This is digitally-edited painting is a weird “blog exclusive” one that I made after a cynical and/or introspective moment last year.
This painting is NOT released under any sort of Creative Commons licence.
“Suspension Of Disbelief” by C. A. Brown
Well, I thought that I’d talk briefly about music today. In particular, why – contrary to the old stereotype – most metalheads don’t just exclusively listen to metal all the time.
Whilst I’ve obviously known this for a long time, seeing comedy sketches about it on Youtube a while back reassured me of how common it is. Not to mention that the sheer number of metal covers of non-metal songs on the internet also shows that many metal musicians also listen to a wide variety of music too.
And, case in point, on the day of writing this article in early-mid January, I’m wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt (and, if anyone still does that “name three songs” nonsense, here’s ten songs), but I’m listening to a playlist of classical music.
Other music I’ve listened to during the past twenty-four hours has included electronic music (eg: “A Drop Filled With Memories” from Susumu Hirasawa’s excellent soundtrack to Satoshi Kon’s 2006 film “Paprika”), punk music (Bad Religion, The Distillers etc...), a sea shanty or two etc… as well as classic heavy metal, of course.
And, naturally, this made me wonder why we metalheads have such varied musical tastes. There are probably as many reasons as there are metalheads in the world, but I think that a major one is discovery. For 99.9% of metalheads, the first genre of music we ever heard or liked probably wasn’t metal.
I personally didn’t even discover heavy metal until I was about thirteen (when I heard some Iron Maiden songs on a computer game soundtrack. They’ve been my favourite metal band ever since…) – before that, I loved to listen to 1980s/1990s pop music and any pop-punk music I could find. I still really like both genres, good music is good music.
There are individual songs that I like in pretty much every genre. Whether this is hip-hop, grime, acoustic/folk, electronic, gothic rock, classic rock, synthwave, pop, punk, classical etc… If I like a song, then I like that song. My musical tastes really do seem to follow their own rules. To me, good music is good music.
And it’s this “good music is good music” thing which probably leads many metalheads to be fascinated by metal when we hear it for the first time. But whilst this often initially happens by chance, it still involves a lot of self-discovery and self-directed searching afterwards.
Whilst there have never been more metal bands, and metal sub-genres, than there are today – metal isn’t exactly the most prominent genre in popular culture these days. You don’t really hear much of it on the radio, on TV, in popular films, on popular playlists or anything like that. In other words, it’s a genre which you have to actively look for. And, when you find it, you have to research it.
Even within the metal genre, there are so many different sub-genres that you have to learn – from experience – what you do and don’t like. For example, whilst I like individual songs from a wide variety of metal sub-genres, my favourite types of metal tend to be the more melodic ones like: Traditional heavy metal (Maiden, Priest, Sabbath, Saxon etc..), symphonic metal (Nightwish), power metal (Gamma Ray, Helloween, Unleash The Archers etc...), pirate metal (Alestorm, Storm Seeker), trance metal (Rage Of Light), melodic death metal (Children Of Bodom, Kalmah) and symphonic black metal (Cradle Of Filth).
This is something I’ve had to learn from listening to a variety of metal songs over the years. And, even in less melodic sub-genres, there are still some thrash metal songs that I really like (eg: “Raining Blood” by Slayer, “Master Of Puppets” by Metallica etc...), some metalcore songs that I really like (like “One More Day” by The Anchor), some nu metal songs I really like (though, arguably, System Of A Down transcended this genre) etc… Because I’ve listened to a variety of metal to learn what types I like, I’ve discovered good songs everywhere in the process.
In other words, because of the focus on having to actively look for stuff – and being guided by your own sensibilities rather than whatever is popular – you end up being a bit more open-minded. Because you’ve been exposed to good music in other genres before you stumbled across the “holy grail” (or should that be “unholy grail”?) of metal, then you know that good songs aren’t exclusive to one genre. And, if you care enough about enjoying music to focus on a genre which isn’t ultra-mainstream, then you probably also care enough about enjoying music to enjoy good music from outside of that genre too.
