Forum Signatures

On most gaming forums there's a popular habit of having a signature your post. A Forum Signature, or Forum Sig for short, is a signature but in the form of a picture. Some forum signatures include quotes while others don't. Almost every signature has a character in it from whatever source. Still not sure of what size to make them. I think it's based on preference though. The character art is not by me but the whole signature is. I decided to try it out for fun. I used GIMP exclusively for all of them. Here are products for various friends in chronological order:

 Below are the various pictures I used as the characters. I had to either cut out the images from their backgrounds and/or clean them up. These were the original images:

New Project

I'm the kind of person that likes to be busy, and when that comes around you would expect me to like to do new things. This is true however I still suffer from not doing things, namely things I don't like to do. An example of such a thing would be the paper I have due next Wednesday. So I will break down what I do to not do something.

Step 1: Do research. I end up doing a lot of research to no particular gain when I could have actually started the project. This is actually quite low on my part to be honest. I don't actually do too much research because sometimes, depending on the situation, I find that doing research simply equates to starting the project.

Step 2: Social Media. I think everyone goes through this at some time where you end up checking to see if you're up to date on everything and I go through a rotation of the various sites to end up on the first one again and check it for any updates. At a certain point I will continue rotating through sites even though I know there is going to be nothing new. At this point I move to the next step

Step 3: Start a new Project? This is something that I do that I'm not sure a lot of people do. Because I like to be busy I love starting new projects. Every project has a goal of improving something about myself. A written project would challenge my writing skills and narrative skills. You may be thinking is this really a way of procrastinating? Yes, most of these projects become unfinished and only end up being time wasters. The only thing is that I never delete any of them so that perhaps someday they will come back and be useful. I tend to start working on one or another to avoid doing something else like my paper. Do I try to stop myself from doing this project? No because by doing this project I don't have to do my other one. If I didn't have any projects to work on I would be very bored and maybe I would end up doing my paper. On the other hand I might revert back to steps 1 & 2.

"Terrorism"

On the topic of fear, this song had something along the lines of overcoming so I decided to share it.

By: Neru
Singer: Kagamine Rin (鏡音リン)

Fear in ______

There are things we like and things we don't like. One of the things we like is acknowledgement. No matter who we are, even if you're the most selfless person on Earth, there is always a part of you that wants to be acknowledged for something. On the counterbalance of acknowledgement is rejection.

Rejection is one of the biggest fears that people have. It's what drives people off the edge and is the number one producer of fear. While people have a fear of other things namely death, there are countless situations where people's fears of rejection overpower their fear of death. This fear of rejection is the leading force that drives people to stop trying to do something. This will result in failed projects no outcome.

Fear of failure is something that everyone runs into and it's the thing that keeps us back. It's been a running trend of mine to create massive amounts of projects to do. More in the sense of quantity over quality so that I can get over my fear of failure. Typically the problem I run into is the sense of this gets boring or there is simply too much work. That results in a dropped project and unfinished work. The amount of unfinished and dropped projects I have is something that strikes me as remarkable. This leaves ideas floating around that tend to congregate and form into new ideas. When I start working on new art forms it always shocks me how much I'm afraid of messing up. This is something I've noticed recently when I start drawing. I know where I fail and it discourages me from trying because I know it will end up bad. At the same time I know I need to keep doing it or I won't improve.

As a system to combat this problem I tend to do everything I'm confident in first and then leave that part untouched until the end. I will use a reference image and copy it. I do this multiple times over an extended period. I don't like to do it in a short period because of discouragement, However there is one thing that art has really taught me. It's that to achieve something one must be confident. When you draw a line you want a solid and smooth looking line, that requires confidence and determination. While I still like to use scratchy lines I'm been using more solid lines and finishing most of my drawings. I'm also started trying to draw in pen to improve my confidence in my lines. There are times when I realize that I should stop worrying about whether it's good or not and just to get it done.

Nothing was ever achieved with fear. Fear only holds us back from achievements and nothing is finished or done when fear is present. When a dictator takes hold of a country, he rules with fear. Fear so that no one does anything, so that he is the only one with confidence and he leads his country. While fear is necessary for the survival of a person, it's something that we need to overcome to be able to succeed in life.

How to be Good at Something

There are only a couple of steps that one needs to follow to be good at something. First we need to discuss the basics principles of Talent vs. Skill. Talent is the amount of skill that you are naturally born with. This is usually directed at one type of skill for example, drawing, writing, memorizing. Skill is the ability that one possess toward a specific action. Usually resulting in reduced time it takes to perform said action and improved quality of the finished product.

Repetition is the first step to getting better at something. This applies to everything. It will increase your skill in anything guaranteed. The only variable that changes from person to person would be the amount of repetition needed to increase your skill a set amount.

The next step is Research. This one is more vague and isn't needed but is going to increase your skill much faster than you would expect possible. There is no point discovering something if someone has already discovered it already. What I mean by that is that if someone has discovered the cure to breast cancer, is there really any point to discovering the cure from scratch again? You build off what people have discovered to go beyond what they had. Einstein didn't create the theory of relativity so that others could discover it too. He made it so people can learn from it and go beyond quantum physics. This is not advocating that you don't review what others had learned. The point of research is to understand what has been discovered. When the foundations are set can you build upward.

In any kid of pursuit there is a fine balance of Humility and Narcissism. If you had no Narcissism there would be no way that you can even pursue something. You need to acknowledge that you are capable of achieving what others had achieved and go beyond that. You need to realized that you can improve no matter how good you are. While some think that there is a limit, it's only a temporary limit set by time. As time goes on society changes and standards will shift. Being able to shift with those will prove your skill to be superior. Too much Narcissism and you will reach a plateau during your improvement and stop because you think you have mastered it. To the egocentric eye it will seem that you have reached the ceiling and can't go beyond it, however isn't there always a sky above the ceiling? Dream for the sky not the ceiling.

Lastly is Passion. Some people think I can do everything, however exaggerated that my be. To regard this I decided to analyze what makes me different, and this is  where I think I'm different. You need to like what you are doing. To everyone there's a number of things that one would hate and not like however when you are pursuing something you need to like it, or better yet love it. When you don't want to pursue something you won't be motivated to do better in it. Another title for this section would be motivation. A mixture of Passion and motivation is really what I'm poking at here. You don't have to like everything to succeed. In this world you only need one ability that you are good at and it can be something you have talent in or something you simply accumulated enough skill in.

Everyone wants to be good at something. To be a successful human in society it means you need to accomplish something by being good at something. To reiterate, a person needs Repetition, Research, Humility and Narcissism, and Passion.

Learning Experience

I bought a graphics tablet and spent the last day getting used to it.
I friend recommended I learn to get used to it by copying a picture. So I did.

I used a reference image my friend gave me:

Drew a sketch:

Figured out how to outline it:




















Made a final Product:

Time to do other stuff with the tablet.

Website Design

I haven't directly pursued designing a website yet before in my life and I hope this project will prove to be some sort of major insight onto the design and concept behind a website. Today we got done some work, more specifically we planned out exactly what were the "Use Cases" or goals of the website and gave them names that we can use for tabs on the Website, we also debated a lot about the overall design plan and layout of the website. We came up with a basic outline and have a general idea of what we could do in the future but we are more focused on the current iteration. While it was a slow day, we deliberated for a long time because we couldn't figure out what we could and couldn't do yet, in other words practical.