they just didn’t sell very often. The weird stuff even less so. The Debtomancer was quickly running out of space. He was running out of patience exponentially faster.

Pizzas, Pastries, and Protein

Ah yes, the three major food groups.

From first to last we’ve got a couple marinaras, bbq chicken, chicken pesto, and another marinara.

In this corner we have a couple of chocolate chip cookie slabs and some pancakes. I tried whipping up the eggs in the pancakes which turned out quite well. I recently found this video covering a different kind of pancake recipe that’s kinda like a meringue. I tried my hand at that earlier today but you’ll have to wait till next time to see the results.

And here we’ve got a bulgogi-ish ground beef bowl, some more proper bulgogi, and finally some grilled chicken thighs (given a dry rub of salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika) that I used for some wraps.

In a previous newsletter I had talked about how I was gonna do a future video on making chocolate chip pancakes but those plans may very well change. I’ve had two friends express interest in a hypothetical video on my pizza making procedure so I might do that instead. We’ll see.

Speaking of seeing, I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

This is gonna be a bit of a shorter one. I spent a good chunk of last month traveling (for work and for personal stuff) and feeling like industrial waste (these things happened separately). Despite this, I still got some stuff done, which you’ll see evidence of below.

Video Progress

I got a couple more shots animated and edited together. One of them was (mostly) hand-drawn and the other entirely 3D.

There are a few other bits that aren’t nearly as funny out of context so you’ll have to wait for the full thing to see them.

The above image isn’t part of the video, by the way. I was just messing around with the model and thought it was mildly amusing. In that aimless articulating I achieved an absolutely aura farming posture that is part of the video, pictured below:

Looksmaxxing a Prehistoric Fish

Looksmaxxing is certainly one of the trends infesting very specific corners of the internet. Some Looksmaxxcolytes (this isn’t a real term I just made it up) will go so far as to smash their facial bones in with a hammer to try and achieve their desired, and one can only assume to be maximized, look.

Dunkleosteus (pictured above) was an aquatic apex predator during the Late Devonian period. One of its most prominent features (and the only part we really have fossils of) was its heavily armored face, made of bony plates.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

I think the results speak for themselves. I’ve been wanting a scale model of a Dunkleosteus skull for a while so maybe I’ll just make one myself. This is going to be the subject of a future video.

A Short Order

I didn’t cook a lot of things that warranted documentation last month, though those pizzas were probably the best I’ve made to date.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. See you again next time!

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

Compositing is turning out to be a lot of fun! I haven’t delved too deep into the VFX rabbithole just yet - it’s largely been simple color corrections, blurs, and glares so far - but it’s still really cool seeing how much of a difference it makes.

The image above was drawn in Krita and then given a fancy background and other VFX in Blender. The filter on the background is from MP_Comp. I can share the node setup for this image if there’s interest.

Video Progress

I’ve got two scenes of the next video rendered and composited so far. Below you can see a few select frames with extremely real context in the captions. I wanted these shots to look like they take place at the bottom of the ocean and I think I got the look down pretty well.

Depending on progress, you’ll either get more out-of-context screenshots or maybe even the finished video with the next newsletter. We’ll see.

If you want to know more about how I’m making this, let me know and I can share some more details next time.

If you want to know more about why I’m making this, it’s because I think it’s gonna be really funny. I’m hoping I get a few “What the fuck did I just watch?” sort of reactions. This may alienate some viewers who subscribed from the scorpion video, but it did have a pretty blatant warning about what was next.

Unfortunately we don’t have time to address the remaining interrogatives.

Website Updates

The Hydromecha dot Website saw a major overhaul to its overall aesthetics this past month. Several legacy assets were touched up and sent through the compositing dimension while others were newly minted just for the occasion. The new stuff was all drawn in Krita, with some of it being processed further in Blender.

Landing Page

I re-did the render for the landing page monitor and did some post-processing to make it fit the deep sea look better. There’s also a transparent grunge texture over the screen that I made in Blender. Instead of using a transparent image with a hole cut out in the center (used to show the scrolling static), I used another image as a mask. The collective filesizes of the non-transparent image and mask are much lower than the previous alpha-channel-having picture.

I was having some trouble getting a shadow to work nicely using the 2D plane/image of the monitor so I made a duplicate of it in black as a stand-in.

Homepage

The tablet frame for the main page was edited slightly in Krita and then sent into Blender for the usual VFX procedure.

I’m quite fond of how the new menu elements are all physical things, although I’m a bit iffy on the featured creation section. It’s supposed to be a display window in a store but I’m not sure if it’s clear enough. Other than that potential change I want to add some icons to the navigation buttons on the left.

Speaking of those nav buttons, they were (outside of the actual LCD screen, which was made in Blender) drawn in Krita and then VFX’d in Blender.

Most of the shadows were done using CSS box shadows. The rest have the shadows painted in, like with the button tracks above.

I ended up making a pretty nice wood texture for the magazine stand that gets almost entirely covered. If the image below gets messed up by compression, you can see the original version from the site by clicking here.

Site Button & Cursors

The site button and cursors were also touched up using the same techniques discussed ad nauseam.

I still need to upgrade the rest of the pages and I’d like to use some other styles or mediums for them. I imagine it’ll take a while.

Foodstuff (Non-VFX)

This section won’t have anything to do with compositing. Don’t worry, you’re safe here.

I recently acquired a waffle iron. More recently I acquired an electric mixer. In the interim period I had to whip egg whites by hand to make waffles. I’m very thankful for automation.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

If you’re anything like me you might just live in some part of the continental US. So how about that recent storm, huh? It was kinda amusing having to free my car from its icy exoskeleton.

Let’s get on to the projects and whatnot.

Next Video Progress

Here’s an early preview of the next video. It’s for a very specific audience (primarily me) so there’s a chance you might not get it.

This is a screen recording of the material preview so it’s lacking proper lighting and VFX. It’ll look a lot nicer in the final product.

I started messing around with some procedural materials for the hologram head and now it’s got this cool scanline effect as well as some other interesting stuff going on with the goggles.

IN A.D. 2025 COLLAB WAS BEGINNING

This is something I drew for the All Your Base Collab on Newgrounds. I thought the idea of a space tow truck was kinda funny so here we are now with this tow-Zig sorta thing. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can check out this video by Whang for an internet history lesson. Click on the image above to see it in full-res on Newgrounds.

