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TheDyingSun
Hey mate, want to learn linear algebra? Denavit-Hartenberg Convention? Inverse Kinematics?
Of course you do!

Just some random guy

Robotics Engineer

Still some tech school

Secret Government Lab

Joined on 4/13/14

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TheDyingSun's News

Posted by TheDyingSun - 15 hours ago


Eyo!!!


Coming back from PAX got me hyped and SO, on April 13th I’ll be hosting a meet up in Boston with @Squidly in the afternoon.


Currently you have:

@Squidly, and myself, and a few tenatives.



THE PLAN:


We meet at the Frog Pond in the Boston Commons at Noon.

We’ll have the NG Flag, so we should be able to be found easily. We’re going to have a few picnic blankets set up to do some drawing and vibing until 2 pm.


At 2 we’ll head off to Chinatown to have lunch at a hot pot place.

After Lunch we’ll check out the rest of Chinatown (I’ve been told they have some awesome bakeries by both Squidly, and some of my uni buddies)


After a while we’ll head down Newbury Street to visit the OG Newbury Comics Store.


By 7 pm we’ll be ending off our night at King’s Dining & Entertainment right next to the Newbury Comics.


Rain Plans: 

Meet at South Station


Newbury Comic will be the one near Faneuil Hall.

King’s will be the one on the bay.




Squidly and I will be bringing stickers to give out.


So let us know if you’re coming and we’ll add you to the list!


Best,

-TheDyingSun


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4

Posted by TheDyingSun - 10 days ago


Heya!


Just wanted to check in and give an update since it's been a while.



Music!!!


Last night I released two of the songs I had been storing for a while. I just needed a few solid hours to look them over:


Flower Forest | An Experimental Piece of weird sounds stemming from a weird night


A Party Without Their Majesty | Their Majesty Listens to their party from afar




Small Stuff


A Game:

[Also kind of music but] I also have a song loop I can release probably in a bit. Over the past 8 weeks, I made a game! It was with a group for a class and we really put our heart into it! It's a bit buggy and some of the drawings I did for it are missing, we want to post it up on Itch soon, and I'll let ya'll know when we do!


A Commission:

The most recent animation I did was for a client and is under my movie tab. It's a trailer for a book and I had a bunch of fun working on it! I admittedly went a bit overboard with the transitions, but they look awesome for the time I had.


I will also double check with the commissioner, but I wanted to show a lot of the behind-the-scenes as wrangling with Blender and Grease pencil was a wild time.


A Comic:

Honestly, now the comic.


Rick's Diner has been going well with drafts on the first two pages being released last week on my discord server. [If you join, I'll usually add you to the rest of the server within a day :) ]


I post updates there weekly on it along some sketches that aren't usually posted immediately anywhere else.


A Short Film

For my capstone project at school right now, I'm working on making the storyboard/storyreel for a short film. This is where Blep (the lizard guy!) shows up again.


So in about 6 weeks, the base of that will be done, I would say hopefully, but, uh, it needs to be done so I can graduate lol.




10th Year Anniversary


April 13th 2014 is when I joined NG, and holy fluff that is coming up soon.


I'm also aware that this is the Homestuck day.


Otherwise, I thought I would have something ready or special for it. I don't know yet. Maybe a recap of everything? I do plan to do something with my friends that day, unsure.


Just... wow, 10 years ya know?


If you have any thoughts or anything you want to see from under the hood of the work I do, let me know! I love showing my tech and things I learned along the way!


There's also a lot of things that didn't make it through the years, with only 4 major projects that I plan to follow through after college.


Anyway, just a lot to sit with I guess. I'm happy with what I've done in that time, and my art is only part of that eh?


Anyway,

Touch Grass,

DRINK WATER,


Best,

-TDS


iu_1177202_5014332.webp


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6

Posted by TheDyingSun - December 6th, 2023


Heya ya'll!


Over the past weeks I started setting up a Discord Server


I have been struggling to feel comfortable posting on my Twitter or Instagram in the ways I'd want (and have even struggled with some of my news posts on here), so I set up a server for more updates and sketches that I might not share or additional info no usually on my posts. (I'm also going to be using for a lot more updates on projects, i.e. Rick's Diner and others lol)


SO, if you're interested, when you join you'll see that you're just in a landing channel. Myself or one of my friends will give you a role to join the rest of the server and then you'll be all set!


It's also at the top of the stack of everything, and I love talking to ya'll and seeing what's up! Just I've only been able to check Discord consistently.


Cheers, and hope to see ya'll there!

Best,

-TDS

The Server Link lol

P.S. HOLY FLUFF I FORGOT

I also have a Discord Bot that's based off of

Ponyboy running on the server as well!


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Posted by TheDyingSun - November 24th, 2023


Just school's been hard at me.


How it's going for ya'll?


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Posted by TheDyingSun - October 6th, 2023


Heya everyone! I released a Kickstarter earlier this week!


I've been working on this little fella since February of this and have been able to get a physical sample of it going.

I'm running a Kickstarter to fund the initial run of pins.


