Hello everyone,
It has been quite a while now, although not from lack of trying. Life has been hectic, but I think I’m finally finding some stability, albeit at the cost of a busier schedule. More on in a separate post!
Still, I will share a relevant update. I will soon start teaching English, which will involve writing on the board and correcting homework, both of which involve my handwriting. Currently, it’s no secret my handwriting is atrocious, whether cursive or manuscript. For this reason, I plan on improving it. And what better way than to set up a new challenge? As a bonus perk, I’ve read that handwriting and drawing skills are allegedly related, which means improving my handwriting could help with learning how to draw.
Plan
Obviously, I should highlight a plan of action. Starting tomorrow, I will practice my handwriting daily. However, I’ll limit how much time I spend on it to a session of about 15 minutes per day. I also plan to divide this into different stages.
First, I will work on my manuscript handwriting while writing on paper. For this, I’ll use grid paper (since I’ve already purchased some to write in Chinese, and can use the grids as guidelines) along with a fountain pen. I’ll need to work on both my pen holding technique, along with the actual strokes. Just as with drawing, I’ll need to build up “stroke confidence” and stability. Note that I will be working my way from individual letters to whole sentences, focusing on a mix of lowercase and capital letters. As for the duration, I’m arbitrarily deciding to limit this stage to one week. By the end of the week, I can evaluate whether it should be extended.
Since I’ll be teaching using a whiteboard, the next logical step is to work on my handwriting on a whiteboard. This will once again involve working on my writing implement holding technique, along with strokes. I expect this to be very similar to the previous stage, other than needing access to a whiteboard. Luckily, I go to a school with whiteboards in every class, and I should be able to access some classrooms during the day, giving me an opportunity to practice on campus. However, I won’t be able to practice on weekends or holidays. I plan to also devote roughly a week on this, subject to change on the basis of progress.
Once I’m satisfied with manuscript, it’ll be time to graduate to cursive. In my opinion, this is less relevant when it comes to teaching to children English as a second language. I therefore feel less pressed on time. I plan to mostly focus practicing on paper, although I might explore different types of scripts. I once again plan to dedicate one week.
Conclusion
And thus begins a new challenge. As of now, I do not know at what cadence I will be posting updates, since I have less opportunities to be on the computer. Additionally, I plan on writing significantly shorter posts than I have in the past. Nonetheless, expect more updates in the upcoming week.
Take care everyone, and I wish you success in your learning endeavors!
Let’s start it starkly, I’ve titled this “My Manifesto“. This might feel a little intense, but I think intensity is what I need (Even if it’s possible I’m misusing the term “Manifesto”).
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my life, where I’m at, and what I want out of my future. For this reason, I’ve realized I should define what I care about and want to accomplish, and use those as guiding principles moving forward. Thus, I’m writing my personal “Manifesto”, guidelines on how I to approach things. I you could also call these commandments, or an equivalence of the laws of Robotics.
Rules/Axioms
strive to encourage people to learn new things, keep growing and become self-reliant, and to enjoy the process.
I strive to learn new things for myself and to keep growing.
I strive to create useful tools and techniques that will bring value to others.
Corollaries
From these three rules, I can derive some other helpful guidelines, which I’ll name corollaries.
In order to encourage people to learn and grow, I should inspire them, while also showing the inevitable pitfalls and growing pains, and how to approach them.
In order to encourage people to learn new things, I should cultivate their curiosity.
In order to help people become self-reliant, to myself learn new things, and to build useful tools, I must keep improving my own techniques, rigor and diligence, while documenting the process for others.
As time progresses, I will undoubtedly want to refine these axioms and corollaries, and possibly uncover new ones.
Conclusion
This is the current iteration of my personal “Manifesto”, which I will use to keep sight of my goals as I work on personal projects; a guiding light. Hopefully this proves useful to me, or maybe even to others. Though for now, I might create a condensed version to print and stick to my wall, as a personal reminder.
After another long hiatus, it’s time to return to this drawing challenge. Today, I decided to learn a bit about shading, and so opted to try to draw an everyday object in the dark, with a single source of light. The object I chose was a mug (which definitely doesn’t count as a person). Here are pictures of the actual setup I was trying to replicate.
Mug lit from an angle – Seen from aboveMug lit from an angle – Seen from my drawing angle
Before discussing the drawing, a quick note. I was planning to use a new tablet, but the app I’d chosen had annoyances. I thus opted to go back to my previous set up. I will eventually have to investigate a good android drawing app, please share recommendations. (Edit: While writing this article, I did some research online, and people seem to recommend “Clip Studio Paint”, although it’s apparently costly. I may give it a try.)
Drawing
Without further ado, here is my drawing:
Day 26 – Final drawing
A few comments about the experience:
First of all, I decided to add the source of illumination on the drawing itself: rays of light coming from the top-left, simply for reference.
I have no experience drawing real life objects, which hindered this shading exercise (I might eventually need to practice this, but it isn’t my primary goal with this challenge). I particularly struggled with outlining the general shape, which funnily enough, is in part due to the dark and reflective surface of the mug. That made it harder for me to properly evaluate the shape of the outline.
I really struggled with the handle and its proportions, especially the bottom part.
I eventually realized I should roughly measure(/estimate) proportions. For this reason, I tried to use my thumb to approximate ratios. However, I realized (unsurprisingly) that I need to keep the distance between my eye, my finger and the object constant (and similarly with the canvas). Finding such a distance was initially unintuitive, so I’ll need to work on this. But it should be useful.
While there were reflective surfaces, I did not want to draw them. This was purely a shading exercise.
At some point, I distractedly displaced the cup, which likely affected the results. One option could be to base my drawing purely on a picture I would take, but I feel like I’ll get a more vivid and visceral experience with drawing from the real life object, where I can also interact with the environment and see how things fluctuate (i.e.: experimenting).
