AuthorTopic: Official Off-Topic Thread  (Read 1001398 times)

Offline digitaldust

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2040 on: June 04, 2011, 01:14:31 pm
Hi, I'm still alive or something. I'm hiding in a hole because I'm sort of destroying myself with self-training of 3D modelling, and I haven't even finished my first character, mostly due to the fact that she's become some kind of testbed of technique polishing. Some aren't impressed at how much time I've spent on her, but eh, it's not really good looking anyway.

But that's besides the point. Anyone remember Skullgirls? Alex Ahad posted here a few years ago about it, and now he's assembled quite a team of buddies to help him with the animations, and I can't wait to look at them up close and personal, because the videos they show of them are absolute diabetic eyecandy to look at.

To top it all off, they managed to hire Michiru-freakin'-Yamane for the jazzy BGMs the game is going for. She's not slacking off in quality, as usual.
"I am smart! I am smart! S-M-R-T -- I mean S-M-A-R-T!!"

Offline blumunkee

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2041 on: June 05, 2011, 04:58:30 am
heh

Offline Conzeit

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2042 on: June 05, 2011, 07:39:50 am
Yep, seems like Alex Ahad really upped the quality bar when he decided to do without pixelart, I was specially impressed with the way he separated the volume from the coloring, so he now has sprites made in photoshop that can be recolored. I know pretty technical but I wasnt sure this could be done and to me this speaks of how he's not holding back one bit.

Honestly I feel more and more the reason we stick with pixelart comes down to nostalgia...if it isnt expanded to things like ascii or modular art, vectors and whatnot it seems like there's no more appeal in it...I havent been thinking "pixel-perfect" for a while anyway, so maybe I'm not one to talk :p

Welcome Tsugumo! glad you're getting down to busyness and releasing your own games and stuff...this is Camus BTW :p. You should put back up that little priest sprite you used to have way back when, it's so iconic to me =).

You guys remember the first time we considered pixelation having a banner? :p I submitted this..heheh I was pretty crazy about those two sprites =)...looks kinda passive agressive in retrospective but I didnt mean that XD

Offline Ovyx

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2043 on: June 05, 2011, 08:15:11 am
 neat.  :)
« Last Edit: June 13, 2011, 01:59:07 am by Ovyx »

Offline Joe

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2044 on: June 05, 2011, 10:37:58 pm
@blu: Interesting articles.  I do the same thing as that woman as far as using it to explore my consciousness, although I'm not so keen on trying drugs outside the hallucinogens as she is.  The second link I found that I could relate to many things that people said.  This:

Quote
Bad trips were something else. We're talking about seeing everything bad about myself and humanity, which considering the basically selfish nature of a human is quite something. Very black-and-white, good-and-evil thinking, alternating between extremes. Synthesizing sounds, colors, physical things around me. When I read about people going nuts or harming themselves, I'm not surprised. Very black-and-white thinking can lead to some alarming thoughts.

I'd find that if I spent a few hours spiraling on that I could lose the ego totally and emerge with a very objective sense of the world. A world in balance, things as they should be, personal and friends' faults accepted, insights into myself and others. I definitely made some amazing self-discoveries, but at significant risk.

I feel that very strongly.  Many times before I read this I would describe to my friends that certain experience in a trip as "spiraling down," where your thoughts follow this pattern that just keeps zooming in on a subject, almost like that subject becomes a fractal.  But in my experience when you break out of that spiral, you can fell that you've integrated with a piece of your unconcious.

@Conceit:  I've heard of McKenna before but never actually read any of his stuff but I read Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness from your second link and it was interesting hearing his own experiences with it.  And as you said, his theories are way out there, but after your mind is opened to a whole new world, anything is possible really.  I've never done ayahuasca, and I hate throwing up so much I don't think I'll ever do it.  But the first time I did DMT, actually all of the times I've done it... It is literally the most powerful experience I have ever had, that I can remember in this life.  It is terrifying to feel as though you are not a part of your body.  But the implications... these things are what make these compounds so amazing.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2045 on: June 06, 2011, 07:29:35 am
Joe, that little thing about being focused on a subject being like zooming in a fractal..perfect description. The intensity of that experience really convinced me that your ego is fake, the way zooming fractally on an idea like that makes you forget even who you are and lose yourself completely just finally convinced me that the ego is just a really bloated idea that we've been chucking stuff on for years and years. Made me feel my screen name is pretty true, it's all just a big conceit.

it's weird with these things. how art intertwines with psychedelia too, I go into these psychedelic experiences and BOOM, you know how an aesthetic impression of the world comes to dominate your whole perception in a moment,  I feel like it is totally new at the moment, but days weeks or months later reflecting on the experience all of a sudden I realize some phrase or a random scribble from years ago described that same perception, only it was much more minute. it's like getting some artistic dream realized instantaenously, with absolute care to detail and without losing a bit of spontaneity.

About throwing up & ayahuasca, I didnt even throw up...and some people who have thrown up told me they didnt mind in that state,  honestly I loathe throwing up too...yet I imagine that I still wouldnt mind in that state because you're really recognizing all this crap you carry that you dont need, so throwing up would seem like a fitting symbolic action for getting rid of that crap. When I took yage it was in a group setting, I recall hearing a woman cry her heart out and a bunch of people throwing up at the same time, but even THAT cacophony seemed really beautiful, because the cry was a very intense expression of life, and the puking...it's not the same as when you puke because you're drunk or sick, because people werent going "aaagh"*barf!* holding it back until it bursted out, it sounded like it just flowed out, sounded more like water being poured. I know it sounds disgusting but I think you'd understand an altered consciousness would change that, and Yage makes you quite compassionate.