The pin glows in the dark and has an iridescent plating and locking backs.


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More details about shipping and everything else I've done for them is on the Kickstarter page for em'.


So what are you waiting for?

Check it out and grab a pin :3


Thank you!

-TDS


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Posted by TheDyingSun - August 26th, 2023


Happy Robot Day Everyone and Happy Summer Fest!


For Robot Day this year, I finish Robot New Year's a little toon started back in late 2021:


Besides the info in it's description about applying stuff from class I wanted to talk a bit more about some reflections and what's going to happen moving forward.


This took a long time since I was weaving in between robotics courses and large school projects to get this done, and I'm just happy to have something out there y'know?


And thank you to everyone who has reviewed it, given me suggestions, and those who I owe high-fives to! The feedback has been amazingly helpful and I'm already starting to implement what I learned from this project to work on future ones. I think as I said earlier this year in a news post, this was kind of a precursor project to larger ones to get the idea of the entire process again, and I'm got the itch to animate again, even as classes for school are starting back up. And kind of a funny reminder: Yup! I'm a robotics engineering student who draws/animates robots :)


I also learned that OpenToonz, which Robot New Year's was made entirely in, is not robust enough for my needs. During my work for the Summerfest opening, I did one of my shots in OpenToonz, and the other with Blender's Grease Pencil. OpenToonz was for shot 19, and it good, but limiting in the amount of colored lines I could use on one layer for lining (it would slow down both my laptop and workstation when trying to erase).

Grease Pencil ran smoother on both of my computers, and even was less demanding on my laptop. So I'm going to be moving to Grease Pencil for now. Switching back and forth between edit and draw mode is a bit of a pain, and not being able to erase fills was also a tad annoying, but that's only after about a month of work with it. I'll get better as I go along.



And Happy Summer Fest! As I mentioned a tad earlier I helped in the Summerfest Opening and all the animators did an amazing job! Check it out!


@TheExtreamH annoyed @Syrupmasterz and I to join, so we did and kept up with each other during production. The other animators were also such a pleasure to talk and worth with :)


@RobC3 and I had to coordinate the colors and outfits for Steve and Captain, and they did and amazing job making the final edits to balance the contrast on the outfits.


---


In the meantime, I'm getting back to work on things, and I got to meet a lot of ya'll at Too Many Games. I wanted to do a post about that, but er, to say the least, it was awesome to meet you all! Some of you again, and it was awesome to hear about all the projects you all are up to :) I love all of you and the work you all are doing is amazing. Ya'll mean the world to me <3


Take care and Happy Robot Day!

Best,

-TheDyingSun


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9

Posted by TheDyingSun - June 14th, 2023


I need to do a write up of everything since February.


In the meantime. How are the vibes?

-TDS


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Posted by TheDyingSun - February 11th, 2023


Hello Everyone!


After posting my New Year’s Update, I felt as if it was heavily lacking as to what I’m actually working on and how somethings I haven’t talked about recently have been going.




The Big Four:

I was doing some reflection, and found that there were mainly four projects that are *live* right now. Each of them receive almost weekly work, even if it’s small:


“Life of the Beyond”:

So, I was at a local arts center where an artist was showing some of their work before a play. I got the contact info of one of the managers… and now I’m doing a gallery showing for about one and a half weeks from late August to Early September.


I’m planning on having an opening and or closing during the show, and wanted to have an open invitation to everyone here on NG :)


I’m still working out the details since I’m focusing on travel details for school, but it’s going to be a wild time.

This is one of my priority projects at the moment, since there’s so much planning and a lot of physical work I have to do. It’s going to be fun, but a lot of work. I’ll provide more updates when I can.


Rick’s Diner

This is a comic that has been floating around for a bit and only recently came to light.

It spawned as a branch off of the now retired “Afterocalypse” idea.


I’ve been doing mostly writing and pen tests of the characters, and so far the writing has been pretty smooth.

That’s about it, you’ll see a lot more drawings with a few of the character from this (like the most recent), and it’s been a fun overarching project behind the scenes.


Robot New Year’s

This is a short cartoon that I started work on late December 2021, y’know, for New Year’s. It’s been a testing board for my animation process and working with Opentoonz to the fullest.


Back in December of 2021, I had just finished a class with a professor to work on the storyboard for Telebuddies. The class went ok. It was a tough time for everyone on campus, but I learned a lot about breaking up animation shots and sequences.


The animation is overall at about 60% completion. Mainly because I’ve been stuck in robotics laboratories all of last year.

I consider finishing this a prerequisite to finishing Telebuddies EP 1. Which is another reason why it’s been delayed a long time. My life also changed a lot since 2018 (which was when the original script was written) and the Telebuddies changed a lot to reflect that.

Robot New Year’s is planned to be finished before the end of summer, since it’s just a lot of grinding left.


Leech Band Pins:

I’ve been hinting at it on my Twitter here and there about a pin set that I’ve been working on getting manufactured. It’s a 4 pin set that’s pretty big and which I wore on my backpack for a good amount of time.