Now, a few notes about the shading itself, which was the purpose of this exercise. First, my approach, which should be apparent in the drawing, was to first outline the different areas of shade, and then fill in the shade. I did the same for the shadow.
Here are the different elements I tried to recreate:
The dark and light area within the cup, which are both lighter than the other areas.
The dark and light areas of the cup’s shadow.
The dark and light parts along the side of the cup and the handle, which are fairly dark due to the dark blue of the cup.
Two light reflection spots on the rim of the cup.
Two light reflection spots on the handle.
Overall, as a first exercise in shading, I think this went relatively well. I’m pleased with the inside of the mug and the different tones of shades I achieved. However, there are a few things that could be improved:
The darker part of the mug feels off, because of it gets squeezed between both lighter parts. It’s hard to explain, but I think it’s an issue with the lighter area on the left. It is either due to the shape of the outline, or the inking technique itself. I will want to investigate different inking techniques for shading and see what works best.
The top of the handle does not look like it makes sense in 3d space, in part due to the shading.
The light reflection spots I tried to highlight don’t seem to be working properly. I might want to either drop that in the future, or research how those are handled by professionals.
The shape of the shadow is off. I decided to “wing it”, instead of doing it more carefully. But while I’m unhappy with the actual shape and proportions, I’m happy with the shading itself.
I will need to investigate the role of the orientation of the shading strokes (if I keep using this same technique). It seems to have an actual impact on perception. For example, aligning them vertically inside the cup seems to help suggest its depth. More research and experimentation is warranted.
The edge of shading areas should probably a little more diffuse and blurry than clear-cut.
But despite some of these faults, I’m still happy with this first experiment, and I think I’ve learned a few things, even having a direction for future investigations. Thus, I consider this a successful session.
Stats
The drawing took me a total of 44mins to complete. However, I neither recorded this session, nor timed any other parts of the process.
Conclusion
For this session, I did something fairly different for once, and it was interesting. As was my goal, I did learn a bit about shading, although it’s unclear how well it will translate into shading in the manga style (e.g.: shading a nose). Still, this is a fundamental concept of drawing, so it makes sense to dive in, even if only slightly. Moreover, I have some further directions to head into:
I will need to investigate how to highlight shiny areas, which seems to be the dual of what we expect from shading.
With the hatching pattern, line orientation seems to have an impact on the perceived outcome.
I should start using my fingers at a distance as guides for proportions of different elements when drawing from a reference (like one imagines a painter doing).
I should experiment with different lighting setups (source, type, orientation, etc…).
Now that I have a direction for shading, I think I will want to have one more session where I focus on shading, and then get back to the main Challenge. Thanks for joining me on this exercise, and until next time! Take care everyone!
Hello everyone, and welcome back!
After a long break, I’m happy to welcome you to the start of my third attempt. There have definitely been a few failures, but I’ve also learned from them, so hopefully this time will go better! Note that this have a rocky start for now. I would recommend reading Blog Update – Life Prioritization if you’re looking for more clarifications on the situation.
Before going further, you might have noticed that this is labelled as Day 25, and I have skipped over Day 24, this is because I had a small session where I drew models for Starting to Swim (Part 2). It felt uningenious not to include that session in my count, since I did practice that time. I may eventually release a post about it as a bonus one, but I can’t promise it.
Next, I’ve actually skipped the drawing exercises this session since I wanted to dive straight into drawing. I may eventually revisit the exercises, but for now, I think I may skip them.
It’s also worth mentioning that I dealt with some technical issues that were really annoying. For some reason, my tablet sometimes decided to erase entire strokes right after drawing them. I’m not quite sure what caused this issues, and whether it was the pen, the tablet, or my hand. Under normal circumstances, I would have to investigate this, but I actually was gifted a Samsung S6 lite tablet, which I plan to start using (with a different software) in the future.
Preparation
Before drawing, I considered my first frame and what it contains:
Closed eyes
Nose
Mouth
Cheeks
Looking at this list, there are a few things that came to mind. First, I’ll need to choose what style and variant I want for the different elements. What kind of eyes, what kind of nose, etc.. Not just in terms of the character’s attributes, but also the art style. Next, I realized that another important aspect, especially with respect to the nose, is shading. This is both a crucial and challenging drawing skill which I will definitely need to learn.
Eventually, I settled on working on noses, and looked at a few models to see what I might my options were. Turns out, there is a lot of variation when it comes to drawing nose. For example, it can be drawn as:
Simple holes
A small triangle
A larger triangle with the whole bridge drawn, along with shadows
A bigger and more realistic nose with the tip drawn in more detail
I thus opened my guidebook to the secion on noses, and opted to try some models, starting with a more detailed variant.
Drawing Session
During this session, I ended up drawing three noses. Here are my attempts:
First Nose
First Nose
For my first nose (And no, I’m not talking about plastic surgery), I started by having a few struggles with aligning different elements. First, I struggled with the curves for the bottom of the nose (around the nostrils). For example, here is a curve I struggled with. You can see how the bottom left doesn’t match the rest of the nose:
Misaligned and misproportioned curve
I also struggled with some small details, such as the nostrils’ size. Here’s an example of one I was unhappy with (on the bottom right of the picture, i.e.: the left nostril). Fortunately, that’s easy to fix.Weird nostril
Beyond that, I struggled a lot with nose shadows and relief, but I will spare you the details. Enough to say that shadows are complicated, and I think I should have a side-quest: studying shadows.
Otherwise, I’m fairly happy with how this nose turned out. My main complaint would be that the top right part (the end of the curve) feels misaligned with the bottom part). A funny note that I wrote, the more I drew the nose and looked at it, the less it looked like a nose. The human brain can be weird sometimes. Here it is once again for reference:
First Nose
Second Nose
Second Nose
First off, as a quality of life improvement, I opted to dedicate an area of my canvas to this nose, but also to put it on a different layer, in order to hide the first drawing.
