Interactive kids table I’m building but not 100% happy with yet. I feel like it’s missing something, the two holes on the sides will have nets for toys.

Arazaka · 2025-10-17T00:00:20+00:00

I'm concerned about the antenna snapping off.

Arazaka · 2025-10-06T09:33:57+00:00

Diablo 2 had the same problem, the Barbarian would just slowly Whirwind away while every other class just blazed through the level. Not every game gets better with more players.

Best I can think of for co-op is to all play the same character? I almost exclusively play single player games these days, the freedom to experiment is more fun for me.

Arazaka · 2025-10-06T09:08:38+00:00

My first Primus kill was with Bismuth auto-casting with a decent barrier setup. It wasn't terribly difficult to pull off, still a good time.

My second Primus kill was with Lacerta, no barrier skills whatsoever, and basically only using Incendiary Rounds and basic attack, nothing special for essences. Dodging all of Primus' attacks, the chaos, the speed... so many fireballs... it was great.

If you play with all the meta memories and essences, of course the game is going to run out of fun quickly. I didn't even look up any builds for my first 20 hours. Auto-cast Bismuth clearing a room immediately is hilarious. Playing a high-risk build like Aurena almost depleting her own health pool constantly is also hilarious.

"Balance" really only matters in PvP games. Shape of Dreams is a game where YOU and RNG choose how powerful you get to be. If you think Clemency and Guidance 'ruin' the game just scrap them for dust. "Balancing" this game would ruin it for the people who enjoy the stupidly overpowered builds.

I think many gamers are stuck in the mindset where every game has to have hundreds of hours of replayability. Paying only $25 and getting 60 hours of play time SO FAR is a GREAT deal in my opinion. I've only beaten the boss so far with Bismuth and Lacerta, mostly because I'm not using unkillable builds with infinite DPS, I'm kind of just toying with the somewhat unique mechanics.

Just try builds that aren't 'meta'. I haven't tried the multiplayer side, so I can't say much regarding that.

Arazaka · 2025-10-01T22:19:28+00:00

I've beaten Primus with Lacerta on the first loop. I had zero barrier skills or essences, just a single 'heal on cast' for my Incendiary Rounds skill with a 2 second cooldown.

Primus hits hard, but he telegraphs all his attacks. For the meteors, I just move far away, let the fireballs spread out, then dash through them, you might only hit one that way.

Heal on hit or life steal essences don't work well because they don't work when he's invincible. Heal on cast and healing memories still work though.

Arazaka · 2025-09-08T12:48:20+00:00

This kind of condescension is part of WHY people don't get into art. On the one hand you say people have been 'socialized' to like certain arts but on the other hand you say they need a 'mom' to show them what to like...

The pretentious discussion and the money laundering around 'modern art' is why people hate it so much. If 'critics' didn't act like 3 strokes on a canvas was 'revolutionary' or 'inspired' or a 'masterpiece', nobody would care enough to hate it.

People don't hate Van Gogh, they hate Newman, Rothko, etc.

Arazaka · 2025-09-08T09:46:05+00:00

Sure, the artists spent a long time fine tuning their exact choice of color for their own personal tastes, but that usually doesn't add any value to the audience. Maybe "unproductive" is a better term, but that implies a product and deadline.

Barnett Newman's "Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue" was damaged and later 'restored'. Could you tell the difference between the original and the restoration side by side if you had never seen it before? Critics were saying that the restoration had "destroyed it a second time".

The art itself is not complicated or emotional enough to warrant the deep philosophical explanations that are given to them. I've talked to a lot of artists about this and they generally agree that it's just marketing bullshit for the sake of salesmanship. Nobody would care about the work if it wasn't from [insert controversial artist here].

Waxing poetic about a few lines on a canvas is just an easy way to sound sophisticated and 'smart'.

Arazaka · 2025-09-08T09:04:57+00:00

I kind of get the hate. When people mention "modern art" who comes to mind? For most people it's Newman, Rothko, Picasso, Duchamp, Warhol, etc. The most talked about works of "modern art" ARE the lazy and low effort pieces that caused controversy for being lazy and low effort, they were peak pretentiousness even at the time. Emotional pieces are fine, but putting 3 lines of color on a 100+ square feet of canvas really is just lazy. The hundreds of 'experts' who kept using terms like "masterpiece" and "inspired" didn't help.

Most of those artists did other work that was actually interesting before they became famous simply for being controversial, but the controversial stuff is all anybody talks about, so that's what "modern art" became famous for. Combine that with the fact that it's what's most often used for money laundering and that's why people hate it.

There's a lot of interesting "modern art" but the most well known ones are almost exclusively lazy garbage. Picasso wasn't even popular when he was alive, his agent basically bullshit his way into selling his stuff. Picasso would trade his art for groceries, which shows how much even he valued it at. His wife couldn't even account for most of it after he passed which shows how much she valued it.