Again, good music is good music.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
If I remember rightly, this digitally-edited painting was inspired by a random mood of 1990s nostalgia on the day that I made it. For some reason, I vaguely remembered watching the “Dilbert” animated series on TV back then and I remembered a coffee machine in a leisure centre and the overall mood of this inspired the painting.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Corporate Coffee 1995” by C. A. Brown
Well, I want to talk briefly about how and why similar art styles can evolve in parallel to each other. This was something I ended up thinking about in early-mid January when I finally got round to watching a few episodes of the classic animated sitcom “Daria” (1997 – 2002). How did I miss this back in the day?
A spin-off from Mike Judge’s hilariously immature animated sitcom “Beavis And Butt-Head” (1993-present), “Daria” focuses on an intelligent, cynical and sarcastic teenager called Daria. It’s a sitcom about being an intelligent person in a stupid world, about not fitting into the mainstream etc… But, whilst it is cynical, the cartoon also has this weirdly reassuring innocence to it – not only are many of the mainstream characters “foolish, but likeable” but the episodes I saw also take place in a pre-9/11, pre-smartphone etc… world too.
Whilst most of the humour is subtle and dry, and there are some awkward situations, there are also some more overt laugh out loud moments as well. The series is also dripping with social satire and – like classic 1990s “Simpsons” cartoons – it walks a fine line between being realistic and being “over the top”. The characters are also fairly well-written, stylised and quirky enough to be interesting but also still just about realistic people. Seriously, American animation experienced an absolute golden age during the 1990s.
Anyway, after watching a few episodes, I wanted to make some fan art in my other sketchbook. For a while, I wondered whether to use the art style of the show or to use my own style. Eventually, I settled on the latter, but I was surprised to find that the two styles didn’t actually look that different. And this intrigued me:
Here’s a comparison between the actual character and fan art in my art style. Whilst there are some subtle differences, the two styles aren’t that different. But why?
There are probably few reasons for this – for example, whilst I might not have watched “Daria” during my 1990s childhood, my early art was influenced by other cartoons at about the same time – but the main one I want to focus on here is practical reasons.
Animation – especially back in the days of traditional animation – was a difficult and time-consuming thing. Even with old-school tricks, such as using cels or animating “on twos” (eg: using the same frames twice, to make 12 frames per second seem like 24) to speed things up, parts of each frame still had to be hand-drawn. Large-budget animated films had the resources to keep the animation detailed despite this, but “Daria” was a relatively low-budget TV show.
As such, like with daily newspaper cartoons, simplicity was important. The animators had to find character designs which were simple enough to be drawn repeatedly in time to meet a deadline. And this probably explains why my art style ended up looking fairly similar.
I’m not one of those people who can spend weeks or months on a single piece of art. Typically, for original daily art, I only spend about 10-120 minutes on a piece. For fan art, it’s usually about 20-60 minutes.
If I spent too long on one piece of art, I’d probably get bored or lose confidence in it or something. So, like in traditional animation and daily newspaper cartoons, my art style is slightly simplified for the sake of speed. Yes, there are a bunch of other tricks that I use these days – like making smaller paintings, using a relatively limited palette and stuff like that, but my art style has evolved in a way that allows me to make art quickly.
Anyway, the point of this is that – sometimes – two separate art styles can end up looking at least mildly similar because they were shaped by the same and/or similar practical reasons.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
This is a digitally-edited fantasy genre painting that I made after a moment of inspiration 🙂
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Mystic’s Mirror” by C. A. Brown
Well, I was in the mood for writing about A.I. image generators again and I thought that I’d look at whether or not painting or drawing studies of A.I. images is a good type of art practice. From the rhetorical question in the title, you can probably already guess that I don’t think that it’s the best type of art practice, but this article will focus more on why it isn’t.