Next, here are a few things I either struggled with or realized:
As with the previous drawing, connecting different parts of the nose without a connecting line can be challenging.
When drawing the nose’s tip, it seems easier to start with the line at the tip itself, and then adding extra lines around it.
The tip of the nose’s relief can be tough to center. Aligning different elements with each other to have a coherent whole has been non-trivial, and I need to make a conscious effort to build this intuition. Luckily, it’s something that can often be fixed through “editing” steps.
With my second nose, I’m happier with the general shape (which came at the cost of a lot of rework), although I’m a little disappointed with the shadows and reliefs.
Third Nose
Finally, for my third nose, I decided to go for a simpler model, but as part of an whole face.
Third Nose
At this point, I was definitely rusty when it comes to sketching faces, and this is an underwhelming attempt. Regardless, it is important to practice once more. Here, I ran into a few issues, not all nose-related:
I struggled with eyes’ direction (where they look). It seems like it’s based on a combination of the general shape and orientation, the placement of the iris, along with the placement, size and orientation of the reflection. More experimentation might be needed to better understand how those interplay, although for now I might just do it on a case-by-case.
Aligning the nose with the face wasn’t easy. Once again, it’s a matter of aligning different elements. It needs to properly line up with the “center”, but also the eyes and the eyebrows.
The shadows remained a struggle. Especially relating it to the topology.
Overall, I’m definitely dissatisfied with this drawing; there are multiple elements I’m unhappy with. While a few of the elements were simple drafts to help understand this conceptually, the mouth is definitely off, which does hinders the nose exercise. Moreover, I’m also unimpressed with the nose. The shadow feels off, and the nostrils aren’t great. Still, it’s work in progress, and the next iterations will hopefully be better, I just have to start practicing again.
Time Statistics
While drawing took me 43mins, and I took 19mins to write a sketch of post and initial sections, I have no idea how long I took to actually complete the article during my second run, so the statistics will be omitted for this session.
Conclusion
So, here are my takeaways:
There is definitely a tradeoff between detail and work amongst the different kinds of noses, and I will need to choose a specific version, and remain consistent and coherent with it. Also, the detailed nose will definitely be more challenging when it comes to doing different angles.
Coherence between different elements is extremely important, and something I need to work on. For now, this takes the form of reworks, but hopefully I will gradually build my intuition.
Aligning different outlines that aren’t continuous is important, and sometimes trickier than it seems.
I struggle a lot with topology, orientation and shadows. I should thus do a dive into those.
For my next session, I would like to do some shadow exercises. I’ll look up some simple ones, and what objects work are best to train with. I expect these will involve sketching objects I point a lamp at in the dark. I’ll try to get useful pictures to show how the process goes.
On that note, thank you very much for your patience, I know things have been slow and very delayed, but I’ve been needing to focus on my mental health and to figure out some priorities, as stated in Blog Update – Life Prioritization. I’ll try to get back into this proper, though I also have some important tasks and traveling coming up very soon, so no promises. Take care everyone and until next time!
Hello everyone and welcome back.
As mentioned in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Take Three, I’m about to revisit this challenge. I’ve also had some ideas on how to supplement the challenge to both be more motivating and also better guide my learning.
Project Overview
So, what will this project consist of? Well, the idea is fairly simple. Right now, I’ve simply been…meandering, without a clear goal, simply trying to draw different things from my guidebook. Sure, it can be fun and interesting, and I can even learn a lot from it. But ultimately, there’s only so much I’m getting out of it, and in the long term, it has no clear direction. Thus, I figured a project would be a good addition. After all, a lot of courses tend to use projects as a good synthesis exercise. Moreover, it will allow me to stray further from the exact models, to experiment more, and hopefully to exercise my own artistic freedom.
I expect this to be a mid-to-long-term project, considering it’s centered around learning many different things. The goal will be to draw different panels for a consistent and continuous scene. You can imagine this as a few pages in a manga, comic book or graphic novel. Moreover, these panels are pre-selected. I’ve actually had this idea and a draft of the panel descriptions while I was out at an event and feeling down, feeling like an outsider. I reckon this pushed me into thinking/creative mode, which I focused on this project. Having my phone with me, I decided to jot down notes and capture my ideas, leveraging my motivation and being creatively “fueled”. I…did go a little overboard with the ideation phase, but that’s just the initial phase, which can be reworked.
The idea is to have different panels focus on different aspects of drawing, while still having a small “story” and a single character we can follow. What’s more, this will push me to design a character that exists outside the realm of the guidebook, and also force me to learn consistency across drawing, since they’ll depict the same character. Ideally, each subsequent panel should either work on a new aspect of drawing, a more involved version of a previous skill, or combine multiple ones together in a new way. Obviously, since I want a specific narrative, this won’t necessarily be 100% accurate, but hopefully this will still help me to gradually build my skills.
