What creative projects have you been working on?

I've been working on a set of high-effort song parodies based on the game Slay the Spire. Just finished my latest one, which had a very ambitious vocal line - had to pull out a whole bunch of exercises from back when I used to take singing lessons, haha, but I'm actually quite proud of the final result!

The next one I have in mind will be an extra challenge for me in particular, because the style is one I've never really been good at. I gravitate towards softer jazzy vocals, maybe with a bit of belting, but the next song I've got my eyes on is an upbeat pop song with a ton of sass to it. Feeling a little out of my depth right now with it, to be honest, but hey - challenges that push you out of your comfort zone are always a great way to grow, and it's not like the stakes are high either (it's still just a silly song parody at the end of the day). It's kind of tough to know where to start with it, though, other than the obvious "sing it a bunch, record yourself, listen back, compare to the original, make tweaks, rinse and repeat". That always works well enough I guess, but I kind of feel like there are a bunch of pop singing fundamentals I'm just straight up missing right now, and you don't know what you don't know. If there are any pop singers here on tildes who know of any good resources to point me towards, I'd be all ears! 🙏

It's a small feat, but I replaced a zipper on a pair of trousers for the first time ever!

Ultimately I didn't bother looking up how to guides. I figured out how the zipper area was constructed, and came up with a plan to remove the old zipper and hand stitch in the new one minimizing the amount of resewing, because I was sewing by hand.

I was surprised how relatively easy it was. It took only a few days picking it up and hour here and there, and it seems sturdy enough.

I built democloid's Picotracker Portable (github) and have spent a few hours attempting songwriting. As I've mentioned before I have no musical talent beyond sharp criticism, so I haven't made anything of any worth and have deleted a number of starters already. But having a physical device with real buttons and a simple interface for positioning notes on a grid really does wonders for me, and the fact that it's not a huge laptop also really helps.

I had the boards made in china, complete with installation of all the SMT components, and there was a minimum order of 5. I bought enough components to complete all five units and am probably going to sell the spares on ebay or something. If anyone's interested let me know.

I've been stuck in America for a number of months with my partner who is pursuing a research placement for his Masters degree, and the one place I've found nearby, that I'm pretty sure I'll miss, is the local MakeSpace. It has such a wonderful depth and breadth of equipment and knowledgeable people- and I've taken up this opportunity to learn a little more about woodwork. I'm usually a software engineer, so to work with my hands on something creative is such a different experience, and very rewarding.

For the longest time I have wanted to try to craft a pair of bookshelf speakers, specifically the Overnight Sensations kit. The crossovers are simple, but the kit usually comes with a prefabricated MDF cabinet, flat packed, and I knew that I wanted to achieve this part of the project myself. Preferably out of some form of hardwood. I modelled the cabinet design in Blender, a simple rabbeted box, and selected a couple of woods- Hard Maple, with a Walnut baffle. I then spent the next two-and-a-half months on-and-off learning how to use the table saw, the miter saw, the router table, the drill press, the Forstner bits, and the laser cutter (to make routing templates).

https://i.imgur.com/dQK1t7c.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/P1JADHf.jpeg

They're very far from perfect, but after stuffing them with an amount of quilting material, I'm very happy with how they sound, and very proud of them. I hope to make a subwoofer to match, in the next space I find like this.

Used Godot to create a VR experience with a nice environment. Its a long time since I played around with VR, but I was impressed by how easy it was to throw together some quality assets and get a reasonably believable setting. It only consist of 10 lines of code to get the VR up and running.

Editing my novel for clarity & content. Hope to trim it down to 100,000 words. It's the first novel I've ever written and it's currently clocking in at around 110,000.

Writing it has been a long and difficult journey and I'm glad I was able to finish. I'd write in starts and fits and when work or personal life was maxing me out it would often be the first thing set aside. I don't think I would've finished if I hadn't switched from typing on PC to writing long hand.

I really enjoyed going to my local coffee shop and writing in my notebook. I think there's a lot of different reasons why this was easier for me. I liked being out writing in public and feeling like a writer. It was fun and exciting for me and it turned the process from a chore into a treat. It eliminated distractions. I got to see the pages fill up and carry a big fat notebook filled with my words. I explored different types of pens and refills. It felt more like ritual.

My goal is to have this draft complete within two months and to explore traditional publishing.

My sister in law hit me up for my soundcloud to listen to some stuff and went "Hey this stuff is pretty good." That pushed me over the edge and I decided to master/release, an album I sat on for a decade. This is that album

I will say it has some issues that I think go beyond the normal creative's struggle of "I'm just not good enough." Many sections are not particularly dynamic, it sort of drones in parts that aren't intended as longer more ambient interludes, and may not be the best mixed/mastered. I don't offer these because I'm fishing for compliments, I have had these thoughts listening to it myself while doing a quick and dirty master, and finally listening to it on my way home from work the other day.

I will say that my SIL enjoying my work, and my infant nephew apparently vibing to it, has been helpful as I've been in my own head for so long on the music production front.

I feel this wasn't particularly creative since it was a quick listen for mixing issues and a final "master," having Renoise gate everything so it wasn't clipping and normalizing -> merging -> crossfading -> exporting everything in Audacity for the final cut, but I also feel that talking about this is part of my process to finally let this era of my music hobby go.

I have been trying to make a small infinity mirror for fun. I have so far built the two parts on onshape, but now my 3d printer need some fixing. Hopefully, it should be an easy fix.

I made my first handspun yarn that is even enough to be used in knitting, and enough yardage of it for a hat (which will be made by my partner because I can't knit). It's made from a dark mohair and a Horizon Zero Dawn-inspired colourway - I picked the dark mohair because I felt the HZD fibre should have a dark contrast, and it really makes the colours pop!

The model car cyberpunk kitbashing has continued... x4. This may be becoming a problem :P

Everything's still WIP, descriptions and details in image links.

I’ve been finishing up some demos, and I finally got into the swing of recording myself by my lonesome. It’s an interesting way to record as I’ve gotten so used to recording with someone else present. Something that I had to learn is to record my own takes like I would anyone elses: just keep working on and doing retakes. I do have a perfectionist streak that sometimes really gets into the way of even recording anything.

I had a Galentines party Saturday with a couple of friends and I made so many little paper crafts! I used a heart shaped cookie cutter to make a bunch of hearts for a banner (bunting?) and for a hanging piece. I got a couple of patterns for my silhouette cutter and made a heart tea light holder (for fake tea lights not a real flame), and some little heart doilies to put on the table. I went bananas and decorated so much for it and it felt awesome to have my friends there and see the fruits of my labor lol! Overall I just really, really love making decorations.