And, yes, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a certain appeal to the idea of “You’ve trained yourself on us, now let’s train ourselves on YOU!“. Not to mention that if you just want to turn your brain off and paint something purely for the sake of personal practice, then it’s probably an easy option. Likewise, there’s a certain fun and satisfaction from turning A.I. “art” into actual human art. And whenever the A.I. belches out something vaguely cool-looking, your “I have to paint that!” instincts might kick in too.
In fact, the latter of these is what inspired this article. Whilst I’ve painted a few studies of A.I. images for comparisons in articles discussing the technology (like this one) and/or for offline “messing around with my other sketchbook” before, this latest one made me think about how useful this actually is as a form of art practice:
This is an A.I. image generated via DreamUp on the 9th January 2024 (with labelling added by me) and a semi-digital practice study that I made of it using waterproof ink pens, watercolour pencils, a waterbrush, a white ink gel pen, a scanner and an open-source graphics program called GIMP.
Whilst painting A.I. studies can be a fun exercise, it isn’t really a good form of art practice. About the only good thing that can be said about it is that, because that A.I. doesn’t always understand things like context or visual storytelling, or even artistic intent, making a study of an A.I. image pretty much forces you to use artistic licence. If you want to add “life” to your painting or make it look like a good painting, then you’re probably going to make all sorts of small changes.
For example, in my human-made study, I emphasised the rain a bit more and played around with the lighting/shading in order to get the sort of atmosphere that I originally wanted the A.I. to create. So, as a way of practicing using artistic licence to improve things, then it is… possibly… useful, I guess.
On the other hand, A.I. images aren’t exactly the most varied or dynamic things. From my own experimentation, unless you directly specify a pose, then it’ll usually default to a dull “just standing there” pose, like in the example. Likewise, unless you directly specify emotions or expressions, then the people will usually just have fairly neutral expressions. It’s all very mediocre. In this regard, it isn’t as good of a type of art practice as just pausing a film and painting what is on screen (eg: the middle of a dramatic moment, with expressions, poses, implied visual storytelling etc...).
There’s also the fact that, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in a previous article, in order to use A.I. images as a practice tool you already need to have art experience/skills. At the absolute minimum, you need to know how to copy by sight (eg: looking at the 2D outlines of everything in a 3D scene, judging proportions properly etc..). If you want to use the artistic licence I mentioned earlier, you need to know even more skills – everything from colour theory, to lighting/shading, to composition etc… In other words, it isn’t really suitable for beginners. It might help you to slightly hone or practice skills you already have, but it isn’t great for learning.
Also, it isn’t a great type of art practice because it is basically spoon-fed to you. Instead of actively looking for things to practice drawing or painting, the machine just gives you a selection of images and all you have to do is choose one. Actively looking for inspiration is an important skill for any artist. Whilst traditional practice is different from creating original art, having to actively look for things like photographs, interesting things in real life etc… to study gets you used to the idea to taking a more active role in your art. But, if a machine just gives you something to practice with, then you’ll lose out on this.
Another reason why it isn’t great for learning is that A.I. isn’t as reliable as things like photographs, movie stills etc… when it comes to learning artistic rules. Yes, even within the past year, the technology has improved a lot but it can still make mistakes with fundamental things. I got lucky with my practice study, since the shading on the T-shirt looked vaguely realistic and so did the reflections on the ground but I have no way of knowing if that is exactly what it would look like in real life – even if you can get away with “vaguely realistic” with shading.
Even so, part of why learning from looking at real life, or at photographs is so important is because it teaches you a ton of “rules” which can make your art look better. For example, absolute beginner artists will often just paint water blue. But, if you actually look at water in real life or in photographs, then you’ll realise that – depending on context – it’s either the same colour as the container it is in or the same colour as whatever is above and/or next to it. Yes, if you’re painting water in a blue plastic cup or the mirror-like surface of a body of water (with nothing next to it to reflect) beneath a perfect blue sky, then it will be blue. But, most of the time, water isn’t blue.
As “realistic” as A.I. images can look, they can still be unreliable compared to direct observation or real photographs. As such, it’s a bit more difficult to learn artistic “rules” if you just focus on making studies of A.I. images.
