"Well, Gotta Refuel Before I Make My Way To Prescott Valley. I Didn't See This Town On My Map, But Gas

"Well, gotta refuel before I make my way to Prescott Valley. I didn't see this town on my map, but gas is gas." He doesn't realize he's about to enter just as the hysteria hits.

Decided to make a fun little art piece about Echo, my current reading material. However, I kinda have a lot of thoughts about it so far.

I'll keep my dialogue here spoiler-light, and will avoid giving anything important away.

Echo is one of those stories that, as much as I typically detest horror, has completely enthralled me. Not to get to philosophical, but its use of foreshadowing reminds me of a few strong mystery and sci-fi points:

The overall foreshadowing reminds me of solid Arthur Conan Doyle-style. ACD was known for his novels having given you everything you need to solve the mystery long before the characters can. While the mystery isn't solved in each ending, there is a heavy amount of this foreshadowing that is just like ACD. Things mentioned early on that feel like minor statements become important later. For example, swimming is heavily mentioned by Chase early on in TJ's route, and to those who have done the route, they realize why. With Leo, its the trainyard. These are the only routes I've completed so far, but I will be watching for these now when I do the rest.

Another neat note is how each story gives a bit of foreshadowing to each other. In Flynn's route, its mentioned that the railing by Lake Emma wouldn't stop a car from going in. Though I haven't finished Flynn's route yet to see if this is direct foreshadowing, I do remember the car doing exactly this in Leo's route, and it's never mentioned there.

Second is the push for "Man is the Monster", akin to Frankenstein. So far, TJ's route was heavily this (Chase you heathen), and Leo's was from Leo. The use of the monster physically in Leo's is almost unnecessary, as the monster's been with them the whole time. It's a great dive into man is the monster that reminds me of the common scifi tropes that aim to point that out instead of just putting a monster in the way (See Alien and how though the monster is a very real threat, the true monster is the company that keeps sacrificing people to study the alien).

This story is so well written and uses a lot of very-strong scifi writing traits, and I'm excited to continue and analyze these more. Props to The Echo Project for really having some great writers so far!

It feels really weird (and even moreso enthralling!) because I don't live that far from the approximate location Echo should be, not to far away from Prescott. I've even located Lake Alamo, which has a lot of similarities to Lake Emma, though there isn't a nearby settlement that matches Echo's description. I'm tempted to do a quick study of the area, take a weekend and hike around after doing like a week of local research to see what I could find that matches the descriptions of Echo. Maybe make some kind of literary analysis out of the photos and the story itself once I complete all the routes.

Note: I noticed a render error and re-uploaded the fixed version.

Also here's another angle of the Echo Sign piece that I wasn't really happy with as much, but I spent way too much time messing with geometry nodes to make this look at least somewhat passable to not post it.

Note: I realized that there was a render error and the rocks were missing, so I've updated it to fix it.

No this isn't an ad. I swear! Well, it's not like I'm advertising anything, but it is a copy of an ad I got.

I was going though my emails and had a promotional one from Swim Outlet with this absolutely awesome pose underwater. I was suddenly infected by a bug that told me to remake it with Civil! (Plus an excuse to try and make better water stuff is always a good reason) Then it was an excuse to open Photoshop, which I haven't done in a while, and found out that I still know that program quite well, even though they've made some changes over the years.

More like the original below!

Here's a version without the text. Honestly, it's just an awesome pose!

Learning Log: learned some better techniques for making a water surface, as well as how to add caustics shading for that underwater-shadow look. Then it was just fun to try and use the skill's I've learned so far to make most of this, so I think this is a good sign of some major improvements in my learning journey! Only looked up one more tutorial on how to make the particles make a bubble effect, and while I already knew the basics of particle systems, it was a great help. Plus the tutorial suggested a super simple water shader using only the principle BSDF and was quite happy with it for the bubbles!

Also, while not really a new thing, I figured out that I still know how to use Photoshop, its adjustments, and how to search for fonts and use them in PS. I use to do a ton of PS stuff in high school, and have used it much less over the years, but I'm glad I still got it and it was extremely easy to use again.

And just for reference, here's the original ad from Swim Outlet. Tell me how well you think I did in replicating it!

Learning 3d modelling and had to pick a subject. Gonna redo this once I get more experience and learn sculpting but here's a low poly Mateo as a Hyleft. Eventually want to make a high res Danny Phantom once I can get the skills.

Just some simple stuff today. Was messing with mixing transparency and toon shaders to achieve the partially-see-through effect of the swim goggles. Also tried to make a copy of my swim earphones (they're one of those bone-conducting sets), though I may replace them eventually.

I actually spent most of today trying to modify an Odyssey class Star Trek vessel into a Lexington and Jamestown class ship. While it is in no way good for renders or realism, the added bits should print nicely for new Armada pieces. Plus a friend wanted a model too, so I obliged!

Learning Note: nothing new today, just messing with shader mixing. However, I did learn why my CPU kept maxing out at 99 Celsius even though I had GPU compute on. Turned on a CUDA setting, and now my system is barely taxed by renders. Excited to make more complicated stuff now that I'm not stress testing my PC every time I hit F12.

For those of yall good at rendering, how would yall make this look better? I just don't know what one would do past this point to improve on this beach scene, so I'd love to see what people say are things they'd do, or steps they feel I'm missing to this. Could use some input since I can note that the water just isn't right, and it just kind of feels wrong, but I am not experienced enough to know exactly what I need to do to fix the issues.

Said input could be from artists or Blender people, though Blender people may have more to note on the materials and how to render this better. I'd super appreciate tutorials or sources of learning for this part, or DM me and we can talk it over! I'm using Blender 3.6.