It’s been a sufficiently long enough time since I began this project that I don’t remember a lot of my very early thought processes. What was I thinking? Mostly that I was building a toy, that thing that I was carefully not considering might become a game. A fan had already created a web page that, when reloaded, would generate a new text description of a Jokkad. That must have been on my mind, because I said at the time, “This is sort of a more needlessly complicated variation of that jokka generator.”
Which it was, because instead of randomly mixing up characteristics on every reload, it started from the premise: “Let’s define the genetics of two parents, then generate a child with some inheritance logic.”
So here’s where we can identify an important principle: that you start with the things that matter to you. What mattered to me was not “Hit a button and get a randomly generated, valid result for the species.” It was “hit a button and get a result that implies heritable traits, and refers to the parents, and therefore implies a story. And the story is ‘this is someone’s child.’” It wouldn’t have been trivial to do image generation of a random baby Jokkad, but it would have been a far more straightforward task than starting with genetic simulation. But what mattered to me was the genetic simulation, or I wouldn’t have started with it.
You often don’t know what you care about immediately. Sometimes, you only notice it later.
I began, then, by defining parents and getting the generator to blend colors and guess at aptitudes. (Not only that, but it was important to me to have mutations! Not just for aptitudes, but for the coloration.)
But it was hard to troubleshoot something that reported colors as hex numbers, so from there I moved on to “let’s make sure we can see the colors. Then I'll know if it's working or not.”
Even this strained my powers of imagination, though, so once it was producing these swatches, I sat down and drew a baby graphic, bashed out the color fill logic, and finally pressed a button to generate a baby.
Here’s the first. “omg he’s hideous” was, I think, what I said, and then I started laughing. And I laughed through all the subsequent reloads as I tested and got endless variations. Truly endless, because unlike many pet games, I insisted on having the entire hex palette available instead of a few pre-defined colors. Canonically, the Jokka as a species have eyes more capable of discerning color and gradation than ours, so there was an in-world rational for what I wanted to do anyway. And I was charmed by the idea that, after a sufficiency of generations, colors would become muted, and what that would suggest about more brightly colored individuals. "More attractive," I thought. "I should make sure that, the next time I write a story about them, I am more sensitive to how unusual it is, to have saturated skin colors, hair colors, eyes."
At this point, I had successfully created the “toy” I’d been talking about making. But the design of the toy was already groundwork for something bigger in scope, because it was asking questions. Who are these parents? Do they look at these babies and say ‘my gods, that is definitely not my hair, that weird greenish color is your fault.’ Does that child grow up and have children of her own? Do they inherit their grandmother’s nurturing spirit? Or does a random mutation turn them into the world’s next inventor while their extended family gossips about how weird they are?
From a coding perspective, I’d tackled two separate tasks: inheritance logic, and image generation using very basic templates.
I had a long way to go. But I was having fun, and it still felt like a low stakes learning experience. So I kept going, to see what would happen next.
Or at least, I intend it to be relaxing. Hopefully it delivers.
4:22 minutes
Materials:
In which I talk about the paper, the paint, and the experience of oils versus gouache. Fun stuff, will do more.
Thank you Locals supporters! Your contribution to my art war chest here is what's powering these experiments and videos. For now I'm keeping them public but I may start doing some subscriber-only videos if you all are interested.💖
Thanks for your comments yesterday on the business post... all very provocative, in a good way. I'll try to respond to all of them today.
Some Alysha misc now, since I'm gearing up for the results of the Kickstarter!
Petrov is giving away coupon codes for every book in the Alysha series (and has some leftover coupons for Marda and the business book). You can pick those up here (and please do! The books are bought already, someone should use them!) https://twitter.com/PetrovNeutrino/status/1457344535843987461
Our own @JudasComplex sent along a sample of the Faith in the Service audiobook, which I've attached for your delight! I... haven't had a chance to listen to it. Don't ask me about my past week and a half or so. Putting it here will guarantee I get to it.
After hearing the amused comments during the livestream, I went ahead and added all the ship type illustrations I have inked from the 90s to the wiki. Glory in the rampant adorableness of their anthropomorphic stylings! See those ...
A little comedy today, at least in the link. Transcript follows.