The Tow-Zig started as a super rough sketch that I then recreated in Blender to help me figure out the geometry of the vehicle better. The sketch was based more on some promo art of Zero Wing that had protruding wings and four round thrusters on the Zig instead of the single pair of boxy thrusters (without wings) that the in-game sprites (and some other art) use. I haven't actually played Zero Wing but I still wanted to make something close to the source material.

Rust Cube

I wanted to do some more painting after I drew the Tow-Zig so I started on this rusty cube. Not sure if I’ll finish all the sides, but it was still good practice nonetheless.

A Whole Buncha Baking

Last time I said I was gonna try making my own baguettes following this recipe. That I did. I also made some other stuff, seen below:

After I finish that animated video I’m gonna do a cooking vid on how I made the chocolate chip pancakes above. I already have the footage for it, so that’s one step done. I just need to write a script, record it, and then edit it all together. I have a funny idea for a thumbnail as well. All in due time.

Subscribe now

Speaking of time, I’ll see you next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

I’m going to reference The Metamorphosis again in the future, mark my words.

I hope you all had a pleasant holiday season. I made a big snowball, as is tradition. As of writing it still stands strong in my parents’ backyard.

When I was a kid I didn’t like powdery snow since you can’t make snowballs out of it easily but now that the government has irrevocably branded me with the designation of “adult” I can appreciate that it’s easier to shovel.

I don’t have any New Year’s Resolutions because I’d be contractually obligated to stop following them a few months into the year. I don’t make the rules. I do, however, make other things. You can see some of that below:

Wiretap & Wingthing

This is that Transformers custom I’ve been talking about for the past couple issues of the newsletter. It’s finally done! The purple one is Wiretap (repainted from Blurr), and his colors are based off of the Autoscout drone Soundwave used in a single episode of the G1 cartoon. Wingthing (repainted from Fangry) is the black/orange one, based on Soundwave’s Targetmaster (little robot that turns into a weapon) partner from his Action Master figure.

You can check out some more pictures of these guys plus my back-catalog of other customized figures (along with bios for a few of them) on TFW2005.

https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/hydros-custom-thread.1285624/

Table Knight Creatures

Table Knight is a custom TTRPG and setting I’ve been working on for a while. I recently started up another campaign to playtest some new things (I just ran a session where we tested out the stealth mechanics). I’ve also been on another speculative evolution kick so that’s culminated in a couple well thought out creatures (and one joke creature).

Hydraken

There’s this old medieval belief that every land animal had to have an equivalent animal in the sea. So what would a Hydra’s aquatic cousin look like?

Behold, the Hydraken, a titanic cephalopod with large claws at the ends of its feeding tentacles that resemble heads. If a “head” is cut off, it will eventually regrow. The real body of the Hydraken remains submerged while it sticks its eyes up on stalks to look for food. It lives in wetlands and swamps where it can use the surrounding greenery for further cover. If the claws weren’t enough, this monster can spray an aerosolizing toxin from its jets. It uses this in tandem with its many “heads” to disorient and ambush its prey.

At some point in the future I want to make a physical model of one of these things.

Terrestrial Sea Pig

This next creature came about to answer what the Hydraken would normally feed on. Hapless adventurers aren’t a stable source of sustenance.

This funny looking pig-like thing is based on sea pigs, warthogs, and shell-having mollusks. I’m going to redo the shell at some point so it isn’t dragging it around on the ground. The idea is that these descended from the oceanic equivalent of warthogs/wild hogs. They live in the same wetlands and swamps as Hydrakens, using their tusks and mouth tentacles to dig for plants.

Siren

This is a stupid idea I had a while back that I finally scribbled down recently. It’s half ambulance and half fish. It tailgates boats with its high beams on. I’m gonna have to redesign this later so it fits the tech level of the setting better. It ought to have something more like a Model T for the front half.

New Video Progress

Last time I said I was gonna get started on the next video. I did get started, but just barely. There isn’t really anything interesting to show for it right now. More info to come next time depending on progress.

Comic Character Model

Last time I also talked about making 3D models of characters for a comic I’ve had sitting on the back burner for a while. I also got started on that, with the results clearly visible above. This is a background character that’s only gonna appear in the first page or so.

For context, this comic is a one-shot that was gonna be for a comic jam last year that I didn’t finish for a number of reasons. I did draw the first page, but the panels are super cramped because I wrote a script that was way too long for the page limit. I gotta redo all the page layouts later.

I’m gonna try using Grease Pencil, Blender’s 2D drawing/animation tool, for adding details instead of going through the whole rigamarole of UV unwrapping and texturing. If I can get that to look good it’ll save me a ton of time.

I’ve been enjoying this whole process so I’m gonna go ahead and make more characters, assets, etc. and just do the whole comic in 3D. It’s gonna take a while but I’ll have a lot more experience by the time it’s done.

For Whom The Dinner Bell Tolls

Here’s some stuff I cooked up last month. I’ve posted similar things before, so if you’ve got a lot of frequent flier miles with us you know what the deal is.

The steak in that last picture is a reverse-seared strip steak seasoned with salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, a tiny bit of red pepper flakes, oregano, rosemary, cilantro, honey, a bit of lemon juice, and a whole bunch more lime juice.

In other news I finally cleaned up and reorganized my hobby space. I still need to clear a bunch of junk off the table but the rest of the room is way, way better looking. The major value added in all this is that I’ll have much better lighting when I film stuff for making-of videos. Instead of one ultra-bright lamp I now have a couple of adjustable light panels near the sides of the table. It definitely looks a lot more like a studio in there now.

I’m gonna keep chipping away at the next video and the character model this month. I also wanna make another webtool for Table Knight and try making my own baguettes. There’s this video I saw a while back about 5 minute baguettes I’ll link below (it’s 5 minutes of actual work, not counting time to rise/bake).

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

It’s very convenient that Roman coins weren’t perfect circles. Now I can call this scribble historically accurate! Just ignore the fact that the face isn’t in profile.

That’s Latin for “After Scorpion”

Those of you playing along with the home edition have very likely already seen the big scorpion scratchbuild video. In case you haven’t or if you’re just tuning in, you can check it out here:

There was a bit of a kerfuffle with the audio in the first upload of the video, which I fixed after a multi-hour variable-framerate wild goose chase. The version linked above is the reupload with the audio un-kerfuffled.

