Sick again???
2017 hasn’t gotten out to a great start for me as I am yet again sick. I started the year with a terrible stomach bug and soon after recovering from that I got hit with a very nasty cold that spread to my lungs and I lost my voice for several days. I am missing too many days at work and I have to somehow squeeze in the time someplace to make it back. This is putting a great stress on me to find the balance to finish a few lingering projects.
Dank Art
It’s been almost a year since I started tuning into BBH’s streams and I am happy he’s come so far in such little time. This week he came up to playing 1,000 arcade games on his Mame Roulette streams. To give back to the viewers, he had a bit of a retrospective of his one year of Mame Roulette and relived some of the best memories from his stream. He followed that up on the weekend playing close to 16 hours of viewer choice games, though I was in and out stuck between working, cleaning up, desk work and other projects. I still managed to get some Dank Art in and also I made this neat poster to help celebrate the fun.
Macaw had this idea for an Arcade Gauntlet where he would play an arcade game and try to 1CC it to see how many he could get 1CC’d under his belt. The games would be chosen by the chat to keep things interesting and one of the first games chosen for the night was the ridiculously hard DD Crew. He managed to finish it with a 1CC only to bite it in Ranstan 3 which was the next game in the Gauntlet. There was also lots of older PC games played thru the week, also a bit of a throwback to Winkysoft games which seems to be one of Macaw’s favourite game publishers (could it be the bird logo?).
Since I was sick I actually got to check out my friends Mato & Poe streaming this week as they are just as busy as I am making books! I have done an interview with Mato on my blog already, he’s the husband of the married team that create the Legends of Localization book series which started with one Zelda book last year. Mato is already well known on the internet of being somewhat of a localisation guru and having dirtied his hands in several fan translations for several crazy Japanese only released games as well as his personal involvements in the fan localisation of Mother 3 and his involvement with Earthbound (one of my fave games ever). Their new book is something they have been working live on stream for a few weeks where they are focusing on some of the worst localisations in games over the years and to show that they need to actually play thru the games to get screen shots for the actual book. You can learn more about what they are up to here on their official site and in the meantime enjoy this wacky Wonderboy in Monsterland art I made during their stream.
I have also been streaming a few raw streams over my Facebook and over Twitter this week as I go along touching up the art pieces and projects as it’s fun to explore these new ways of getting my work out to more people. A lot of my fans who live near me still have no idea what Dank Art is despite my blog and me constantly talking about it. Most people around me know me for painting landscapes at the local Farmer’s Market as I usually set there to paint in front of people. The best part about these little impromptu paints is that I get to hear my friends tell me their kids love watching the “cute ones” being made live, so I’ll try to make a few cute pieces to showcase in my random online appearances.
Family Trainer
I am a huge fan of the Powerpad and I try to stream me playing the games as much as I can as I recently found out that playing Powerpad games is a much better workout then at my gym. I also found out last summer that there’s a huge world of Powered games that were Japan-Only releases and I made it a sort of mission to myself to try and review them. After saving up over the past few months I was able to have just enough to afford a Family Trainer and an AV Famicom system so I can actually do that!!!
The big reason why this took so long was because I needed to try and see if I could get a Family Trainer in Canada first. I’m not the biggest fan of Ebay and usually will use it as a last ditch effort to find the things I need as I like to either find them in the wild or at little retro shops to help out the little guys just doing their jobs. Plus doing it this way gave me enough time to research and save the money up with the sales of Dank Art (minus the continuous need of supplies and burgers). After giving up looking locally for a Family Trainer in December I still took even more time looking on Ebay for one that seemed reasonably priced and possibly came with a few games. As luck would have it, a few weeks ago I found my Holly Grail: A perfect condition Family Trainer mat in the box with 6 games all in their own collector boxes for under $150 CAN.
I made the huge leap towards buying an AV Famicom under the direction of my boss at the Apple Store after he showed me this video here on AV connections with the Famicom.
For a short time, I was considering a Twin myself as playing the disk games seemed like something that I would be interested in, (still am btw). However after seeing the comparison between the mod, the actual AV and the Twin I am happy I put my hard earned cash towards the AV Famicom.