DMT....yeah...that sounds like what McKenna describes, actually I wanna test something, have you ever been in the dome? heheh...he says anyone who'd done it would know what that means. I'd love to hear more...because Mckenna's descriptions of it have made it quite imprinted in my mind, and while it's the same compound it's supposed to be completely opposite to ayahuasca.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2011, 07:56:32 am by Conceit »

Offline Joe

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2046 on: June 07, 2011, 11:46:50 pm
Oh yeah.  Art definitely has an intimate relationship with psychedelics.  I think the reason is the art we make is rooted in our perception, of the objects we portray and our understanding of how the world is, and they alter that incredibly.  Like for example, I'm sure you know that when you're drawing something, in your mind you break it up into regions and break those up into colored shapes, etc.  I was able to do that fine before, but once on acid I started concentrating on "perceiving."  I concentrated very hard on a shape that belonged to a pamphlet at a very skewed perspective like this:



And I was able to perceive the orange shape as completely two dimensional, with no interference coming from the perspective.  I don't know if you can do that, but since then I've been honing that skill.  I've also been given the gift of visualization, to a small degree, whereas before I could not do it at all.  But at this point in time, if I concentrate very hard I can project an image of something onto a solid colored surface.

But no, I have not encountered this dome yet.  I've only had the chance to do it 5 times now, and each time it's only 5 minutes.  It's extremely tricky; there's this enormous wave of energy that comes over you, and you either ride it or miss it.  And it takes a lot of concentration to ride it.  So far I've only been able to be just outside of my body.  But I'm sure an individual with McKenna's experience would know of it.

Offline alkaline

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2047 on: June 08, 2011, 02:12:04 am
I've actually come across a very similar phenomenon while on shrooms once. as I looked out at a lake and the trees behind it, the entire scene's perspective seemed to fade away and it became almost photographic in nature, although the space entirely living and moving still. very interesting, not sure if such a discovery has really helped, though.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2048 on: June 08, 2011, 04:58:07 am
hahaha, I'm loving this. I knew there were some psychedelic undercurrents in some PixelJoint pieces but actually talking about this stuff in Pixelation is waaay cool, pretty fitting now that there's a proposal to end the war on drugs on the way to ONU backed by over 500.00 people (avaaz) and some presidents and ex presidents from drug producing countries  :D here's hoping that goes well.

I never tried what you described of removing perspective, but I can definitively see that you could do that, one of the things I enjoyed about Psilocybin was to look at a tree, and see how different sections of leaves would go into the foreground and into the background again, and that made it look like there were figures shifting inside the tree, and sometimes you'd see faces and it'd seem like they were gesticulating to you...I'm almost sure that's what the whole deal with the greenman is about.

On the DMT thing, he says that you have to get affected by DMT, and then take ANOTHER hit, this is what he calls a "heroic" dose. This is how you get to the "Dome" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oigtSg6ZFiw here he describes it a bit...:p

IDK I personally enjoy this, but every time I post I feel like this might be not the topic for Pixelation, does anyone feel so? should we do this in PM?
« Last Edit: June 08, 2011, 05:03:16 am by Conceit »

Offline Cure

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #2049 on: June 08, 2011, 07:56:29 am
Ah, I can't help but spur on the psychedelic talk a bit, though it is inherently (at the bottom of the spiral) something that cannot be communicated (by its nature), and certainly can be known only experientially, though all these 'fingers pointing at the moon' I find interesting, especially hearing other people's analogies. It certainly magnifies whatever you bring into the trip, and I find that if I enter it with an attitude of acceptance and submission then I allow the acid to create a much more profound experience, without my interruption. When it reaches zero kelvin and enters into that silence-of-silences, that complete letting go of all ideas/emotions/concepts, without reflection or the desire to communicate the experience, even to oneself- that's when it borders on the spiritual and earns its entheogenic classification.

I usually relate to a sinking analogy, with non-lucid life being the sloshing current on the surface (characterized by being rooted in the thinking mind), and acid acting as a catalyst to bring these energies to a still point, almost as if there were something like gravity pulling me down to that place-that-can't-be-expressed. I'm sort of a religion geek, so I'm always interested with the striking parallels between these experiences and concepts like Nirvana and the Kingdom of God (Huxley called it Moksha Medicine, after all). I personally like 'the Riverbed', 'the Substrate' or 'Chu', though there are as many analogies for trying to communicate it as there are communicators. I like that Joe mentioned 'riding the wave', that's another feeling I sometimes get. No tension or resistance, just flowing with it, completely in-tune, almost like a needle finds a groove on a record. The whole 'purging/pouring out' thing I can certainly relate to as well. There a link to McKenna's concept of 'the dome' ?

As far as visual stuff goes, I had a somewhat opposite experience a few times, where, when looking at an object close to my eye, the view retains its fish-eye perspective, and my mind doesn't 'unfold' it and make sense of the view by reconstructing it without the extreme distortions. Usually the only visual effects are of course the vibrancy of the colors and the way that everything 'breathes' and flows with a certain life.

It does feel a strange thing to discuss in a public forum though, these are pretty intimate and personal experiences after all, something with an almost sacred air. If only there were a washed-out psychonaut subforum...
« Last Edit: June 08, 2011, 08:01:21 am by Cure »