The sound in the initial edition started with a subtle desync, which got progressively more desynced as the video continued. At first I thought it might’ve had something to do with mixing framerates while editing (the footage was recorded at 29.97 FPS while the animations were done at 24), but that turned out to be a non-issue.

I spent several hours attempting to troubleshoot that non-issue.

It seems incredibly obvious in hindsight (as these things tend to), but all I had to do was change the audio codec from the default AAC to Vorbis. If you or a loved one is suffering from Audiodesynchronitis (in Blender’s video editor), Vorbis might be right for you.

And now a few interesting behind-the-scenes tidbits:

The SCORPIO MAXIMUS in the background is a 2D image in a 3D scene. I cropped out a picture of the scratchbuild and put it on a hill (which uses a picture of the model’s base with a Scattershot node for the ground texture) with some lamp posts (that are also in the foreground) to give you some semblance of scale. The posts all the way in the back are scaled down slightly to better sell the effect.

The black bars in the penultimate animated shot actually exist in 3D space. I changed the focal length of the camera a bunch to get that cool forced-perspective look and I had to do some funny things with the bars so they would look nice in-camera.

There was also some cool stuff I did with compositing, but that’s all node spaghetti that I imagine won’t make sense to a majority of the readerbase. If you do want to see more stuff about compositing, do let me know and I can talk about it after I finish the next video.

The Next Video

Like I said towards the end of the recent feature presentation, the next video is gonna be something like a Vsauce video with Xavier Renegade Angel-esque writing. It probably won’t be what you expect (unless I’ve already told you what it is, in which case you know exactly what to expect).

The audio’s done, by the way. It’s been done. For almost a year now, actually. It’s been collecting dust in my hard drive since January.

No idea when it’ll be out, maybe a month or two? We’ll see. Once It’s done I should have a better idea of how long making this sort of thing takes. I’ve got another script ready and some funny ideas for some future animations.

I’m not done with scratchbuilding type content, by the way. I have plans for the next thing I want to make but first I gotta finish something else.

Autoscout Progress (The Something Else)

A couple months ago I posted some WIP pics of this Transformers custom. I’ve made a bit of progress since then, largely focused on disassembling the base figure more. That involved knocking out a bunch of pins (I had to drill a hole through the windshield to remove the pin in there so I could take the torso apart) and sanding some stuff down in an attempt to prevent paint chipping (we’ll see how well that works later).

I couldn’t think of a good segue to the next part.

Item Tag Randomizer

Long-time readers might remember rumbles of a tabletop RPG I’m working on. I’m starting up a new Table Knight playtest campaign this weekend and I wanted a way to randomize loot using a big list of item tags with various effects. That turned into a small webapp that lets you roll 1 - 5 tags for weapons, armor, and accessories. You can see an example roll below:

I threw this together in a few hours and I’m quite happy with how it turned out. You can see it in action on the Goblin Base website, although I’m not sure how much mileage you’d get out of it since you’re more than likely lacking a lot of context. Do note that the website isn’t optimized for mobile displays just yet. If something looks broken, try clearing your browser’s cache first.

I’m planning on making some more of these small automated tools over time, with the long-term goal of having everything you’d need to play Table Knight/Tablespace available on the Goblin website. I also gotta put the updated game rules on there at some point. It’d be kinda difficult to play without those.

Tales From The Food Dimension

There were some interesting things cooked last month. The first of which was ribeye steak marinated in honey, lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, cilantro, parsley, basil, oregano, rosemary, and Korean red pepper flakes/powder.

This was really good, and rather sweet if you couldn’t guess from the ingredients. I gotta make this again sometime.

Next up is this lemon-y chicken dish.

It was loosely based off of the recipe from this video (great channel btw):

And last, but certainly not least, are some more pizzas I made.

Dehydrated cherry tomatoes and minced garlic are like crack when you put them on a pizza.

In other news I still want to try using Blender to make a comic using 3D stuff, but that might have to take a seat on the backburner for now depending on how much time other things take. I might try at least making one character model this month.

That’s it for November. I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

I’m pretty sure the issue was with the default audio/video codecs Blender uses in its video editor breaking when trying to render a long video but I gotta do some more testing to figure out which one specifically is causing problems.

The old version of the video still exists with links to this new one in the description/comments (along with me documenting the troubleshooting process in the pinned comment).

With that I should finally be free from the scorpion mines for the foreseeable future.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

I’ll share some behind-the-scenes stuff on this behind-the-scenes video in the next HydroMonthly. Stay tuned for that!

-Hydro

Subscribe now

I’m hoping to have the full thing done sometime this weekend, so stay tuned for that! I’ll send out another newsletter whenever it goes live.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

There isn’t a lot to talk about for September. To be honest I was in a pretty bad headspace for most of the month and didn’t get much done (I’m feeling a lot better now). But I did make some really good food so I can talk about that.

The Food Dimension

We’ll start with this pizza. I’ve posted many a pizza like this before but the chicken atop this ‘za was something special. I marinated it overnight in olive oil, salt, pepper, dried lemon peel, garlic powder, and onion powder and then grilled it. It was an excellent combo that made for an excellent pizza topping. It’s my go-to for grilled chicken now.

I also started making my own fries from scratch. These potatoes were soaked in water and baking soda overnight, boiled, and then covered with olive oil before being air fried. The fries in the second hamburger photo below were frozen before being air fried which made them even better.

These were some awesome burgers. The toppings included turkey bacon, pickles, cheddar, barbecue sauce, and an interesting combination of caramelized onions and cherry tomatoes. The first burger (on the left) just had the onions and tomatoes, which was alright on its own, while the second, far more flavorful iteration added salt, cilantro, and hot sauce which I guess you could call a salsa. I made a way larger batch that second time so I had the rest with some softshell tacos later that week.

Scorpion Video Progress

I severely overestimated how much I thought I’d get done on the previously mentioned SCORPIO MAXIMUS making-of video. As of writing I’ve got all the audio recorded, which needs to be edited. I would very much like to get the video done before the end of this month but we’ll see.

Knight Sketches

Here’s a super rough sketch of the characters from the short story I wrote a few months ago. From left to right we have Tackle Knight, Mine Knight, and Psych Knight. I might make these into 3D models later down the line.