So, no, it isn’t the best form of art practice. It can be a fun exercise, and it’s a good way to practice using artistic licence, but not only do you already need art skills in order to do it, it’s a very “passive” way to find source material, the source material can be fairly bland and it also means that it might be more difficult to learn basic artistic “rules” as well. Still, at the very least, it’s better than doing no practice at all.
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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂
This is a digitally-edited painting based on a photo I took last April of some rain on a conservatory window. Although I later ended up editing out my failed attempts at drawing water droplets on the glass, I still quite like how this painting turned out 🙂
“Old Conservatory Window (April 2023)” by C. A. Brown
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
Although I’ve probably talked about elements of this before, I wanted to talk briefly about how literally every age is a “heyday” in some way or another. And I apologise if this article is shorter or a bit abrupt, I eventually ended up editing it a day or two before publication because I worried that the original version was “too political” or “too depressing”. Sorry about this.
Anyway, if you grew up during the early-mid 2000s, it’s very easy to look back on it and – ignoring all of the bad parts – feel proud that you remember the “pre-smartphone days”.
To remember the 1996-2004 heyday of survival horror videogames, how “J-Horror” movies used to be a fixture at the cinema in the way superhero movies are today, how “popular music” actually included genres like punk and metal, to remember when you could play finished games on offline games consoles, to remember when every film and TV show got a DVD release, to remember when “social media” consisted of instant messenger/forums/MySpace etc…
I could go on, but it can be very easy to see two decades ago as being a rose-tinted paradise where everything was just… better. Seriously, I was genuinely shocked the very first time I actually got nostalgic about the early-mid 2000s at some point during the mid-late 2010s. Before that, I remembered it as being a dreadful time – it was dull and limiting, there was lots of post-9/11 fear and angst in the media, “Section 28” was still a thing in England until 2003, I had to go to *ugh* secondary school etc… Nostalgia has given it a significant upgrade!
Yet, I still found myself making these comparisons. But then I looked at the modern world. Yes, it certainly isn’t perfect. And, even though news media always focuses very heavily on bad stuff – presenting a distorted view of the world as a whole – these professional pessimists journalists have no shortage of source material to write about these days!
The modern world certainly isn’t perfect yet, but some elements of it are better than they used to be. This age, today, is a “heyday” for at least some things if you know where to look.
To give just one small example, there are indie games! Like there are new games being made in “old” genres which the “AAA” games companies have completely overlooked – Fixed camera survival horror games! 1990s-style FPS games! 2D Platformer games! – Seriously, this is amazing. Like, game genres aren’t just ignored, forgotten or neglected any more. WOW 🙂
And, yes, some of these things do depend on perspective and on your opinions. For example, whilst I might be wary about the development/popularity of A.I. technology reaching dystopian levels, there are probably a lot of A.I. enthusiasts who currently feel like they are living in a golden age right now.
Every age is a mixture of good and bad. Every age – even this one – is a “heyday” when seen in a particular way.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
This is a digitally-edited painting based on either a memory or a photo of some wonderful rainy weather near Westbrook Shops last April.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Westbrook – Rain Paradise (April 2023)” by C. A. Brown
Well, for this stand-alone article in my “Horror Videogames Series“, I thought that I’d talk briefly about why fan-made mods are a lot less common for survival horror games, compared to – for example – first-person shooter games, role-playing games etc…
And, whilst I have briefly dabbled in survival horror game modding – making some small “Suspiria” (1977)-inspired texture adjustments to the 2002 remake of “Resident Evil” for my personal amusement –Â I’m not really an expert on the technical side of it.
[Edit: A few days after preparing the first draft of this article back in January, I saw a Youtube video (Warning – flashing lights, horror imagery) which claimed that Capcom wants to prevent people from modding the modern “Resident Evil” games via DRM. Given how long before publication this was, I have no clue whether this ridiculous fan-alienating plan has been sensibly shelved by the time this article goes out. But it’s a good argument for why you should only buy games that don’t have online DRM.]
