There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING in the world that can top the bittersweet irony of spending 6 hours trying to find what is wrong with your mesh skinning math, not being able to see a single thing out of place, and then discovering that the math was right, the data was bad.

Pardon me while I go beat my head into a gibbering senseless pulp on the nearest available brick wall.

It seems to me that no matter how many times I get into this stupid cycle, I never learn from it.

This past week my coworkers and I have been playing around with the Wayback Machine at archive.org, which is a pretty cool thing that lets you view what websites looked like in the past, at various intervals. Today, I decided to check out a site I did way back in ’03, which housed an aborted comic and some various ranty type materials.

And I was stunned. It seems that the more time goes by, the more and more human my earlier efforts seem. I seemed so open, so honest back then. Of course, for all I know I was just as manipulative back then, but it might as well be a different person based on what I read. If I was late, I said I was late. Apologized, of course, but it was no biggie. If I was courting traffic, I made no secret of it. And now, I just feel so wrong. Everything I do is with the intention of “making it”, of utilizing my time for maximum result, not for fun. I think this is partially a reaction to my slowly getting older; the older I get, the more I realize that my time is limited, and I (naturally, I think) want to use it better. But the end result is, I don’t.

Back in 2002-2004, I worked like crazy on my projects in my spare time, at least as hard as I do now, if not more. But the critical difference was, I wasn’t ashamed of my shortcomings then. I have a mean perfectionist streak in me, that makes me want to hide away anything that doesn’t feel like the best of my best, and that includes art or programs that I have done before that seemed okay at the time, but no longer “make the cut”, and so get deleted from whatever public viewing location I had them up at. It also includes this website, which has gone through three different revisions without being posted, simply because I didn’t want to put up anything that might compromise any first impression I could have made with my honestly non-existent fans. I had fans at one time. Not a lot of them, and not really deserved, but fans nonetheless. People who looked at my art simply because they liked it. And I had online friends too, a network, people who liked what I did and I liked what they did. People with similar interests as me who would keep me straight and honest with myself, and vice-versa.

And then, I think around the time I was prepping to go to Japan, it all fell away, and because of me and me alone. I had a lot of real-world things to do, and places to go, and things to see, but I allowed myself to drift away from what I had in favor of the new. Things change, people change, and that’s okay, but I’m not convinced this was entirely a good change, and haven’t been comfortable with it for quite some time. My Deviant Art blog is full of “I’m back, no really this time!” posts, in which I would post some picture and promise more, but then never do so. And I think the big reason I did was because, I didn’t enjoy it anymore. The pieces that I did for myself, usually simple sketches in my sketchbook, were relaxing, comfortable. But in my narrow little mind, art for the web, for public exhibition had to be more. It had to be the absolute cutting edge of my skill level, something that in somebody else’s portfolio would make me say “Wow”. My goal was no longer to present the art that was a part of me, but art that I thought would be popular, that would make people think “geez, this guy is good”. With the result that I didn’t post anything.

And so, I’m going to try to pull myself out of the creative ditch once again, but with a slightly different tack. I’m going to upload things that are not perfect do DA, for a start. Heck, I’m going to upload things that aren’t even colored, and probably some that aren’t even shaded! And, I’m going to try to make the effort to make some new internet based contacts. I’ve still got my DA account, which should work okay for the art side of things, but I’m not so sure where to look to find other hobby game developers. I’m sure a short search will turn some stuff up, though.

Let’s keep it real. Even if my blog starts to sound like a whiny myspace page, I don’t care. At least it will be honest. And potentially entertaining ^^.