On top of the scorpion video I’d also like to get the Autoscout custom I showed off last time finished up soon. It’s just a few more coats of paint away from completion.

I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

SCORPIO MAXIMUS

The giant robot scorpion I talked about last time is done! It also won 2nd place in Robot Day on Newgrounds! After starting on it all the way back in January it was left to collect dust for several months before I finally kicked it into high gear a few weeks before the deadline. The sheer size of this model is honestly inhumane. I have to turn it sideways to get it through a doorway.

This thing is made of a smorgasboard of junk, model kit parts, and foam. The tail uses a phone receiver, the main body is an empty spool of printer filament, and the legs are largely made from deoderant stick parts. Every single rivet on the model is a tiny hemispheric bead. The entire underbelly of the model is covered in riveted panels that you can’t see because the thing’s so close to the ground. You’ll be able to see that and more in the making-of video that should be finished sometime before the end of the month.

If you want to take a gander at more images of SCORPIO MAXIMUS, head on over to Newgrounds to see the art post: https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/hydromecha/scorpio-maximus

Website Updates

The Hydrosite (Hydromecha.Website) has seen some major renovations recently. The old layout was way too cramped so I moved the monitor to the new landing page and painted a tablet sorta thing in Krita for the main website content.

These updates also saw a new website button along with new About and Home pages. The button was made in Blender, recycling the same scene and assets from the landing page render. Below you can see the new button along with what the Blender scene looks like outside of camera view:

Autoscout Activating

Remember that drone Soundwave only ever used in a single episode of the G1 cartoon? Me neither (I mostly watched Cybertron as a kid), but I saw it on a list of Decepticon cassettes on TFWiki and thought it would be a cool basis for a custom so here we are now. Below you can see a digibash of what the figure will eventually look like along with what I’ve painted so far. I picked Blurr as the base figure since he’s got that antenna sorta thing on his head that resembles what I’m assuming is a camera/eye on Autoscout.

Once this is finished I’ll post it (and all my previous customs) on TFW2005’s Radicons board. I didn’t know they had a forum for customizing figures until I started using the site earlier this year. It was cool to find a message board for this very specific hobby.

Comic News

There’s been a change of plans with Bugalo. I’m going to be putting it back on ice to re-focus on some more serious storytelling with other stuff. Bugalo was certainly an amusing experiment but I’ve lost interest in making it and I don’t think anyone’s seriously invested in its continuation.

There’s one last page for Bugalo that I’m (as of writing) still waiting for a friend to add dialogue to that should go up on the website sometime this week. Here’s a (textless) preview:

So what’s next for Hydrocomics? I’d like to get back to working on the P.I. Periscope one-shot and later Hazardous Materials. I also want to see if making comics in Blender is a viable option. It would require a lot more up-front work to make models for characters, objects, and environments, but it also means I can recycle assets easily (once a model is complete I can reuse it endlessly) and use different camera angles and perspectives that would be a pain in 2D.

I’m gonna try making a single page of Periscope in 3D once the scorpion video is done and we’ll see where I go from there. Oh, and while we’re talking about the world of Hazardous Materials, I also did a quick headshot drawing of Coal Dust while I was working on SCORPIO MAXIMUS.

There’s still room for improvement but it’s leagues better than the earlier drawings I did of the character. I started going through an anatomy book (Anatomy for Sculptors) a little while ago and I really oughta get back to it at some point.

Anyways, I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

Here’s the stuff I’ve been working on since the last issue. It’s a mix of 3D models, robots, and a 3D model of a robot.

The Glizzy Goblin

This is more or less an inside joke with my younger brother. If you happen to find it amusing too, that’s awesome and I cordially extend to you this invitation to the secret club. If you think this is stupid, this isn’t for you and you should skip to the next headline.

If you remember the Spider Cuz model I made a little while back I mentioned I wanted to design a nemesis for him. This is that nemesis. I’m actually quite proud of the way the Green Goblin mask turned out. The rest was a bit rushed since I wanted to get to another model project (the next headline).

You can also see this model on Newgrounds for a tiny bit more context.

Hydromecha 3.0

This is the big ticket item for the episode. I remade my 3D model from the ground up and also started dabbling in compositing to make it look even fancier. This is where the video is, by the way. Give it a watch if you want to know more about what went into making the model.

If you seek a quicker rundown on the model’s creation you can also check it out on Newgrounds where I wrote a short summary on stuff.

The Return of the Giant Robot Scorpion Scratchbuild

This thing has been staring at me unfinished since January and I want to get it done for Robot Day (August 26th) on Newgrounds. I made some pretty good progress the past few days. Here’s what it looks like currently:

What is that some sort of winged thing?

Wait.
Say that again.
“Wing… thing?” Yeah, I like the sound of that.

This is something I’ve had nearly done for a while that I finally finished up. It’s a customized Titans Return Fangry repainted to look like Wingthing. It’s gonna be the targetmaster (little robot that turns into a weapon) partner for another Transformers custom that will hopefully be finished before the heat death of the universe. I’ve been wanting to get back into this hobby for a while (my backlog is insane) and this was a pretty simple way to do that.

Below you can see what the figure originally looked like and the character it’s been painted to resemble:

TR Fangry is put together entirely with friction joints, which made disassembly super simple. After it had been pulled apart I just had to spraypaint the things I wanted to recolor.

Where did Bugalo Buga-go?

I just didn’t make a new page, sorry. I’ll have two done for the next Hydromonthly.

On a related note, I’m curious if people (outside of the small group where I share the pages directly) actually keep up with the comic. If you’re an avid Bugalo reader let me know somehow. I’ll accept comments on this post, direct messages formatted like telegrams, and astral projections into my dreams.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about you can start reading Bugalo here. Read the description first so you know what you’re getting yourself into.

I’ll see you again next time with a giant robot scorpion to my name.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

There’s also the video edition of the Hydromonthly in case that previous paragraph completed your reading quota for the day:

Monolith Field

This is something I threw together in Blender to practice using ucupaint, a plugin that adds a whole bunch of really useful functionality to Blender's texture painting.

The model is loosely based on long-term nuclear waste warning messages, something I first learned about back in college.

The purpose of those messages is to figure out ways to tell future humans, who might not even understand any of our current languages or culture, that dangerous nuclear waste is stored in an area.