Usually when I stream if I have complications with the actual capture I will resort to simply emulating (as what I am doing with my Master System at the moment) to ensure a good capture with less noise or interference. I would like to get my Master System back up and captured though I’ll need to work out a few more capture issues before I can make that happen. In the meantime, be on the watch for more Powerpad and the start of Famicom Family Trainer streams once my AV Famicom arrives.
Dank Art
I don’t have as many Dank Art’s to show for this week.
That’s alright as I have plenty more to make up for my Dank Valentine’s Day Project that you’ll read about in a bit. I wanted to keep the two things separate as possible though it wouldn’t have been a huge success without a bit of inspiration from the people I follow. For this week, Macaw was still running through more of those strange PC 98 indie games that all use the same game engine as well as BBH working towards playing 1,000 arcade games through his Mame Roullete.
I’m not sure where or how my friends come up with their ideas, but BHH suddenly started playing Mystic Warriors for 1CC attempts. It’s a spiritual successor to Sunset Riders, but you play as a player of your pick of a team of young Mystic Warriors to go after the bad guys who kidnapped your friend. Out of chance, BBH selected the female character & started making attempts which surprisingly worked out well & he came close to 1CC-ing. I got to make this piece on some of my postcard paper.
I made this piece for someone on my list who needs a painting live on my Sunday Morning painting stream. I’m also trying out random videos as well through my Facebook and Periscope. When I have something randomly on the go that I think looks nice I’ll try to paint live there and show off my progress. It’s really fun to see something come together so you should make sure you’re following me so you can check it out.
Valentine’s Day Projects
One of the best memories I have of Valentine’s Day was when I was in the fourth grade and in class we made “Mail Boxes” to collect all our Valentine’s day cards. I used a long rectangle box for mine so it turned into a little mailbox with cute construction paper hearts all over it. We spent the whole morning making these mailboxes and in the afternoon we had treats and a little party with music while we delivered our cards to everyone in the class.
The class bully suddenly walked up to all of us and announced that he had thrown out all the Valentine’s from the girls because the girls were gross. This guy used to pick on me every day practically in elementary school so I seized my golden opportunity to loudly say, “You only like BOYS? That sounds GAY to me.”
Everyone started laughing, even a few of his friends because you could see how it bothered him. He yelled, “I’m going to TELL on YOU, Ann!!”
The teacher asked him why he couldn’t just take his cards out of the trash. That’s when he started crying and screaming that he tore all of them to bits. The teacher then said we all had to donate one of our cards to him because that’s how that works. Probably not my best moment as a child, but one of the more memorable Valentine’s Day memories for me.
I love making art and giving art away. I can’t give all of it away (I’d be poor and super hungry if I did that) so I try to find a good balance with what I give. I always wanted to try a project where I would give as many handmade Valentine’s Day cards to people who needed one or asked for one. I spent a few days hand making 55 little Dank Art cards to mail out to people.
Thank you to everyone who got to be part of this fun project for me!
Comic Books
On my twitch channel a few weeks back I actually went thru a pile of comic books that I have been collecting since I was a small child. Comic books & video games were a huge part of my young life growing up and almost all my hard earned money and allowance went to go building these collections. I never wanted the best or a complete collection and I found out quickly the best collection that you could ever have is something that speaks to each of us individually. For me, that was a lot of X-Men, Bone & Cerebus books.
I’m not into collecting comics like I used to. It can get expensive and I have limited shelf life in my place. I still hold onto this collection which took me years to build. I only started to think about it when Greg started dragging me along to comic book shops again that I haven’t gone thru them in a while and what exactly did I have in there.
I collected a lot of Cerebus comic books. When I was 14 I was all about that barbarian Aardvark and I even had an official T-Shirt that I bought at the Silver Snail that summer. I would only wear it to bed because it was an XL & it was huge on me. Years later I gave it to my then boyfriend who never gave it back. //goes onto eBay.ca and starts looking for the same Tshirt//
Check out the vod here of my Comic Book unpacking!