Anyway, there are a ton of reasons why mods are less common for survival horror games. Whilst some early survival horror games – like “Alone In The Dark” (1992) and “System Shock” (1994) – were primarily made for the PC, the genre only really took off with the release of the original “Resident Evil” in 1996. Whilst this game got a PC port, it was a later afterthought. For the genre’s 1996-2004 heyday, survival horror games were primarily console games. This immediately made them a lot more difficult to mod, compared to PC games.
You’ve got to remember that, back then, the tools that modern modders use for these older console games either didn’t exist yet or were very much in their infancy. Add to this the lower power of the average personal computer at the time, and it would have been very difficult – if not impossible – for ordinary people to mod any survival horror game that didn’t also have a PC port.
Plus, whilst older survival horror games were often designed to be re-played, to compensate for their shorter length – often including bonus game modes, unlockable costumes, novelty weapons and mod-like stuff to encourage replays, they were often as much narrative games as games of skill. Yes, there obviously was skill involved and players could sometimes unlock stuff if they “speed-ran” the game within a given time but – unlike older first-person shooter games which were almost 100% gameplay-focused – the gameplay in survival horror games often sat alongside things like the atmosphere, story etc…
As such, whilst the bonus stuff was cool, there probably wasn’t as much of an impulse to “mess around” with the game, lest a mod ruin the atmosphere or story of the game. Plus, unless they included a lot of extra voice-acting, locations and “difficult to make” stuff like that, survival horror game mods couldn’t really change the game’s story too much – limiting what modders could do and therefore discouraging modding.
Plus, the very act of installing a mod automatically makes the game less scary. It gives the player more control over the game. And, for a genre of horror games which relies on things like strict limitations in order to be scary, this automatically makes the game less scary or less suspenseful. So, mods only really have an appeal to jaded players who have played the game enough times not to be scared by it anyway.
As well as this, mods can also make these games less scary in more overt ways. Although I unfortunately haven’t played any of the modern “Resident Evil” games (due to system requirements, online DRM etc...), I randomly found myself watching online footage of them in early January. I was curious about what modders had done with them recently. And, leaving aside the famous comedy mods (eg: fly swats, tank engines, “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” etc...), the most popular mods still just seemed to be “risqué” costumes for Jill, Claire, Ashley and/or Ada.
[Edit: Between writing this article and posting it, I’ve seen footage of an amazing “fixed camera” mod for the 2018 “Resident Evil 2” remake. One which actually turns it into a proper 1990s-style survival horror game 🙂 Something which – like in the 2021 survival horror game “Them And Us” (which I’ll be reviewing in the future) – should probably have been a standard built-in camera option for the game at launch. If mid-budget indie developers and low-budget modders can do stuff like this, my mind boggles as to why a large “AAA” games company didn’t. Still, where was I ? Oh, right, fan-made costumes…]
Regardless of your orientation, these cartoonish costumes make the games less scary. Whether this is because your reaction is one of lust or one of “This is hilariously ridiculous!“, it will be something other than suspense or fear. And these emotions are what survival horror games rely on. When the novelty value of the mods wears off, the only thing left is the actual gameplay. And, yes, from playing the original “Resident Evil 4” (2005), modern-style “Resident Evil” gameplay is fun, but it is probably more difficult for it to compete with a dedicated action-focused game on gameplay alone.
Not only that, whilst the “Resident Evil” series is – by far – the most popular franchise of survival horror games, it is very much an outlier here. The numerous other survival horror series – old and modern – like “Silent Hill”, “The Evil Within”, “ObsCure”, “Alone In The Dark”, “Project Zero”/”Fatal Frame”, “Parasite Eve”, “Galerians” etc… are slightly less well-known. They have a dedicated fan base, but not really the sort of widespread fandom which results in modding communities being formed.
So, yes, there are a lot of reasons – from historical practicality to emotional tone changes – why mods tend to be less common for survival horror games than for other genres.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
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