The Panels
So, what ideas do I have for these panels? Let me set the scene: The entire scene will take place in a bedroom, where we have a single character wake up and dress up before heading out (I plan for the character to be male, but the scene could unfold with any type of character). Here are the panels, in order:
Sleeping face (closed eyes, no hair, no ears, but tip of hair)
Eyes open, zoom out a little (see ears, chin, top of head)
Character yawns, zoom out a little more (Working on face expressions)
See character in bed, from above, final zoom out (No blankets, only wearing underwear)
See character in bed, from the side
See character turn on their side, from the side
See character sitting on the bed, from the side (legs still on the bed)
See character with legs dangling from bed, getting ready to get out of bed
Character lowers head into hands, sighing
Character turns head towards alarm clock to check the time
Focus on alarm clock and the time
Character gets up
Character approaches chair with clothes ready on the back
Characters picks up pants
Character in the act of putting pants on*
Character with pants on picks up shirt
Character pulling shirt over head*
Character buttoning top buttons of shirt*
Character with pants and shirt on struggling to puts socks on*
Character walking towards door
Zoom on hand approaching the door knob
Zoom on hand touching the door knob
Framing upper body, character hanging head down and sighing, while hand is still touching the doorknob
Same framing, turning doorknob
Door opening
Door open, “light coming in”, character looking outdoors
In total, this consists of 26 frames, some of which should be fairly complex (for an amateur at my level). However, I do think this should be good opportunity to gradually work on various skills and aspects. As you may have noted, I also added asterisks next to a few frames. Those are ones that I think could be omitted without destroying the scene, if they turn out to be too challenging. They’re mostly clothing interactions, where the character would be in odd poses, which I expect to be fairly complex.
The Goal
As stated before, the main goal for this project is to have something tangible to work towards, and to guide my learning. Along this vein, I am hopeful that this selection of frames should build skills gradually. We go from the simplest version of a face, to a gradually more complex one, eventually emulating emotion. We have simple versions of full body along two different angles, before moving on to gradually more complex poses. We then introduce clothes gradually, although with some complications thrown into the mix. The final few frames involve interacting with the environment and emoting more emotions, but I expect they shouldn’t be much more complicated than what came before. It does, however, help close the narrative, and focus specifically on hand work. Overall, not only should this give me a chance to gradually build my skills, but it should help showcase my progress as well, which should be interesting.
The plan for me is to spend some time figuring out what skills I need for the next frame, and then probably spend a few days working on these skills before moving on to the actual frame. I might even make a few attempts, and unlike before, possibly spend more than one day on a single drawing. We will see how things unfold. As the frames get completed, I plan to showcase them and the whole scene. I may have a page somewhere presenting the scene as it is so far, so you can see the progress in its full glory (or abomination).
Conclusion
There you go, the plan for my new project: a simple manga scene that should have enough variety to grow multiple skills gradually. I’m somewhat excited about this, and looking forward to see how this pans out. I hope you’re also excited! If you have any questions, or recommendations (such as potential improvements to the scene), please leave a comment below. Have a nice one, and stay curious!
Welp, it’s officially been a month since the start of my hiatus, and I really want to get back into it. I may have “fallen” twice already, but I’m planning to keep getting back up and figure out what works best for me! As mentioned in April Update, I feel ready to resume this challenge, and have some thoughts on how to approach it this time.
When will I resume?
This is the most obvious question: when shall I actually resume? My current plan is to resume the challenge on Monday May 13. Why that date in particular? Two main reasons:
I have a Final Exam on May 10, and want to make sure to study for it before it happens.
With the new strategy I want to implement (discussed below), I would rather start on a Monday as opposed to a weekend (Plus it also be my birthday weekend).
Is the date actually going to be final? Not necessarily. I could see myself starting a little early, though ideally not any later.
Strategy
General Schedule
One of the things I’ve noticed with the previous runs is that I manage to last maybe a week or two before my motivation and energy both start to wane (along with an increase in sleep deprivation). Similarly, it seems that while working on projects, I tend to have “short-term” bursts of high motivation before getting fatigued, and I’m wondering whether I could make use of that. Accordingly, I want to try out a “week on – week off” strategy, where I have a full week of daily drawing, followed by a full week off, and rinse and repeat. This would hopefully help me make better use of my motivation, and also lead to a better life balance, since I could use the week off towards other activities (such as exploring Taiwan).
I have not yet decided whether I’ll also be drawing during the weekends or not, I’m still torn between the two alternatives. I’ll probably see how my first week goes before deciding. Still, 5 days every two weeks is still be better than my current track record.
Also, I want to retain the ability to get “credits” to help manage unexpected situations. As mentioned in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Take Two, it allows me to draw during an off-day to gain a “credit”, which can be used to “skip” a normal day of work, although without affecting my normal posting schedule. I believe it was a really good addition to my last attempt.
Additionally, and very importantly, I’ll once again want to “review” the new strategy at the end of the first week. Although by the nature of this strategy, I should also have a review after the second week of drawing for a proper evaluation.
Stats
One of my concerns has been how long each individual session takes. Thus, I decided to look at some statistics. Thankfully, I recorded some of that information. Here is a screenshot of some of these stats:
Drawing Articles Time Statistics
One of the first things to notice is that drawing was about a third of the duration (articles taking twice as long to write), which seems a little intense. Similarly, reviewing the article sometimes took about as long as writing the article, which also seems off. Therefore, I would like to modify how I tackle these sessions to (hopefully) spend my time more judiciously.
Individual sessions
Following the above, I think I should streamline my process and make it more consistent. Here are a few changes I would like to try:
I would start with the drawing phase as per usual, but with a notebook in which I would take timestamped notes.
After drawing, I would review the video, take screenshots, and take additional notes.
With the images and notes ready, I would clean up and rearrange the notes into logical topics, sketching the narrative. (While the exploration should remain mostly linear, the rest of the article and the takeaways could be better presented). The end-result should consist of different sections, each with a very rough draft.
With a rough sketch ready, I would flesh out the article for a proper draft.
The final step would be to review the article.
I also think I’ll need to monitor the time spent in each part, and different time ratios. Thus, I will likely want to “timebox” how much time I spend on the article itself (and each phase of the process).
My intuition is that, while it feels intense for an article to take longer to write than the time spent drawing, it kind of makes sense, since I need to analyze the process, internalize, and synthesize what I want to write about it. However, the writing phase being twice as long (which happened on a few occasions) feels concerning. In a similar vein, it feels like reviewing should not take longer than the actual writing. I feel like it realistically shouldn’t take me more than 2/3rds as long. Still, I haven’t yet decided what ratios I should aim for, and it will probably require experimentation too. I expect to start with initial guidelines, and which will evolve over time (or be discarded entirely).