Part of that includes physical structures meant to appear hostile, intimidating, and unnatural. That's what this model pulls from, with the monoliths, spikes, and weird grid sorta thing.

Some highlights of the paintjob include blue painted over the shadows, a painted-on normal map for the terrain, and some gradient work on the main monolith.

HEISTSONG

It’s been a while since I made some music. This song started as me just messing around in LMMS, which eventually metamorphosized into something that sounded like spy music, so I ran with the idea of it being about a bank heist that goes wrong.

I really like how the bongos turned out in this one. I’ve been wanting to use them in a song for a while, largely inspired by how they’re used in the TF2 soundtrack (Faster Than a Speeding Bullet specifically).

The songs I’ve made so far are all up on Newgrounds. I should probably put them up on YouTube at some point as well.

I also got started on another song based on an earlier version of HEISTSONG. It started as a drum ‘n bass thing but now it’s sounding a little more like something out of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Here’s what I’ve got for now:

I feel like I can do drums and basslines pretty decently but I struggle when it comes to figuring out melodies. Hopefully something that gets better with practice.

Bugalo’s Back, in More Ways Than One

For those not in the know, Wonderful & Fancy High School Bait Club, also known as Bugalo for the sake of brevity, is a deranged collaborative comic experience wherein I draw textless pages and a friend remedies the lack of lettering.

I had been publishing a new page per month pretty consistently until I missed the last two. We now return to the regularly scheduled whatever-this-is. Click on the page below to read the whole comic on my website (not formatted for mobile just yet).

In this new page, Bugalo is forced back to life by decree of Gerbil Dictator using the aptly dubbed “Forced-To-Live-Ray” that had only appeared in-name prior.

If the new page isn't loading try clearing your browser's cache.

Break Action Spellbook

Ever wonder what a magic super shotgun might look like? Wonder no longer! This is the Break Action Spellbook, another model I made in Blender using ucupaint and Krita for the textures.

The Team Fortress 2 players in the room (that includes me btw) might say “Hey that looks like the Force-a-Nature (or the Soda Popper)!” and yeah, it does. It was one of my references when making the thing.

The model originally had some funny looking barrels that made it look like some kind of floo-floober instead of a gun. Although a blunderbuss looking thing might be cool for a future model.

The texture painting includes highlights on the edges, darker colors in the recesses, and some subtle grain on the wooden parts. Not to mention the glowing green wear on the barrels.

This is the second Spellgun model I’ve made so far (click here to see the previous one on Newgrounds). Spellguns are firearm-shaped housings for spellbooks designed to be more ergonomic for adventurers. I’m making these with my tabletop RPG system in mind, where elemental gems are used as ammo for magic items.

I also started on some first-person animations that I’m hoping to get done sometime this month. That’ll go up on my YouTube channel whenever it’s done. Here’s a preview:

Mystery of The Memoryhole Monastery Pt. 2 - A Table Knight Short Story

I recently participated in the 2025 Writer’s Jam on Newgrounds, a roughly 72 hour writing jam with a bunch of single-word prompts to choose from. This resulted in a short story in the world of Table Knight, one of the settings for the previously mentioned TTRPG system. In Table Knight every player is named [Word] Knight, where the chosen word determines your character’s abilities and some of your starting equipment.

This story follows Mine Knight, Tackle Knight, and Psych Knight in the second part of an adventure into The Memoryhole Monastery. There is no first part. I got the idea largely from an episode of The Venture Bros. that had a similar concept. You can read the story either on Newgrounds or on my newly minted short story Substack, Hydro’s Story Plot. I’ve also uploaded a small back-catalog of older things I wrote with more to come.

The Memoryhole Monastery was originally an idea I had for a dungeon within the game. I might do some more stories exploring other dungeon/quest ideas I had for it.

And that’s all the stuff I finished between now and the last edition. I’ll see you next time with another Hydromonthly.

Have a good one,
-Hydromecha

Subscribe now

Low-Poly Spider Cuz

If you’re a fellow enjoyer of Sidetalk you already know who this is. If you aren’t, go give the channel a watch. There’s a ton of great stuff there.

I made this for Low Poly Day on Newgrounds. There’s a little more info on the model in my art post, which you can check out by clicking on the image above.

TTRPG Updates

Tablespess/Table Knight saw some significant updates this past month, including the introduction of several new Elements.

The Esoteric Elements

Previously, Table only had 20 Elements, shown below. These are now known as the Base Elements.

Six new Elements joined their ranks in May. These are the Esoteric Elements:

Economic

Anything to do with the concept of value or transactions.

The Moneyman’s Monocle (Accessory that lets you damage your target’s credit score instead of its HP) was changed from Neutral to Economic.

Miscellanea

All the little things that slip through the cracks. Fungi, bacteria, archaea, viruses, etc.

Data

Information. Also includes things like cursed/forbidden knowledge.

Unknown

Something foreign to the universe as we know it. Also includes chaos, entropy, and the incomprehensible.

Clownforce

Humor, cartoon logic, and absurdity made manifest.

The Rubber Chicken (joke weapon that always deals 1 damage) was changed to Clownforce.

Fate

Inevitabilities and order.

Chekhov's Gun (unique weapon that deals no damage, but makes things you shoot with it become important later) was changed to Fate.

Universal Durability

It used to be that only Primary/Secondary Weapons had Durability (and could be affected by all the mechanics related to it). No longer is this the case. Armor, Accessories, Weapon Attachments, and even Misc. Items* all have Durabilities now. This means you can target, disable, or even destroy more of your enemies’ items, though the same holds true the other way around.

*Misc Items don’t have Durability values. You instead treat the quantity like Durability if the item needs to take damage for whatever reason.

More information about Table can be found on the Goblin Base website. Do be warned, it hasn’t been updated in a while and navigating things can be kinda annoying. I’m planning on doing a total overhaul at some point soon with updated game rules and maybe some other things.

Organizational Obsidian

Speaking of Goblin Base stuff, I recently started trawling through some old chat spaces we had been using to jot down worldbuilding ideas and transplanting them into an Obsidian vault. It’s turning out to be insanely useful for organizing notes. It’s also free and open-source. which is always cool. Below is a snippet of the graph view for what I’ve sorted through thus far:

Being able to link between notes is super useful (shown by the lines that connect the dots in the above screenshot). I’ve also started using the program for some other projects.

