Heya gang! Exciting news, I got another session in on my chest tattoo this week! I started it almost three years ago and for a number of reasons kept putting off more work on it, but seeing it look incomplete in my upcoming SG set finally got my ass in gear to get it scheduled. Here's a little before + after so you can see the difference-
The biggest difference was filling in one of the crows, so now everything is symmetrical. The shading also covered up an old Mass Effect tattoo- nothing against Mass Effect, but I got that tattoo when I was 18 and it wasn't exactly the highest quality.
Other than the shading, there was a lot of refinement on the linework overall to make everything clearer (it'll look even better once the saniderm covering comes off and takes all the gunk that comes out while healing off with it). There's a bit more work to do adding details that tie the larger elements together, but I'm super pleased with how it's turning out!
My artist Keysea has done just about every tattoo I have, so if you're ever in Chicago and want some great work done give em a shout.
What I'm Listening To
Chest tattoos are a rough sit, pain wise, so I needed a good distraction for the 5 or so hours I was under the needle. I spent a big chunk of that listening to the new-ish actual play podcast World's Beyond Number, featuring Dimension 20's Brennan Lee Mulligan doing some phenomenal Game Master work as always. I legitimately cried when I listened to the show's first proper episode, and I immediately felt so invested in what was happening with the player characters.
The players bring an incredible earnestness and warmth to their character performances in addition to the usual improv comedy-esque D&D shenanigans. Highly recommended if you're at all interested in the genre, especially if you're someone who is more into the narrative of role playing vs the more nitty gritty mechanics.
Additionally, I pulled out some symphonic metal to really grit my teeth to while we worked on my sternum. Sometimes Nightwish is the best painkiller ✨
What I'm Watching
I saw the new Spiderverse movie over the weekend and it certainly lives up to the hype. You can't go two minutes watching it without seeing some incredible new visual technique that I've never seen in animation before. I don't think it holds together as well narratively as the first, but it also suffers from being very clearly just the first half of the story it's telling. Once the next movie comes out I imagine it'll feel more cohesive overall.
What I'm Playing
The Steam Summer Sale means I'm picking up a lot of older titles for super cheap, so it's been a bit of a video game smorgasbord here. My biggest playtime has been going to Darktide though, which has been steadily improving since a slightly disappointing launch. If you haven't played Darktide or Vermintide, you may be missing out on some of the most satisfying dude-chopping in the business. They're essentially spiritual successors to the Left 4 Dead games, but set in the Warhammer universe (40k and fantasy respectively) and have you murdering just so many dudes.
The developer, Fatshark, has a habit of releasing games that nail the core gameplay loop and 'game feel' but are overall a little empty to begin with. But their near-decade of support for Vermintide 2 gives me hope that Darktide is gonna deliver some incredible stuff down the line- and it's already just so fun to chop through a guy with a big chainsword.
All for now- see y'all next time!
