Today's picture doesn't seem like much of a lesson, but boy oh boy, you get a good one today. If you're a struggling artist and fame looks like it's an inch away, you might want to take note. If you are a terrible artist like me, it might be a cheap thrill. My friend and neighbor Jay asked me if there's any way to protect his work on the internet. I think he wanted to test my methods. You see, I'm putting all this work into the web and all someone has to do is spider my site and put it up on their server to make all my work as their own. He seemed genuinely worried that people who do good work will not get paid. Well, there's a few ways to get paid. First off, make a good product. People are always happy to pay money for a good product. Secondly, ask politely for money. Thirdly, give something in return for money. EditPlus is my favorite tool of all history. They ask me to register so finally I did. What did I get in return? A stop to that nasty splash screen. Of course, I lost the Registration key during a reformat, but you get the idea. Then, if you are worried about actual artists stealing your work and getting it published, you can r0x0r them. When I say r0x0r, I mean h4X0r style. It's not exactly hacking, but rather the opposite: the securing of information. But hacking works both ways. Keeping yourself on top of the game is all that matters in hacking. My method today is steganography. This image is invisibly boobytrapped (watermarked) with my company logo. If a publisher were to ask me to prove that their client is stealing my work, I give the publisher the software and type in the password. There out of nowhere we see MY COMPANY LOGO encoded into his image! Let's see here... Hmmm... Ya... Explain that one, stealer of other people's work! ^_^ Now we know who, what, and why, how about where and how. The answer to "Doko?" is: this cryptography website and their steganography page. The one called S-Tools4 is the one you want. The answer to "Wie?" is: just drag and drop. First you drag the bmp or wav onto the program. It'll open up. Then you drag the file to be encoded on top of it. It asks you for a password and an encryption method. A good password is helpful. If you put 1111 in there, it'll be desteged in a few seconds. I've only done IDEA encryption, but I hear that is good. And the results are astounding. Or actually the opposite. I can't tell a difference at all. But wait, then you compress it to PNG. You can't change anything or you lose the watermark. Lossy compression (JPGs, squising, conversion to fewer bits, etc) will destroy the watermark, so beware. So then you have your image. But wait, check this out: the png with the watermark is larger than the png without. Why? Because S-Tools does stegging and compressing with the zlib algorithm. So your png size is almost exactly the same as the png of the pic without watermark plus the png of the watermark. Funky, huh? Also, note that if you watermark ever single work with the same password and you tell people that you do, then people will break out their brute force password breakers and break your password, take the steg out and steal it. However, I don't remember there being a desteg program. Oooh, interesting. The case of the un-dewatermarkable image.
Well, you didn't expect another shot of Jav, did ya? Well, my train of thought was able to stay on one thing for more than one day straight this time. This is another fight scene that I can't explain until I finish Scene 5. Jav is kicking someone and screaming while he's doing it. Wow... So, what's the lesson? Animation is harder than I usually say it is. I said that it was easy just because it's easy to start. What can be easier than drag and drop? Well, first off, it's hard to get the mesh to work with the skeleton. If you get your skeleton working with your mesh, then you actually have to do something with it. That's even harder. You need to drag and drop until the person looks like they're doing something. The only tool you have is your mouse and the XZ, XY, and YZ views. You can drag those bone around all day and get little more than a funky squishy mess that you say is your "animation". But really what animation means is moving pictures. We aren't doing moving pictures as much as moving body parts. It's a 3d thing instead of a 2d thing and it plain sucks. I don't like it one bit. I have no idea how video games do it. I used to think: why don't they hire better animators, these body movements look jerky and unnatural. Well, now seeing the shyte that I produce, it's all becoming clear to me. Skeleton animation is tough. A professional can hardly do it right, so what am I going to do? I'm going to make pictures that hide the ugly looking parts. I should look at the Half Life models, etc... I just can't do it.
Tonight's lesson is that of sunshine. Indeed sunshine is better than a tall cup of tea, even though tall cups of tea are more likely to manifest themselves here in Seattle. Not only can sunshine cause cancer, sunburn, and blond hair, but also gleefulness. Today was so sunny I had to go out. When I got home from class, I made a pair of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, grabbed a banana and my jug of water and headed to the newly reopened park. It's been closed for months. It was completely insane to close an essential park that long. Not that I used it, but kids did. What's improved? There's better sand, softer and I was less fearful of refuse. There's also one or two new jungle gyms. I dunno if the normal one is new, but I'm certain that the second is. It's a huge modern art sculpture of a metal ape pushing down the frame of a house. The ape hasn't knocked it down, so it's a pretty awkward jungle gym. I drew in my notepad and came up with the two things you see here. Note that I agree with you if you think it sucks. A few things make this terrible. First of all, wtf are these two guys doing? You dunno unless I tell you. They are Jav and they are in the middle of a big kick, kinda like Chun Li's helicopter kick. I won't tell you what it's for, but I'll tell you that you'll see something like these two picture in scene 5. Secondly, what's with the head size, body size, etc? Well, I suck at drawing the same person twice. Even in the same position, it's completely impossible for me currently. Thankfully, 3d forgoes that unpleasantness. However, if I want to become a real manga-ka, I'll have to learn to draw non-3d and get two images to look correct even if the person is doing completely different things. Perhaps I'll never become a real manga-ka, but perhaps I'll be and artist and the inventor of 3d manga/anime. But I suggest if there's ever a sunny day, grab your pad and pencil and get out there. It'll also be good for you to get away from this forsaken machine and your lame work. It might be good to draw inside when it's not sunny. Never let your skills dull. My drawing skill biorhythm is all gone to fuxx0rs.
Happy Valentine's Day to yas. You can the love, can't ya? Tonight's lesson is an interesting one. I added the screenshot function to my work, so now it's cool. It won't serve my needs for AS3D Anime Producer, but that's fine. I know how to do that since I did it in Visual Basic. But the SaveSurface function avoids a lot of trouble. Yup. It's below if you are interested. What about this pic? Well, it's pretty lame. It's just the same old AS3D Manga Director Interface at a particular spot where pixels get weird. When I say pixels getting weird, I don't mean pixellation, I mean smoothing due to pixellation. Look at this! It looks as if it's smooth as a sandy beach while it's really at the sub pixel level. What is going on? Perhaps it's because the surface isn't quite right? Perhaps it's because it's at an angle or something? I dunno, but rarely do I see order descending into chaos and returning. Certainly this is a phenomenon of DirectX. Perhaps someone can use it? A programmer trying to make a surfing game with only one 32x32 texture? Hehehe. I'm always looking for new stuff that defies laws that are counterintuitive and/or unsupported.