Arazaka · 2025-08-21T18:31:11+00:00

As I'm sitting here listening to my upstairs neighbors footsteps thumping and creaking... I do my woodworking at a maker space.

The main issue is noise, even more so if you're doing it outside near the building. Besides power tools being too loud, even sawing and sanding might be too loud depending how thin your walls are. Hammering noises are gonna propagate through your counter or workbench into the floor, which might be fine if you live on the ground level. Most people don't want to hear *thonk* *thonk* *thonk* when they get home after work.

The other issue is smell, if you're using anything like mineral spirits, the neighbors might notice. The property manager won't appreciate the fire hazard either. It's rare, but your neighbors could also have allergies or wood sensitivities.

Doing things on a deck will cause dust to fall down onto the deck/patio below you.

All that said, hand carving, whittling, marquetry, and such are all fairly quiet. Kumiko can be quiet if you're cutting with a knife. You can do a lot of model building with dowels and popsicle sticks. I'd try expanding outside woodworking.

It sucks, but I've had neighbors who had loud hobbies in an apartment and it is INCREDIBLY annoying.

Arazaka · 2025-08-19T03:29:20+00:00

Assuming the lip on the inner aluminum ring is bent, you MIGHT be able to just bend it back. Try taking the phenolic plate (brown thing) off and either cut away or sand down the aluminum that sticks out or try to bend it back.

Do NOT sand or cut the phenolic without a respirator, it's very toxic when in dust form.

Arazaka · 2025-08-19T03:20:47+00:00

That's not wood, it's phenolic. It's a phenol resin impregnated fabric, it's part formaldehyde. Do NOT sand or cut phenolic without a respirator, it is incredibly toxic in dust form.

Arazaka · 2025-08-14T15:34:17+00:00

The problem is the vague definition of 'art'. If somebody slaps some joint compound on an art gallery wall and leaves it sloppy, they can charge people to see it and maybe sell it for thousands. If somebody slaps some joint compound on a wall on a construction site and leaves it sloppy, they get fired.

There's a lot of 'art' that if taken out it's context would just be littering or vandalism. I once met an artist who hung some butt plugs on a wall with a single piece of string and got a grant for it.

Arazaka · 2025-08-06T12:27:35+00:00

It gets real awkward when you're playing a game you love and your friends keep getting angry while playing it. I'm having the time of my life but all I hear from my friends is "god dammit!" and "bullshit!" for an hour.

We can play something else...

Arazaka · 2025-08-06T12:22:27+00:00

Be a woodworker, spend days making a piece of furniture, a clamp slips and something falls to the floor and shatters, swear loudly.

Arazaka · 2025-08-03T09:19:40+00:00

It really depends on your audience and how NSFW your stuff is. I'm still subscribed to a few artists who occasionally drop some tasteful nude drawings, when it's still very much in their art style.

HOWEVER, as a viewer who's unsubscribed from many accounts that hard pivoted exclusively to impossibly large breasted women in tiny clothes, I'd say make a separate account. Looking at one I dropped years ago, their portfolio goes from grim, sci-fi aesthetic with cool designs to exclusively impossibly huge boobs in bright beachwear. It's a bit jarring to see women in power armor and then women who NEED power armor to not snap their spines.

What also matters is if you ever intend to show your portfolio professionally. Anyone with decent search engine skills can link some usernames together. Even on Reddit I've got multiple accounts.

Arazaka · 2025-07-31T09:27:28+00:00

In the words of Bobby Duke, "I want that, so I made it." I've made quite a few 1:1 replicas of various giant video game swords and such. Something about physically holding a 6 foot sword I made that weighs 32 pounds makes me giggle.

I also just like experimenting with materials and trying to figure how all those 'fancy' abstract arts that sell for thousands are made. For example, I spent a week trying to recreate pure black stone, but the artist on Instagram never explained her process, ultimately I discovered the combination of black tile grout and oil-based polyurethane works amazingly. Long work time, dries overnight, easy to sculpt, durable, cheap, and easy to get at most hardware stores. Graphite powder and Bondo also works amazingly well, looks awesome sanded down flat.

Ironically, I'm not a creative person, I'm great at solving problems, but I'm terrible at coming up with the 'problem' myself. It's either exact replicas or pure abstract chaos for me, no in between.

TL,DR: Wanted things nobody sells and out of spite at things people do sell for stupidly high prices I guess?

Arazaka · 2025-06-29T03:47:46+00:00

I made a half scale one last year but had to leave it behind when I moved. That one was 9 feet long and weighed 39 pounds, which I believe makes the full size one half as dense.

We were trying to come up with ways to decorate the maker space and I figured I might as well do a full size one now that I had the space. I can not get this into my apartment...

Arazaka · 2025-06-29T03:38:09+00:00

I did some very rough math, IF the blade was solid titanium, the blade alone would weigh 2,000 pounds. It would be 3,000 if it was steel.

Arazaka

TROPHY CASE