The Grill

Here are a couple of interesting things I cooked last month. I have some rough recipes written down that’ll be posted on the Hydro website soon™.

Chicken Teriyaki with Caramelized Onions

Sweet & Spicy Korean Beef Bowl

Ground beef, onions, and garlic with bulgolgi marinade stuff plus gochujang.

Also works as a soup (just add miso paste and rice):

Other Foodstuffs

And here’s a big ‘ol gallery of some other things I made:

Closing Thoughts

A Distinct Lack of Comics

I said I wanted to get back to Bugalo (previously monthly comic where I make a textless page and a friend adds all the wordstuffs) and Periscope (one-shot comic originally intended for a contest that got way too ambitious and isn’t out yet) but uh yeah nah neither of those happened. I’m gonna get back to it at some point once I can get my mojo (read: time management and motivation) back on track.

Cubicull CubiCANCELED

Remember that short animation I teased last time? Yeah that’s just straight-up canned. I came up with the idea while I was in a mental rut and I’d prefer to stay out of that kind of brainspace. You can see what I finished here, though there isn’t much.

The minimalist style was pretty cool (and kinda reminds me of Madness Combat looking back at it now so maybe I can recycle some stuff for something else later) but I don’t want to make something that was a product of me feeling miserable. I’d rather make things that are products of me thinking “that’d be cool” or “that would be really funny.” I have a new idea for an animation that comes from that latter line of thinking.

Coming Eventually to an Internet Theater Near You

I really enjoyed making the low-poly Spider Cuz model and I wanna try making an animated skit with a similar style. I have a rough outline for the script featuring some certified exhale-out-of-your-nostrils-type amusing moments. All I’ll say is that it has something to do with Shark Tank. I might post some models as I finish them.

Holy Crap I Gotta Get Back to Updating My Website (and Other Projects)

I think that title speaks for itself. I really would like to get back to working on the Hydrosite along with some things in the physical world (scratchbuilds, Transformers customs, 3D prints, and some Arduino stuff). It feels like I’m constantly trying to get better about managing my free time and finding motivation and I’m not sure if I’ve actually been able to do so.

And Now for Something Completely Different

In completely unrelated news I saw Devin Townsend in concert last month and that was a fucking blast. It was almost surreal being there after only ever seeing recordings of previous live shows. I got an Ocean Machine (my favorite album) t-shirt and a signed CD of Galactic Quarantine (my favorite live album). There are a couple more concerts I’ve got lined up that I’m really looking forward to seeing.

And that’s all I’ve got for May! I’ll see you again next time with another Hydromonthly.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

The Cloudburst Comic Reader is Now Open-Source!

If you or someone you know is in the extremely specific niche of story-driven comic author who also dabbles in frontend webdev on Neocities and other similar platforms, you may find this interesting.

The Cloudburst Comic Reader is a JS comic reader I’ve been working on for my own Neocities site. I’ve talked about it a few times here and now it’s finally out and open-source! Check it out on Github here: https://github.com/hydromecha/cloudburst_comic_reader

Here are some of the key features:

• Can host multiple comics with multiple chapters on a single webpage.

• Next and previous (if applicable) pages are preloaded to make for a smoother reading experience.

• Procedurally creates menu elements based on the information you enter.

• URL hashes let you bookmark or link to specific comics/chapters/pages.

• Built-in tutorial (clone the repo and open the html file in a browser).

With more to come! See the issues on the repo for more information.

Chain Lightning Spellgun Model

In the old days, adventurers would hand-load elemental gems into spellbooks one at a time and then fire the books as-is. The incredibly unergonomic idea of wielding a textbook-sized tome in the heat of combat has put off many would-be magic users from utilizing the vast library of spellbooks out in the world. Fret no longer!

Introducing SPELLGUNS, the ultimate magical munitions. By combining the industrial efficiency of the modern firearm with the near-limitless potential of the spellbook, SPELLGUNS make it easier than ever to add some sorcerous stylings to your next adventure!

This inaugural model uses Chain Lightning, a powerful spellbook that shoots a bolt of lightning in a straight line, dealing doubled damage to each consecutive enemy you hit.

The idea for Spellguns started with trying to figure out a way to cram a magazine of elemental gems onto a spellbook to make loading them more efficient. It eventually evolved into gun-shaped housings for the books. I definitely want to make a few more of these. The next one is gonna be a break-action shotgun sorta thing.

The spellbooks I'm using for these are all from my homebrew tabletop system. Spellbooks are combat-focused magic items while staffs are more for utility magic. I might also do some staff models later down the line since I've got some funny ideas for a few of them.

Getting back to the chain lightning model, this started out as couple of sketches you can see below.

I felt the first one was too small for what the spell did so I tried going for something more rocket launcher/minigun sized. I originally wanted this spellgun to be an over-the-shoulder thing like an RPG but then I realized that would put the cylinder right next to the user's head which probably isn't a good idea. There also used to be a shield on the front that I later scrapped because it obscured too much of the model.

I ended up recycling the support structure behind the shield into the sights on the final version.

New Monitor Renders + Detailed Making-Of

I recently did a new render of the new website monitor graphics I talked about back in the February Hydromonthly to use as a banner on Newgrounds and YouTube. I posted it and some of the other renders to Newgrounds along with details on why I wanted to change the monitor on the current Hydrosite and how I made the newer graphics. Big website updates coming soon!

New Animated Short Progress

I also got started on an animated short that’s gonna be a bit different from my usual stuff tone-wise. Whenever it’s done it’ll be up on Newgrounds first for maybe a week before it goes to YouTube.

Comics Resuming This Month

I’m planning on resuming Bugalo this month. I’d also like to start chipping away at the pages for the Periscope oneshot I talked about last time. I’ll post those pages to my website as they’re completed. As of writing it’s still just the first page done so far.

Improvements in Pizza-Making

My pizza-making quest continued this past month, with some of the best ones I’ve made so far.

hey wait that’s not a pizza

These are some loaded fries featuring waffle fries, sweet & spicy bulgolgi-ish ground beef, kimchi, mozzarella, cilantro, and parmesan. This was also really good.

