I got very sick since the last time I updated my blog. I had a terrible stomach bug that really got to me and I was in the hospital for a bit. It was not a pleasant experience and I still feel ill after eating meals. Because of this, I’ve missed a bunch of days at all my jobs which is making this month extra hard on me.
However, once I started to feel better I started to make not so Dank Art to keep myself sane and busy when I had nothing to do when I was sick in bed. Possibly the best thing about the week when I was sick was the time to dedicate to my art and things I wanted to work on. One of my bigger projects this year is to work on a Patreon so I can make a collection book of my Dank Art and do neat things like giveaway and posters & so on and this down time for me was a great way that I could just sit back and think it out. I never like rushing into things, I always like to test the waters and take my time as I am never in a hurry when it comes to my personal projects.
Captain Jivepants, BBH and a few others are taking part in this event called the YOLOympics where they are competing in groups in a bunch of selected arcade games for score. It can get a bit frustrating to play a game for score, but if you get good a competition like this is great to take part in.
When I was sick, I got to watch a bunch of the score attempts and checked out a few new streamers who do arcade games to see if they were exciting and fun enough for some Dank Art. Im always looking for new people to draw Dank Art for and I always enjoy the players who have great energy, a cool personality or just beasts their way thru the game.
I really enjoy watching everyone I follow on Twitch and I am glad I have made so many friends over the years of streaming. I don’t have the typical gamer tastes- I don’t really go for LoL or CoD games or anything thats really new or recent. Even when it comes to retro games I am still picky as I tend to always fall for the things I liked as a kid such as arcade games, crud-old Sega stuff, DOS games and things that are just strange and bizarre that you wouldn’t see all the time. Thats why when I stream I am all over the place with the stuff I stream as I could be into Sega CD games one month and then calling up Tony to do a Kings Quest play thru because we just love those games.
When I was sick I slept most of the day but was wide awake for most of my evenings so I was able to catch a few of Puri_Puri’s streams. Puri was one of the first people I followed on Twitch after I finished playing through both Shenmue games on my Dreamcast as Puri is well known in the Speedgaming community for his Shenmue runs. He’s not limited to just Shenmue though and what got me hooked & following was watching his Space Quest 3 playthrus as I am a HUGE fan of Sierra action adventures games. I grew up playing those games and I’ve always been a huge fan of the humour and 4th wall breaking elements that are unique to Sierra. Puri is also somewhat of a technical genius (well, to me he is) and I look up to people who can code their own mods and can use a soldering gun without yelling “oops” every twelve minutes. I took a few robotics courses and have always enjoyed being hands on with things and asking as many questions as possible so I can make by myself nicely. My biggest secret for learning is to always ask questions and be sweet as pie when doing it as I can be a bit overbearing when it comes to asking questions but at least I am honest. I don’t know everything so I always look to my friends who do because I know I can only go so far reading over things myself.
Puri is follow and even sub worthy! Please check out his streams because he’s one of the best on Twitch in my opinion.
With my regulars a lot of cool things started to happen after I started to feel better and got some strength back so I could return to my jobs and start making money to pay off my bills. Just as a joke I made a silly Valentines Day Themed Wonderboy Dank Art for BBH because he was going for score in the game (and not having the best of time with it). I can understand when you play a game for score it’s not the best way to play the game but thats why I watch and thats why I make Dank Art. It was from this silly idea that I got a BIG idea to give away free Dank Art Valentines to people who follow me or who are fans of my work to brighten up their day. I’ll talk more about this project in my next blog as it was rather large and is worthy of its own post.
Macaw got this insane collection of Korean Indie Gaming magazines from one of his auction sites and for the last week he’s been playing nothing but these crazy looking games. The magazines alone for me are interesting as I just go nuts for old gaming magazines and things like that. I am always checking under the tables of gaming shows and in thrift stores for dumped collections as these things are more of a “mistake find” want as most people I know who want to sell me a full collection are dorks about it. (Please don’t tell me that Nintendo Power Magazine 1st issue is $300 alone, bonehead, no one is that stupid.)
I was also checking out a few other streams by Trap and Pasky this week as I think both of them are solid players and worth checking out.
Using the Power
After a short sick hiatus, I returned to featuring a bunch of Powerpad games which people wouldn’t normally see unless they owned this stuff back in the day. I don’t think there are a lot of twitch streamers who are up to the task of streaming Powerpad games but myself, but thats considering there isn’t a lot of “games” for the pad I can understand. I use the “games” term loosely as many of the game ideas for the pad are joggers and hurdle jumpers where you challenge a friend or you play against your own score. Thats great, but they aren’t really considered real “games” if you are trying to get that immersive playability with your Powerpad experience.