I will, however, keep in mind that there might be a reason for such ratios to arise naturally. Accordingly, I will remain open to the idea that these ratios might be ideal. Nonetheless, I think cleaning up my process and trying something new won’t hurt, and might give me valuable insights and new tricks.
Motivation
Another addition to this run is a larger “mid-term” goal. In the past, I was simply learning to draw different things, with no clear goal, nor project I was working towards. I think that lack of direction worked against me, both in terms of motivation and having a clear learning plan. Accordingly, I decided to instigate a project. The goal would be to make a small “manga scene” consisting of a few panels chosen ahead of time (through a description). It would be aimed at building different skills throughout the panel progression. This would include a single persistent character (modeled consistently), as opposed to blindly following the models in my book.
Ideally, I would be to practice the skills required for the panel a few times, before moving on to the actual panel, which I could add to the sequence. The scene I’ve envisioned is not the most exciting, but I’m hoping it can serve as motivation and that I can get something out of it, no matter how “simple” it might feel. And I think it might be cute, interesting and maybe insightful to see a few pages of panels where we can (hopefully) see my gradual growth.
Conclusion
Stay tuned for my third attempt, which should start May 13, and will utilize a new strategy. Hopefully, this should work better, and also be a little more interesting for all of you, since I’ll also be working towards something more tangible.
Hello everyone,
As mentioned in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Second Pause Discussion, I have been planning to develop a Youtube extension to improve my productivity. In this post, I’ll describe my current problems with using the platform, potential solutions, along with a roadmap of the features I want to include. Not that it will be a Firefox extension, as opposed to a chromium extensions. (Since that’s the browser I use)
I’ve been thinking about such a project for a while now. The goal is not only to develop an extension to benefit my personal requirement, but also to share my thought process when tackling a programming project and show people not just how one might accomplish such a project, but also how one even approaches problems with unknowns. I also want to help you gain the confidence to solve such problems yourself, and be able to tackle more personal issues when dealing with technology. And obviously, I’ll want not only to show the solution I end up with, but also the issues and struggles I encounter along the way.
Disclaimer
A disclaimer should be in effect: I do have a background in mathematics and computer science, along with industry experience in software engineering, which means I have experience with abstract thinking and this kind of problem solving. I’ve also already tried to solve this specific problem before (a while ago), which means I know some of the issues I might encounter. However, my expertise with the front-end (what you actually see when browsing the internet) is actually limited. Thus, I’ll be exploring new territories and share how I approach such unknowns. My solutions won’t be perfect, and I’m definitely not the best engineer around, but I’m hoping I can impart some knowledge regarding problem solving, how to break down a problem, how to debug a solution, and also give you the confidence necessary to tackle yourself such issues/annoyances with products you use on a regular basis.
Problems and Solutions
As I’ve mentioned previously, Youtube tends to be a time-sink for me. During the week, I get to my desk around the end of the day and just start browsing Youtube endlessly, mindlessly going through recommendations, and usually barely getting any lasting value from it. I often forget what I’ve watched, and rarely get lasting value from these sessions. And all that time “wasted” gets in the way of both my studies and any projects I would like to tackle. And let’s not forget this can lead to “sleep procrastination”, where I just keep watching videos instead of going to sleep, further compounding my issues.
Based on this, what are the issues I can identify and do something about? Here are the main points I can think of:
The Youtube shorts are an endless stream of content with a low-barrier to entry. It means I can simply press a button to get the next bite-sized piece of content.
Mindlessly scrolling through Youtube Shorts
The Youtube recommendations make it too easy to continue watching beyond the “current video”. It’s also easy to add a lot of interesting looking videos as extra tabs to watch afterwards. This isn’t surprising based the nature of modern content, which tends to be click-bait by nature, but it still tends to be unhealthy for me.
Video recommendations next to a video – (Ads erased from screenshot)Video recommendations presented at the end of a videoA bunch of tabs added to “watch later”
By the nature of the incentives Youtube has put in place, I tend to have “FOMO” (fear of missing out) with a lot of recommended videos, which pushes me to continue watching more and more videos.
I’m passively consuming Youtube, instead of actively using it. This is to say, I just take in whatever it gives me, without actually looking for it. In my opinion, there’s a big difference between passively and actively consuming content: looking for something and trying to engage with it, as opposed to being served different things and consuming them as they come. In the latter case, there is no incentive to fully engage with it, or search deeper to better understand it. It’s just something to be taken and thrown away afterwards. (This might not be your experience with it, but it’s been my personal and subjective experience over the years).
By default, Youtube autoplays videos based on the next recommendation. However, that’s something that can be disabled and remembered. (I recommend disabling it)
*Note that all screenshots were created using a “blank youtube account”, and starting with “Tested”, which felt like a “neutral” Youtube channel.
Based on these points, I can see a few solutions I could enact. But first, I can notice a theme in terms of the mentioned issues:
There is inertia when it comes to continuously consuming this sort of content. This is because the energy required to continue is too low. I would thus like to make the alternative easier, or more tempting.
The platform wants to gain your attention and make you want to click on more videos, whether it’s something you truly care about or not. (Unsurprisingly, considering “clickthrough rate” is considered an important metric).
Based on these, here are the core potential solutions I see at a glance:
Remove Shorts from the homepage.
Homepage recommendations – Long form and Shorts
Prevent Shorts pages from scrolling infinitely.
Remove recommendations from a video’s page.
Remove recommendations shown at the end of a video.
Limit recommendations to subscribed channels.