The Most Important Vote of Your Life (Perchance)

I need you to vote
…on some stupid nonsense versus matches. Feel free to argue about why the 2-story tall floating granite monolith would kick the shit out of those 20 elephants even if they do have prep time! Or take a different side! It’s all up to you.

This is all for shits and giggles so don't take it seriously in the slightest. These polls are up on my YouTube channel’s community tab, with more to come.

I’ll see you again next time with another Hydromonthly.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

WHEREISCOPE IS PERISCOPE?

I’m gonna cut to the chase. The Periscope one-shot I talked about last month obviously hasn’t released yet. I started working on it way too late and didn’t realize how long it would actually take to complete it. The contest I was making it for had a 15 page limit but the script I wrote probably would’ve fit a 20 - 25 page comic better. Things are a bit cramped, but I have all the page layouts done. I just need to finish drawing everything, which is gonna take some time. I did finish the lineart for the first page, which you can see below:

It’s funny. At first I wanted to make Froz Challenger as this large comic project but then I decided to downscale and make Hazardous Materials to get a better handle on comic-ing. Naturally, HazMat turned out to be a rather large undertaking in and of itself. I jumped (heh) at the opportunity to make something smaller for the Newgrounds Jump contest but even that’s turned out to be way more work than I anticipated.

It’s a similar situation with some other things I want to make. There’s a ton that needs to go into those projects and I really lack the experience to make them. I have a bad habit of starting a project (without realizing it’s gonna be a crazy amount of work), getting some decent progress on it, burning out, and then shoving it into the writhing mound of unfinished projects on the back-burner before moving on to a shiny new toy that will inevitably meet the same fate.

I’m gonna take a step back from all the things I want to work on and try shifting gears to some smaller-scale stuff. I still want to finish Periscope since it’s more than halfway to the finish line but I also need to complete some more reasonably-sized projects so I can:
A. Build up my skills.
B. Actually finish stuff.
C. Learn how long it takes to complete things.

There’s some animation stuff I wanna do with Blender but I’m gonna try making some one-off models first to get some practice in and to build up an asset library. I’d like to do something similar for the tabletop stuff I’m working on. Instead of trying to make a full-on oneshot module I want to focus on just making single enemies, encounters, or rooms. Things I can reasonably complete in a day or a week.

Overall I really gotta get my shit together when it comes to how I’m spending my free time. On top of all this stuff I wanna make I also have a huge backlog of books I want to read (comics, novels, and nonfiction), vidya I want to play, and some housekeeping I should probably take care of. I’m not sure how you’re actually supposed to function as an adult and I’m starting to see why some people drink …but I have enough chemical dependencies (food, air, water, plastic) as-is.

Anyways.

We’ll see how well I’m able to stick to this. I’ve been itching to get back to the robot scorpion scratchbuild and the comic reader, among other things. There’s a lotta stuff I want to do and I gotta get better about breaking that up into more manageable chunks so I can actually get shit done. If the next Hydromonthly has more stuff going on that means it worked.

Pizza Time

Oh, and one more thing. I also made a bunch of pizzas (and a couple pizza-adjacent things) this past month. Instead of posting recipes on my website I’m gonna use that section as a showcase of various stuff I’ve cooked (website updates coming soon™) since I’m either following existing recipes or just freehanding stuff that I don’t really ever measure.

I’ll see you again next time with another Hydromonthly.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

A Most Musical Month

I was bitten by the music bug in February. I ended up completing three songs, which is three more than I usually make a month. These songs are all on Newgrounds and will be linked below.

Intertidal Zone

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON NEWGROUNDS

This is a prog-rock-ish song I made to use as a background track on the website. It might be a little too exciting for that so I’m thinking of making some changes for the web version.

North Atlantic Current

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON NEWGROUNDS

Here’s another song I made for the website. It’s what I like to call deep sea industrial jazz. It’s probably also a bit much for a background track but I’m still happy with how it turned out.

TIRE IRON TANGO IN THE WASTELANDS OF DESERTIFICATION

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON NEWGROUNDS

Late one October night after working out at nearly 3 AM I threw together a list of 50 metal song names. The Waltz of False Life (a song I finished that same October) uses one of those titles.

TIRE IRON TANGO is another member of COOL_METAL_SONG_NAMES.txt and it’s a heavy metal tango fusion (in case that wasn’t obvious). I’m pretty happy with how the dueling guitars part turned out. I really want to try making a heavy metal klezmer song so stay tuned for that and the rest of the COOL METAL SONG NAMES.

These songs were all made using MIDI instruments with LMMS. At some point I’d like to take a deeper dive into music theory since I only sorta know what I’m doing.

The Beginnings of a Webular Revolution

I want to make some changes to the Hydrosite, and one of those changes involves a landing page that shows off the entire monitor I had built for it.

The process for making this new landing page involved cropping out the monitor from a photo, rendering it in Blender on a backdrop, adding a dither filter to it in Krita, and then getting things set up in HTML.

There are some other elements I want to make to complete the new look of the website, so keep an eye out of that in the future.

Bugalo Takes to the Skies

In the newest page of Wonderful and Fancy High School Bait Club, Bugalo’s ghost rockets through the skies of Gerbil Detroit, straight towards a zeppelin housing the Gerbil Dictator.

This page continues the use of the screentones I talked about last time. The page on the Hydrosite is compressed down in a way that they all turn into different shades of gray without any of the screentone patterns showing. Click on the image above to check out the new page. If it isn’t loading, try clearing your browser’s cache.

HazMat One-Shot: P.I. Periscope

There’s a one-shot comic contest happening on Newgrounds and I want to try making something for it in the same setting as Hazardous Materials. You can see a rough sketch of the main characters below. If you’re a returning reader you might recognize Periscope and Amber from the HazMat chapter 2 lineup I showed off back in July of last year.

In this 15 page one-shot, Periscope must figure out why the city-state of Plantor hasn’t burned itself to the ground yet. The deadline for the contest is April 1st so this should hopefully be published by then. This is gonna be my main focus for the month. If I don’t end up doing much else in March I can do some behind-the-scenes stuff for this comic for the next Hydromonthly.

As always, I’ll see you again next month with another update.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

(The following two headlines are copied from an update post I made on the Hydrosite when it was updated.)

