Perspective

Like the good old times

A few days or weeks ago I started working on a drawing type that I had not used in years. Its made in a style that throws out any rule of perspective and can be best related to the isometric graphics style used in older games.
Back then they didn't have strong 3D engines and a lot of the games used this type of style. Me being a joyfull gamer, back then and still today, got inspired by those types of level designs.

Although its not realisticly correct, it does give you a kind of freedom to show more than you would normally be able to show. In my older drawings I usually didn't add any people, for this one I didn't bother either.
The only big problem I had while making it was inspiration. It was rather difficult to come up with an idea for the stage. Even now I feel like I should have added more details to some of the places. Too many times did I use a cheap trick to fill up empty spaces.
Whenever I had a wall I added either a piece of wood as support for the building or just painted the texture of a brick wall. Its a simple way to fill up empty space and you don't have to come up with new ideas to draw.

Most of it was drawn during my lunchbreak at work. Which of course turned a head once in a while. Its only recently that I started making sketches again during my lunchbreak. Mostly because I have the time to do so. A few years ago I had 45 minutes to eat food and draw, but when I moved to a new shop it changed to 30 minutes. Which is fine for eating food, but not enough to really get into a drawing. But as of late we got those 45 minutes again and I figured it was time again to roll out the pencils. Just got to make sure I don't eat any of them.

btw, can you see the C&S, it stands for "Clothes and Stuff".

Scary stuff

Sometimes life can really mess with your head

You can't say that I'm a superstitious person, but I do know some of the habbits out there. Basic stuff like, don't walk under a ladder, or the four-leaf clover. Little meaningless stuff, created by old cultures. Me on the other hand, I'm more of a science guy. Whenever people come to me with scary stories or odd things happening, my first thought will wonder towards the scientific explanation. Be it hallucinating fungi, rats running in walls or simply just people playing tricks on you.

All that being said however, the mind is a powerfull tool that can really mess with you.

For example:

A few nights back I went to bed at my usual hour, much later than the responsible grown ups sleepy time. I had set my alarm for the next day and left the real world for dreamland. Then during the glorious hour of 1:33, i.e. the middle of the night, my alarm went off. That's 1:33 am for people not using the 24 hour thingy.

The beeping noise woke me up and I rushed my hand towards my phone. Eventhough I had just woken up I knew this wasn't the time for my alarm to go off. After checking the time I was wondering what the hell was wrong with my phone, because I knew for sure I had not chosen that time to go off. It seemed very odd that my phone would pick a random hour to go off.

Strike one..

Confused I turned around and tried to go to sleep again, thinking it was a one time thing. However, what I did not realise at the time was that in my haste I had pressed snooze instead of turning the alarm off. So, at 1:38, five glorious minutes later my alarm started beeping again. Now remember, in my mind the alarm was turned off and there wasn't a single reason for it to go off a second time. I rushed up and slammed the button multiple times while in my mind I was thinking, "what the fuck is going on here".
Still sleepy and not thinking straight I was getting a bit worked up. Its kinda like when you just wake up in the morning and that pile of clothes looks like a person or dog sitting in your room and you think, "how did he get in here?". I was at the same stage right now, half awake, wondering what ghost was haunting my phone and by God if it went off a third time I would freaking move out of the house.

Strike two..

For some reason however I was able to fall asleep again with very little effort, but then came the dream I had. In hindsight its very logical I dreamt this because my mind was already set for haunted things, but let me tell you what happend.
In the dream I was doing some random stuff, going to the store to buy some bread, but there wasn't any bread left anymore so I stood there for a second thinking I should just go home again. Right when I was about to turn around I heard a voice wishpering from behind me. A silent, whispering, ghostly voice right next to my ear softly calling out to me. "Stiiijjjjjn" (for the english people it would sound like "Stan", but long "Staaaaaan")

I woke up the second I heard that voice and actually said out loud in the middle of my room "What the fuck!" Now I was really fucked up and I turned on all lights (which luckily I was able to do because the lightswitches are right next to my bed) and prepared myself to check under the bed for monsters. While carefully pulling away the sheet I already kept in mind what object to grab first in case I actually encounted something. The space underneath my bed was clear, which was a huge relief.

Strike three.

Luckily that was the last thing that happend that night, but my mind was going crazy with scary stuff and I did not go to sleep for the next hour, I refused to. I kept the lights on, pulled the sheets a bit higher over me and took my tablet with me to browse some of the funny sites. Only an hour or so later I was back to my normal self and was I able to realise the sillyness of the situation. The rest of the night however was very short because I had to wake up for the early shift at work. Needless to say I was a bit tired the next day.

After that odd night I can say that I did not move out, even though I had three strikes. Strike three and two are just silly things that my mind turned into something far scarier than they actually were, but that's what happens when you wake up in the night and your mind isn't fully awoken.

However, I have not yet found an explanation for my phone going off in the middle night...