Note that I’m not sure whether I can implement these or not, but if I could, I believe I would have a healthier relationship with Youtube.
Goals
Accordingly, here is an initial list of goals/milestones I would like to accomplish. My initial scope:
Create a basic extension with a straightforward change that can be tested locally. (Learning the basics of web extensions)
Remove Shorts recommendations from the main page.
Remove recommendations from a video page.
Remove recommendations shown at the end of a video.
With these in place, I think I would have a solid prototype to work with, and my experience should be improved.
Stretch Goals
There are a few extra features I think could be really useful to add (a few of which I’ve already mentioned), which aren’t core, nor part of the initial scope:
Prevent Shorts page’s infinite scrolling. It might be ok to watch Shorts from time to time, but I shouldn’t allow them to turn into a never-ending stream of content.
An interface to enable or disable different features.
A way to disable recommendations for a specific channel, and store it into a list that can be edited in the future. There are some channels I find really “easy” to watch to “pass time”, but it’s not always good for me to go down that road.
Add a way to track how much time is spent during a day on Youtube
Add ability to trigger certain actions based on certain conditions (E.g.: After x-mins a day, disable Youtube).
Add ability to treat music differently.
Add ability to treat videos in other languages differently (E.g.: I presently consider watching Chinese videos more productive, no matter the content, since it’s helping me with my language acquisition).
Above, we have a sizeable list of features that could be useful, although I’m not sure how easy or realistic implementing them would be. It’s definitely interesting to think about such features, but it’s important to disregard them for now. I presented them to illustrate how easy it is to simply generate a lot of extra features, causing unnecessary “scope creep”. For this reason, I believe it’s important to keep in mind what the “MVP” (minimum viable product) is, and try to keep the scope at a minimum level (especially at this early stage). Otherwise, this project might spin out of control, and become too intimidating. For this reason, I will stick to the “core features” for now. Once those are complete, I might consider adding new features, based on my needs at that point (Which might be different from what I might predict now).
Conclusion
This is definitely something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, both to help others learn how to solve issues with software on their own, and as part of a different goal to “Reclaim My Focus”, since a lot of technology I use is trying to fight for my attention, whether through push-notifications, click-bait or retention-techniques. I may eventually have a separate post on that topic alone, along with other projects I’ll want to share.
With everyone’s needs being different, it can be useful to know how to personalize your own experience with the different tools you’re using, in order to improve it.
This said, I’m planning to start working on this project soon, and I hope it’ll have the desired effect. I also hope you will find it helpful, either through learning, being able to use such a tool, or making you consider about how you use technology.
Stay tuned for more content in the near future. Stay curious and keep on learning!
Hello everyone and welcome back,
As stated in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 23 (2024/03/16) – Dawn of a new Break, I had to take a break from my Challenge once again due to some issue I’ve been facing. I decided I would talk a bit about these issues, along with what I’m planning to do in the interim.
Stress and Issues
Let’s first talk about the various contributors to this pause. First of all, the primary reason for coming to Taiwan was to learn Chinese, and this should remain a priority. Obviously, my Chinese classes require both time and mental effort. On top of that, I try to read in Chinese every day, which can take a few hours (for barely any pages), and leaves me mentally drained. This thus limits the amount of effort I’m able to expend on other endeavors.
Speaking of time, I do spend a lot of time on transit, taking the metro and bus from where I live to school and back, along with some significant delays while waiting for the bus. This is a non-negligible chunk of my day that can’t be disregarded, during which I tend to be idle and not really “productive”.
Beyond that, I’ve also been stressed. Not only do I have exams every week, but it’s also been tax seasons, and my current situation complicates matters. I also have to figure out what I’ll to do this summer, and the uncertainty is eating at me, along with worries of issues with the timeline and my visa.
Next, through a combination of different elements (including insomnia, stress, and the amount of things I was trying to handle at once), I was becoming sleep deprived, which negatively impacted my ability to focus, and in turn both my motivation and ability to perform involved tasks. This means that forcing myself to stay up later for the challenge gradually made my situation worse, and I therefore need to find a solution on this front.
Another big issue is how much idle time I waste on the internet, especially during the evening or weekend. A big example of this is Youtube browsing, continually and mindlessly watching videos, yet not getting any value from it. Shorts in particular are rather egregious and problematic. I start watching some videos, but have such a hard time stopping, even if I know I ought to.
I also shouldn’t understate the fact I’ve been trying to spend some time with new friends I’ve made in Taiwan, along with just exploring some areas, or trying to get new experiences here. I’m visiting a completely different part of the world, I might as well try to make the most of it. Moreover, I think such activities ought to be good for my mental health, which is primordial for achieving any of my goals.
Finally, the time I spend on my articles can undoubtedly be overwhelming. I first need to spend time on the action itself (in this case drawing). I then go meta and analyze what I did while writing about it. But it doesn’t end there, since I also review my article afterwards, which also requires a significant chunk of time. (And funnily enough, in classic Shawn fashion, I’m sometimes tempted to go another layer of meta deep and write an article about my review process, the kind of changes I make and what I’ve learned on that front). All of that usually results in a few hours spent each day on this project, which can get into conflict with the other previously mentioned elements.
Priorities
So, a lot of these points definitely highlight that I need to organize some of my priorities. Some priorities that should rank higher than this blog and the drawing challenge include:
This is just a quick blurting out of my thoughts, and I should personally do a deep dive, but it’s still a useful thing to quickly consider, and try to balance. I also think it’s important to note that (and forgive me, this will be a little abstract):
Even if element A is more important than element B, it doesn’t mean I should completely neglect B for the sake of A. For example, if I decided socializing was more important than something else, it doesn’t mean I should just spend 100% of my time socializing, but instead that I should prioritize finding some time to socialize. We could consider each of those priorities having a “quota” of sort.