The Cloudburst Comic Reader

The comic reader finally has a proper name! I've decided to call it The Cloudburst Comic Reader. Cloudbursts are huge amounts of rain that happen in a short period of time which is sorta fitting since the reader procedurally loads up a whole bunch of stuff when it starts. It's also a cool sounding word that's got something to do with water so it's on-brand. :^)

I've made a bunch of changes to the reader (some of which I talked about in the September 2024 Hydromecha Monthly) and to the website overall. We'll start with the comic reader changes.

As always, if you aren't seeing any of these changes, trying clearing your browser's cache.

Chapter & Page Hashes

Previously, the hash in the comic reader's URL only included the name of the comic. This has now been expanded to include chapters and pages, giving you direct links to any specific chapter or page. The new hash format looks like this: #[Comic Name]#[Chapter Number]#[Page Number] where page 0 is the cover, usually. If you want to try it out, clicking on this link should take you to chapter 2, page 5 of Bugalo.

Old

New

Procedural Comic & Chapter Buttons

Buttons for different comics as well as the chapters of the current comic now fill in procedurally based on the comics' information. I had the comic buttons hardcoded into the page's html file in the previous version but now they all fill in automatically. I also set this up on the Comics page of the website.

Old

New

Other Changes

There were a few other changes under the hood that should make adding comics easier than the previous iteration. I've also made a few aesthetic changes that you can take a gander at below.

Old

New

Website Updates

I made some pretty big changes to the homepage along with some smaller ones across the board. Check out the before/after below:

Dithering Upon the Horizon

I’ve been messing around with some dithering effects in Krita. I find it looks better using lower-res images (so you can see the pixels more clearly). You can achieve this look by adding a Filter Layer and setting it to Palletize.

I’m planning on using this look for some website assets (first image) and for an animation I’m working on (second image). At some point I’d like to overhaul the Hydrosite using this fancy schmancy new look. I’m also thinking of adding a landing page with a zoomed-out view of the monitor.

Dithered website updates and the animation will be out when they’re done.

Bugalo

As is tradition, there’s a new Bugalo (Wonderful and Fancy High School Bait Club) page out with this new Hydromonthly. Check it out on the Hydrosite by clicking here. If you don’t see it, try clearing your browser’s cache.

I wanted to try out some new screentone brushes I had downloaded (from here) and I’m pretty happy with how things turned out. I’ll probably stick to this sort of style for comics in the future. The final image file on the Hydrosite is scaled down from the original resolution, which helps get rid of some weird artifacting that occurs when you zoom out on the full-res image.

Scorpion Scratchbuild Progress

Here are some progress pictures of the giant robot scorpion scratchbuild I revealed last time. The pattern on the interior of the mouth (purple thing in the last two pictures) was made by spraying wet paint with isopropyl alcohol.

As always, I’ll see you again next month with another update.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

Hydromodel - Inverse Kinematics

I finally got around to giving the Hydromecha model IK bones. The old version of the rig was just a bunch of FK bones with rotation limits to keep things looking all robotic (If you don’t know what IK/FK means there’s an explanation below). This was an okay setup but it quickly become a pain to try and pose things with how many pieces make up the limbs.

This new control scheme has the old FK rig copy the rotations of some IK bones (with the limits still intact) which lets me pose things much more easily. The arms each have two sets of IK bones: one for the actual arm and one for the shoulder pylon. Things can get kinda wonky depending on how the arms are moved but it’s a small (and slightly amusing) price to pay for convenience. I’ve got some ideas kicking around for a proper animated video with this model so stay tuned for that.

This video shows off how I would pose the model before with just FK bones:

These videos show off the IK rig:

If you’re unfamiliar with FK/IK, posing Forward Kinematics (FK) limbs has you start from the shoulder/hip and then move your way down each bone till you get to the hand/foot. With Inverse Kinematics (IK) you start with the hand/foot and then the computer figures out how the rest of the bones should move to get there. There’s more to it than that but that should cover the basics. Check out this video by Doodley for some more info:

Secret Santa Slayer

Now onto something a lot less technical. I did an art Secret Santa with some friends back in December and I ended up drawing Slayer from Guilty Gear for one of them. Click on the image below to see it in full resolution on Newgrounds.

I really like wacky perspective/focal length chicanery and wanted to do that for this drawing. I used Blender to create a rough reference image to help me figure that out.

Bugalo Breaks the Sound Barrier with Cigarettes

Yeah you read that right. Bugalo throws some cigarettes so hard it causes a sonic boom. This page includes even more funny perspective stuff. You can read Wonderful and Fancy High School Bait Club over on the Hydrosite by clicking the below image. If the new page doesn’t load, try clearing your browser’s cache.

Coming Attractions

I definitely wanna get back to working on the comic reader this month along with some other website updates. I also just got started on a new scratchbuild I teased a couple months ago. There are a few other things I have in the works but I’ll wait until they’re actually done before talking about them.

As always, I’ll see you again next month with another update.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now

Cubeguy: The Animated Character

Cubeguy’s animations are all complete! I handed the .blend file off to a friend and then banished him to the gamedev mines to get things set up as an actual playable alpha. No clue when that’ll be, but I’ll keep you posted. Check out the video below for a compilation of all the animations I made for the character:

Some of the animations could use some work, but I’m gonna save that for later unless we find something egregious in-game that needs to be changed immediately.

The Bugalo

In accordance with the ancient laws of this land, a new Bugalo page has been unleashed upon the world. Check it out on the Hydrosite by clicking on the image below. If you don’t see the new page, try clearing your browser’s cache.

I was playing very fast and loose with the sketches and inking on this page. I’ve been enjoying inking using the ‘ol pixel brush but I really gotta draw more so I can get better and more consistent with it. I used to draw exclusively using that brush before I knew anything about inking (which you can see evidence of in my very old drawings on Newgrounds).

Miscellaneous Mentions

In other news, I am now a Certified Associate in Project Management. A lot of my time this past November was spent prepping for the exam for that certification on top of some unrelated family stuff.

I’m doing a secret santa art thing with some friends so you’ll see at least one new drawing out in December. I also wanna get cracking on the Table Knight module this month. I had initially set a deadline for myself earlier in November but the CAPM cert took priority. Unfortunately I’m not getting paid to work on my cool fun projects so I gotta focus on things that’ll help me in my dayjob.

As always, I’ll see you again next month with another Hydromonthly.

Have a good one,
-Hydro

Subscribe now