Hi, all. Welcome to this episode of The Jaguar’s Heart.
A while back I was introduced to a comedy sketch about Cuban coffee by a Mexican comedian, Gabriel Iglesias. ( The sketch begins with him greeting all his fellow Latinos and then backing up to say ‘but we’re all different, aren’t we’ which is a segue into a demonstration of how different Hispanics speak Spanish.
It is hilarious. First, because I am a Spanish speaker and a linguistics hobbyist, and his portrayal of various accents resonated with my experiences in trying to make sense of them myself… Not always easy, since from culture to culture, slang and accent are often totally different (and sometimes grammar! Spaniards use a grammatical construct that has died out in many other Spanish-speaking countries, the plural “you.”)
I also loved it because the Cuban coffee part is real. I grew up with Cubans. I know how we are....
One of the most common things I hear (and say) right now is "the asymmetry is the story." Here's one about how none of us are innocent of the sins we hate in others.
Hi, all. Welcome to this week’s episode of The Jaguar’s Heart.
It’s been weeks since the Baen’s Bar incident and I’m still thinking about it... because the longer I do, the more I feel, overwhelmingly, that it’s obvious that the problem is deeper than “this forum was saying stuff that offended us.” We have to back up to the glaring fact that people on opposite sides no longer consider each other human. Nothing I say will matter because the people disagreeing with me don’t think I’m human. They have denied my humanity; they have not bothered to listen to my beliefs, or have fake-listened to them in that way that people do when they’re so ready to prove you wrong that they’re only using your speech to provide talking points for their own ideas.
We have forgotten how to listen.
Increasingly, we have also ...
https://mcahogarth.org/gallery/image/123-2019-42-ElementalJahir
Today's Wednesday Share is a little different... in this case, it's the first of a series, and you can see the other 6 pieces (plus a false start) linked from the annotation in the gallery. (Bonus: there's a link to another, similar series of Peltedverse Tarot images in the artist notes section).
I was inspired to do this one by the song Elemental from the Tears for Fears album. I was thinking of what the elemental symbols of each of the major Eldritch saga characters was, so I decided to chase them down. For instance, Jahir's has the unicorn, the amulet, the sword of state, the caduceus, and the net/spacetime of the seer!
If you're interested in seeing the rest of them, go check them out! Share your favorites if you feel like leaving a comment!
How wild is that? This one is fun because it's a "choose your champion" style competition between tea and coffee! And my daughter is participating to raise money for her college food budget with a design of her own! AND it will run through my birthday!
This might be more excitement than I can handle, honestly, lol. Anyway, come check it out!
Yes! Because tomorrow I am launching the kickstarter, so I don't want to clutter up your feed. So for your pleasure today, here is a color pencil piece from 26 years ago. Look at the water! And goodness, how hard I worked on those dark and forbidding cliffs. But I think my favorite thing is her hair, caught up in the jeweled caul.
I hope this one brings some beauty to the start of your week!
You can see it here on the gallery: https://mcahogarth.org/gallery/image/56-2000-055-NorthPoint
Today's short returns to the Le'enle for a comical urban fantasy published originally in Raconteur Press's Brim to the Dregs anthology. This was a potion-and-brew-themed call, and that made it a perfect fit for the Le'enle who have a special relationship with...
Well, just read on. XD
Returning to the freebies, here's the fantasy short I wrote for Raconteur Press's Goblin Market anthology. One of the things I love most about the Le'enle is that they're a meta-genre species: because they are immortal superbeings who choose to live among mortals, they are as at home in a scifi dystopia as they are in an urban fantasy as they are in a fairy tale. For this story, I chose to return to their medieval-fantasy-esque roots to tell a gentle story about magical inventory.
Okay, it's not about magical inventory. But I did have a lot of fun designing Prissa's potions, and I hope you enjoy reading about them.🧡
This one was originally published in Raconteur Press's anthology All Will Burn 3, the theme of which was "parents will do anything for their children." Most people went super-serious with that theme. I decided to go slapstick, and set this one in the Peltedverse. It's about the Guardkin, and eventually it will go in the Forecourt collection I'm planning. But for my locals supporters, here's your dose of fun for Friday!
