Moldy Oldies

My mom recently found an old portfolio of mine from highschool. I was ecstatic! I'd thought all my drawings from that period were lost. It was so much fun digging through the old drawings. There are lots of memories tied up with these, and it's cool to see the drawings transitioning from sucking to... well, sucking slightly less.

It's seen some stuff

My dear old friend Nicole

   

 An adorable mis-application of 3 point perspective. Keep at it buddy, you'll get it.

My old dog "Patchy". A universally loved sweetheart.

I have no idea who this is, but I hope her eyes aren't weird in real life.

Ladies and gentlemen... the tortured artist. 

So moody. So misunderstood. So ART!!!

The discovery of the portfolio was bittersweet. In my Senior year I entered a city-wide high-school art competition. I created two horrifically pretentious mixed media pieces for it. They took grand prize and honorable mention respectively. At the time I thought I won due to the quality of the work. In retrospect, it was probably because the concepts were comically obtuse so they seemed like "ART". I was hoping the smaller of the two would be disassembled and crammed in my old portfolio. Unfortunately, it was not. Both were probably discarded during a move or in a fit of "uncluttering". I still have the award ribbons though.

That said, the portfolio did contain some drawings that represented a seminal moment in my life. They'll get their own blog post next week.

Since I'm digging up old stuff, here are some REALLY old drawings I re-discovered a few months back.

 

Early teens. Lots of drawing from life

At about 13 years old I made an epic comic book about a light-saber wielding pilot squirrel

At about 9 years old I made several comics featuring "flat noes and fred"

They revolved around characters falling down and tooting.

The oldest drawing I have. I REALLY liked megaman.

It's not far off from the original cover art.

Better actually...

Nanoloop

Apps have come and gone on my phone. There's only one app that I've played with nonstop for years.

 Nanoloop.

I was introduced to it by Doctor Popular one night over dinner. I was instantly hooked. It's an ingeniously simple chiptune program. The thing I love about this program is that you have to make every sample by hand. It even allows you to work so granular as to make each note a unique sound. This program and a pair of headphones has been responsible for countless extended bathroom breaks.

A video posted by Jason Baldwin (@jasonsbaldwin) on Nov 19, 2015 at 10:57pm PST

One of my nanoloop tracks

It was originally designed for the gameboy and gameboy advance, so the interface and graphics are extremely sparse. The first time I looked at was like looking at Sanskrit; a bunch of abstract symbols with no context. Add to that the fact that each sound has to be created from scratch, it means the initial sessions can be daunting. A buddy of mine put it best,"...how you manage to make anything that doesn't sound like sonar bloops and pack-man noises using Nanoloop is a mystery to me."

But once you get the hang of it, it's incredibly intuitive. I love it so much that I finally gave in and bought a gameboy advance and a proper nanoloop cartridge.

While nanoloop on the iphone simulates chiptune sounds, nanoloop on the gameboy uses the gameboy sound chip to create sounds. The result is a much clearer, crisper, nostalgic sound. The downside is that you're introduced to all the hardware limitations of the 8 bit era and a brand new learning curve. After my first session with it, I solemnly placed the gameboy in my junk drawer. I'll get back to it someday...

Edit: After posting this, Doctor Popular sent me the nanoloop file of a song he'd made from some middleschooler's vocal samples (see comments). I made this quick remix and had a blast doing it!

The original song and blog post is HERE.

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