Next steps
Based on all of this, what are my thoughts for moving forward? Well, I think there are two big things I want to work on, which I’ll likely turn into their own project on here:
Trying different techniques to improve my sleep, along with evaluating them and recording my subjective experience.
Work on a method to change how I use Youtube to make it healthier for me. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and think I’ll try to work on a browser extension. Stay tuned for more details.
I think these two things should help me a lot with tackling large projects such as my Challenges, by both limiting how much time I waste, and allowing me to feel more refreshed, motivated and focused. (And yes, the Youtube issue is also impacting my sleep). But that’s not where things end. I’ll also need to keep working on my physical health, which for now means going swimming weekly (hopefully eventually twice a week).
Finally, because I know that my stress is a big issue, I also will want to find ways to properly relax. One potential solution might be to look into meditation. And let’s not forget my mental health, which is also something I need to keep in check.
Conclusion
Thank you all for your patience and understanding. I’ll keep you updated on my progress and let you know what I learn from all of this. More updates to come in the future, so stay tuned!
Have a nice one, and take care of yourselves!
Welcome back everyone!
Unfortunately, I think I may need to take another break. This latest session made it clear to me that I’ve been getting under the weather and the stress is getting to me (along with sleep deprivation). Which in turn induces impatience and negatively impacts the quality of my learning, along with my ability to apply what I’ve learned. And not only for this Challenge, but also with learning Chinese.
Still, let’s at least go on with this session. Since I’ve been wanting to track these stats, I evaluated my sleepiness as an 8/10, and I started drawing at 10:15pm.
Exercises
This time, I tried to be more mindful during the lines exercise. However, it gradually decayed from an amalgamation of stress and frustration, which resulted in me becoming impatient and rushing. And unfortunately, this state lasted through most of the session. This was also reflected in the wavy lines and circles exercises, although I must admit the wavy lines exercises weren’t that bad today.
Overall, the exercises took me about 5m45s to complete.
Day 23 – Lines ExerciseDay 23 – Wavy Lines Exercise (Vertical)Day 23 – Wavy Lines Exercise (Horizontal)Day 23 – Circles Exercise
Drawing
For the drawing, I opted to revisit the full frontal body. I first drew the initial guidelines meant for measurements. Unfortunately, I think I made these guidelines a little shorter than I’d like, which made things feel a little too cramped. Although this might generally be good practice in the future.
Day 23 – Initial Guidelines (for measurements)
I then started drawing the wire-frame on the same layer, which I think might be a mistake. In the future, I might want to use different layers to limit complications from adjustments. For example, some adjustments caused me to erase part of the guidelines.
I once again struggled with the head, redrawing it a few times. Consequently, I might eventually consider using the circle tools to improve and hasten this phase, only drawing the subsequent phases by hand. They are guidelines after all, and it’s not like I’m shying away from using a ruler.
In terms of drawing the wire-frame, I decided to listen to my past self and draw the lines first, adding the nodes afterwards as I suggested on day 17. However, after finishing the first phase of the wire-frame, I was unconvinced with the torso, and thus opted to restart from scratch. Here’s the first result.
Day 23 – First Wireframe Attempt
I was happier with the second attempt, having increased the height:width ratio. Still, I eventually realized that the torso was wider than I’d initially planned, likely due to the drawing section being on the shorter side. Regardless, it wasn’t really an issue.
Day 23 – Final Wireframe Attempt
Next up, adding nodes for the elbows, which I realized the book shows as not being centered on the arm’s line, but a little off towards the outside, which I presume is to push the elbow out a little bit and make it feel more natural. I also added hands and chest guidelines.
Day 23 – Guidelines completed
Next up, drawing the actual outline. I started with the head, which needed a few attempts, and some adjustments using the eraser. I made it a little thicker from adjustments. I then added the limbs, by gradually drawing counter-clockwise. I definitely still have some issues properly understanding the anatomy, but I believe it has improved a little since the beginning. I also ended up trying to apply a few different fixes, in particular to the leg area. Here are a few attempts for reference:
Day 23 – First outline attemptDay 23 – Trying to fix the right leg (on the left). Result too thinDay 23 – Another try to fix the right leg (on the left). Result better, but the shin still off on the outside.Day 23 – Yet another attempt at fixing the right leg (on the left). The outer shin’s slope seems a little too abrupt, but still an improvement.Day 23 – Final Outline. In retrospect, the previous attempt might have been better, but I think I just gave up at this point.
Once done with the outline, I added some muscle lines all over the body. I’m mostly satisfied with the chest area, but beyond that, I’m underwhelmed how the lines turned out on the limbs.
Finally, I added elements to the face before calling it a day. This took a while, and I was still unimpressed with the result. But considering this was a body exercise, I now think it’s “good enough”.
Day 23 – Final Drawing (With guidelines)Day 23 – Final Drawing (No guidelines)
Conclusion
Looking back at this session, it’s not so much the drawing I’m underwhelmed with, but rather my behavior and approach during both the drawing session and the writing. Due to my stress and increasing lack of sleep, I’ve reached a state of “carelessness”. I often thought “eh, whatever”, which is not conducive to learning and improving. Even worse, I almost feel like I’ve been regressing lately! (Though I do realize this is still miles ahead from where I started).
For this reason, I think I need to take a break. However, unlike last time, I don’t plan for this to be an inactive break. I will obviously still have my Chinese studies on the map, but I also have another project I think I should work on (which will hopefully help me with better managing my time and prevent me from getting this stressed and tired). I also have a few smaller posts I want to write. I’ll get into details about this in a separate post, although you might expect me to be a little less active this week.
As for the stats, drawing took me about 48mins, and writing roughly 40mins, along with 43mins spent on reviewing. This sums up to 83mins spent on the blog post, and a total of 131mins overall. This means drawing was roughly 37% of the overall time, and reviewing counted for about 52% of the time spent on the article.