Let’s look at Street Cop. It’s one of the few Powerpad games that came out for the system in North America that actually has proper “game” elements to it. You play as a Street Cop armed with a bully club who has to go catch “the bad guys” who are different gangs that terrorize the city. You can run, jump, and attack with your club as well as throw items you can pick up along the way as well as calling a cute little police dog to help you out in bad situations. You have to do all of this with a time limit which seems a bit daunting however you do get unlimited continues so if you wanted you could keep playing till you beat the game with the only limitation hiding you back is yourself. I say this because I have yet to finish the game, always getting owned at stage 4 out of sheer fatigue. If your feet don’t start to hurt from running on the floor your mind will start to break down from getting tired and confused as to how to navigate the city map finding all the little pick ups and help items to beat the bosses. In saying that its a great game! You will get a workout playing this one as every time I get to stage 4 I’m screaming and dripping in sweat trying to figure out which direction to run in. I might make it a goal to finish Street Cop for 2017 though theres something like 6 stages in the game which is INSANE to think that a young child could do in one sitting. Well, if kids could back in the day adult AnnK should be able to do it.
In saying all this I have won an auction on a Japanese Famicom Family Trainer Pad with a bunch of games for it!! Stay tuned for future episodes of me streaming Japanese Power Pad games!!
The week before I got sick
Before I got sick I was swinging out my usual flow of Dank Art. A lot of things have been changing for me at the places where I work- one of my bosses quit leaving our project team without proper leadership and trying to find a new director to fill that spot has been very stressful on me. Personally I have been paranoid that I might need to look for another job which I cannot do at the moment considering I already have too much on my plate. I’m also having problems just doing simple tasks like grocery shopping in my community as winter has settled in & with lots of snow everywhere it hard to fetch nutritious food and I’m stuck picking up junky stuff from the corner shops. With the weather cold, snowy and uninviting I usually just rush home to get to my Dank Art and projects as I hunker down and wait for spring to arrive.
When it comes to all my Dank Art the most money that I spend goes directly into the paper that I use as watercolour is so saturated that you only need to buy sets once a year. I have sets I haven’t even gone thru 100% and I tell people if you go thru a watercolour set in under 6 months you’re either doing it wrong or bought a cheapie set that’s more chalk then actual pigment. In saying that, I always try to encourage people to start out cheap to see if they like the experience as watercolour isn’t like playing video games for score. Watercolour is more about tones and shades, value and movement and developing your own sense of style in a dry landscape of other great ideas.
When I first got into watercolours I was a small child of 6 and I would set up next to my dad and copy what he was doing with the projects he’d work on. My dad taught me nothing about composition, what papers to buy, or even which paints to get. He did teach me that you should go for it and don’t let people shout you down for trying. One thing he did stress to me was if I wanted to see great results with my watercolour painting I would need to spend a lot of time hand drawing and sketching things first to learn how to see things in a way that would look proper before warping everything so it’s more visually interesting. In a way you could say artists are more editors when working from an existing source as were not going to paint the trash can there or make that bird look green as it should be yellow to fit the composition better. Thats when school really comes into it as it’s slightly important to learn rules in order to break them cleverly all the time.
When I was sick, my dad came to take care of me. I was out of it trying to sleep it off on the sofa in my living room. My dad came over & kept asking me what was wrong and what I needed when I was in that state. I remember I put Kismet on as I had bought that movie just before christmas and since my dad was there I wanted to put something on for him as I wasn’t much of a conversationalist that day. I passed out a bunch of times but when I finally woke up my dad was sitting in my computer chair which used to be our old dining room table chairs from when I was a kid. My dad had cleaned my whole apartment, did the dishes, got me groceries and even took care of my pets properly. If he could be he would have been Gandalf sitting in that chair smoking a pipe and telling me in no words at all that it’s going to be OK yet the road ahead was going to be rough. Thats when I got enough strength to properly show him all the Dank Art I have been making over the past year.
My dad sat there with the book in his hands for a real long time going thru everything. He knew sort of what I was doing but since we don’t get to really spend much time together anymore since he moved he can’t really see how I’m living my life or doing with my time. He only said, “You’ve been doing this for at least a year now,” and “I’m taking this one as it’s the best girl”
My dad is a Chitta man, but I think he chose wisely.
Amazing Adventures in Collecting
Greg took me out that Saturday to check out a few of the shops in the Flea Market District in Mississauga. I call it that because theres this huge Flea Market thats the centre for a bunch of other tiny stores that specialize in “collectables” such as comics and video games. Back when I was a kid I remember this area was where my parents would take us if we needed new things such as bedsheets or linens as they used to have a bunch of these linen stores all together in this area. I should have taken photos of the buildings here as they looked quite decrepit and had this “dissolving” appearance to them.
I could care less about the appearance of some of these places because I only care whats inside. Usually the best stores for buying things at a resale market are found in the worst of buildings because the rent is so dang cheap. This is where collector shops thrive and you should go seek them out. In that block alone there were several comic and video game stores all competing to get our business so I walked away with a pile of stuff.
Back when I was a kid I was the biggest comic book collector and you could always find me poking around my town’s local comic book store, Comic Express. I would save up all my money just so I could have a complete set of X-Men comic books for my beautiful collection. I collected a bunch of other comics as well, but I was a X-Men fan and was totally dedicated to the franchise until the price of comics jumped from $2 each to almost $6 an issue. Being 12 is difficult when you only get $5 a week for allowance so I had to give up collecting expensive comic books and find an alternative. My alternative was the cheaper, more gritty and highly pornagraphic titles that awaited me in back rooms and dingy bargain basements warehouses.