I worked with a manufacturer that I liked their quality and sent out a final request for more sets, and after about 5 sets being distributed among friends… we found issues. My friends and I have been doing testing and working to push what I initially ordered and I’ve been getting more advice from other artists.


At the time of writing, I’m getting samples from a different company and we’ll be doing testing and I will be trying to break them and throwing them half across a campus building to see how things hold up.

I’ll give updates when the pins are on full release. I won’t be talking about them much otherwise because it’s mostly emailing and invoices to deal with this project at the moment.


This is slated to be finished by end of summer this year, taking into consideration I won’t be anywhere near my normal set up for two months and can’t receive packages “normally”.


(I’m also helping some folks on campus with a game, not important to this list for detail, but important for completeness :) )




Also In Queue:

Telebuddies (has a pending pre req of Robot New Year’s)

Resetting up my Etsy (has a pending pre req of the Leech Band Pins)

Resetting up my Kofi (pending pre req of me finding time)


Dead:

Patreon:

So, my Patreon is pretty much dead at the moment. Most of the stuff that’s available right now is about it, my Patreon is now pretty much similar to my Kofi in the sense that, if you want to send me money… cool! I can’t really give anything back besides a digital high five. It might change at the end of the year, but I can’t see that far ahead. We’ll see together.



Reflections:

Something that I’ve learned from the past year and I’m still working on is mostly time management and being honest with myself on how much time I have and can spend. I’m very used to having multiple projects at once, but each with differing commitment timelines. The pins, for example, are low on time and work I need to actively do, and fits in well. However, larger art projects like Robot New Year, takes time I have to set aside.


So, I guess it’s best for me to reiterate what I’m doing is what I like to do, and drawing these characters in the margins of my notebooks has been getting me through college. And it’s been a repeating thing, but I’m sometimes scared to branch out in art and just do silly drawings that aren’t anything “serious” when I want to do drawings that are just… me. It’s very much a trying to maintain a sense of “professionalism”, but what’s illustration without telling the story you want?

I know which drawings are ones where I just kind of let myself relax and draw because I smile remembering the hours I spent working on them.

I want to do more of that as I did we a few of my recent illustrations.

Even as someone who draws robots a lot, I want to make drawings are more.. human...

And man, humans are weird.

-TheDyingSun


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Posted by TheDyingSun - January 7th, 2023


Happy New Year Everyone!

I finally am settling back in my apt and getting ready for school again.


If you missed it, I did a drawing of most of the folks I met in person this year!


It includes:

@ProffessorDunce (Who I met up with in Philly twice in 2022)

@SyrupMasterz It was Thron's idea to wake you up with syrup

Thron (The plague doctor, they're non NG, but a few of ya'll know em)

@maxxjamez @heyopc @Droid  THE BOYS

@poptaffy Mate, I'm going to draw your OC again, it was fun

@jack Jacked Jack

@littlbox  @GoodL ACOCK Rock

@bitbeak Vibing in the airbnb watching littlbox's stuff right before we picked him up

@dogl EGG

@PsychoGoldfish Thanks for Hosting Pico Day :)

@OddboyAnim Randomly encountered at a club, thanks for allowing randos to compliment your shirt XD

@Onic Vibing

@ChutneyGlaze  and @Maiden-Chynna Congrats guys <3

@Goji Goober

@Shal Professional "fast walker"

@Jacob I can still taste the peanut butter

@Xinxinix We'll start a dance circle some day

@BuhlBoy Thanks for the help last January btw

@Spadezer BUNK BRO

@chimp-shrimp How's the onion doing?

@StaggerNight we found him, we got big foot


Admittedly it is missing @AJtheRed


Thank you all for saying hi to me this year! I hope to see a lot of you guys again! Maybe for... Pico day?

Check out all these cool folks above though :D


Otherwise:

2022 Recap (fast edition)


-Got a few physical pieces into a gallery

-Went to Meow Wolf: Convergence Station

-Went the furthest from my spawn point as I've even gone (Salt Lake City!!!)

-Working with art faculty on campus

-Gave a robot anxiety

-Got better with physical mediums, for no reason at all ;)

-Programmed a robot arm, roomba, and fancy roomba


So, what's next?

So while I was stalling to post this, I got a notice that I would be exhibiting. More details later, it's like late August/September it'll happen.

I'm still working on animation, and I'm done all the robotics courses I need at the moment.

More illustrations (of course, and my New year's drawing forced me to get good at drawing people)

And you'll see me for Pixel day in 19 days (as of posting)


I can't think of anything else at the moment, so that's it for now :)


Happy New Year's everyone. I got a lot of great memories in 2022 thanks to Newgrounds community. I'm proud to be part of this community and share the passion and liveliness that exists here.

<3

-TheDyingSun


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Posted by TheDyingSun - October 24th, 2022


Been busy with classes and such so sorry for the deadness around here =.=


Will it change, likely not, but somehow my Twitter has been more alive. So check that out if you want to see at least somewhat what's up.


Cheers!

-TDS


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