The Shortest Straw has been pulled
11/03/07 at 13:01 EST

If it weren't for this, I'd be working straight through my lunch break uninterrupted. My usual mealtime regimen involves a lengthy trip over to The Escapist for some news and entertainment while I engage in the indulgent ritual of eating, but a temporary shift in focus will leave me back in the dark, arguably where I belong.

It's crunch time at work again, and this time around, the shortest straw has been pulled for me. Without me even pulling a straw, as a matter of fact, though the titular Metallica song never really implied that one pulled the shortest straw for oneself, so it's fitting, I suppose. At any rate, crunch time involves testing jumbled, yet very real, customer data, as oppose to the usual riff-raff of keyboard battery and internet-meme data, but there's one customer that's bigger than allllll the rest. Considerably bigger. Tenfold, in some cases. The shortest straw for the biggest pile of data to sort through, as it were. Oh well, I'll find other time to do some sprite work.

I mentioned earlier my suspicions that I'm improving my craft, and that suspicion proved true. I was able to crank out an animation from one of my static images last night, and in admiration of my accomplishments, took a look at some older sequences, only to realize that they were repulsive in their lack of fluidity. The most telltale sign of improvement lies in the knowledge that everything I have done to this point is in effect worthless (as a product, though the learning experience remains invaluable) and can be revisited in the name of improvement in a vicious cycle that promises nothing of a conclusion. But it should at least be very pretty.

I was hoping to have some images up here last night, but my apng sequencer is not without its flaws, and the web hasn't fully embraced the format yet, so I'll have to fall back on gifs for now. That way everybody wins, and who doesn't want that? No need to short-change Chrome users.

As a closing afterthought, for those of you who suck at Mario Vodkart: hey, you suck at Mario Vodkart. You know who you are. You can tell that by sucking at Mario Vodkart when you play it.
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Tagged under: sprites, work
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