As always, thank you for joining me, and sorry this past week was more of a descent into my own madness. Stay tuned for a new update about my situation, and don’t worry, I don’t intend to let this challenge die! Although I do apologize for having to pause it once again. Have a nice one and take care everyone!
Hello and welcome back everyone,
I hope you’re all doing well. First of all, the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that my credits dropped down to 0. Indeed, I made sure to hold onto that one credit because I knew yesterday was going to be very busy. Also having to pay off a sleep debt, I figured I should rest. But now I’m back at it!
This session started around 6:15pm, and I evaluated my tiredness at 6/10, better than the rest of the week. However, I must add that I’ve also been feeling very nervous and stressed, which should probably also be taken into consideration.
Exercises
Let’s start with the exercises. As of late, I’ve definitely been letting myself go with the lines exercise, using it mostly as a warm up. Today’s was rather sloppy, and I might have to make a conscious effort to improve these. Although it’s definitely not a priority at this point.
In contrast, I believe the wavy lines exercise went particularly well today, and it might be my best results yet. I’m happy with them, and feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it. In particular, I think the horizontal ones turned out pretty well.
Meanwhile, the circles were soso. I think I should definitely look up tips to draw better circles. Overall, the exercises took me about 5mins, which is incredibly short.
Day 22 – Lines ExerciseDay 22 – Wavy Lines Exercise (Vertical)Day 22 – Wavy Lines Exercise (Horizontal)Day 22 – Circles Exercise
Drawing
As I’ve mentioned last time, I decided to wait until I’ve translated the related pages before going back to the angled profile. Yet, I needed something short and a little simple today, especially with a time limit of about 40 minutes before the Cafe I was in closed. For this reason, I chose a frontal face in a new style, akin to chibi.
The first thing I drew were initial guidelines with rough measurements, making small ticks here and there to guide the head’s outline.
Day 22 – Initial Guidelines
Next up, I drew the outline in the guideline layer. Of note, I struggled with line confidence today, with my lines being on the shaky side. This is generally especially true for longer lines (e.g.: outlines), but today felt particularly bad.
I also added extra guidelines for the eyes (unfortunately not quite parallel). The previous horizontal one should align with the “middle”,while the others with the top and bottom. Note that these eyes are particularly “bottom-heavy”.
Day 22 – Outline GuidelineDay 22 – Eye guidelines added
With these guidelines ready, it was time to add a new layer and start drawing proper. In this style, the head’s outline wraps inwards toward the eyes, so I estimated where that would converge and marked a spot on each side. I then drew my curves. I once again struggled with this. Head outlines seem to be one of my biggest struggles, which luckily can be mitigated with later additions like hair (for non-bald characters). Thankfully, this is something I get to practice on most drawings. Though I may want to look up tips on consistency (both consistent results, and consistency between different elements). This is definitely a stage during which erasing and retrying is common practice for me.
Day 22 – Outline added (With guidelines)Day 22 – Outline added (No guidelines)
With an outline sketched, I moved on to the eyes. I noticed that the eyes looked to be oval, with more “weight” towards the center of the face. Consequently, I made some rough ticks for the ovals’ axes, and tried to sketch them. This took multiple attempts, and adjustments to the aforementioned ticks.
Day 22 – Initial Eye Ovals added
With their outline ready, I moved my attention to outlining the iris. I eventually realized this should be taller than wide, while not touching the top of the existing oval, but merging with the bottom (top and bottom relative to the drawing). I then added eyebrows, ears, a smile, an upper body and clothes. In the future, I may want to check rough measurements for the mouth’s position. Also, the upper-body is just meant to be decorative, yet this is something I’ll need to practice through full-body sketches.
Day 22 – Face Elements added and refined
Next up, small shading for the eyes, along with reflection. I actually struggled with the shading, since it’s only a few lines, and I’m not fully understanding the theory behind them. But it seems like the orientation of those lines is of primordial importance. The reflection is also something I struggle a bit with: drawing the circle with the right width, and positioning it correctly.
The eye’s outline was itself also detailed. Do note that I erased the previous outline (which I commonly do during step). I also added some additional details such as a blush, and a line in the ears.
Day 22 – Eye details added
I was then distracted with trying to fix a few elements, such as the eye’s shading and reflection, and the jaw’s outline.
Day 22 – Some fix-ups
Finally, I moved on to the final details for the eyes, adding the iris, and darkening the rest of the eye (making the previous shading pointless). Once done, it was time to end the session, at roughly 39mins, 34mins of which were dedicated to the drawing. Here’s the final result:
Day 22 – Final Drawing (With Guidelines)Day 22 – Final Drawing (No Guidelines)
Conclusion
Looking at this drawing, here are a few of my thought:
I really need to work more on my face outlines, in particular making them “smoother” and with better line confidence.
In the future, I will need to work on some spacial positioning. The mouth seems a little off, and the eyes might be slightly too far apart. Yet, I think I’ve still improved a lot. While I’m unhappy with it here, this is still much better than some of my early work.
Below the neck is an area I really struggle with in general.
But overall, it’s not too bad for a first attempt at a different style. I also think it might have looked better had I added hair, and applied some additional fix-ups.
As for the stats, 39mins were spent on drawing, and 38mins on writing the post. Reviewing took me about 41mins, but good portions of it were either with adding the pictures (since I’m now doing this in a single batch) and fighting against WordPress (I generally hate tools that try to be smart and just change everything without your consent, but I’ll spare you a bigger rant). This means the article took roughly 79mins, and the session itself was a total of 118mins. Finally, drawing represented about a third of the session, and reviewing took just a little longer than writing the article.
On that note, have a lovely weekend everyone, come back next week for more!
