Metamorsnowsis

Now That's What I Call Kafkaesque! Vol. 1

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