Tsun

I like things that react to input instantly.

I am attracted to things that are simple but effective.

I usually spend an hour or so thinking about things in bed before I fall asleep.

My name is not actually derived from weeaboo slang. It originates from a time when I used "Tsunoflare" as my name, which I later shortened to just "Tsun". Tsunoflare itself came from mixing up the letters of "soft lunar" and adding an "e" to the end, I probably used an early version of Letter Mixer to come up with it. I'd like it to not be associated with a meme Japanese word, but I'm too attached to the name to change it at this point. I often use some variation of "Sun" or "Sundae" as a name because "Tsun" feels oddly too personal, it even feels weird to use it on this website, like I'm giving my personal details to someone I shouldn't.

My favorite colors are bright and pastel yellows, greens. I also like tan and pale green/brown-ish colors as background colors.
#9f0 #df0 #9e5 #fe7

Software development

I like programming but I hate all programming languages. C is the language that I hate the least, therefore it is the language I use. Ideally I would make my own language, but I don't have the motivation to spend enough time to do it well, and if it's not a well made language then I would hate that language too. You can read about how I would change C here.

My first programming-related memory is creating crappy point & click games with MS Paint graphics in Clickteam's game maker programs when I was a kid. Back then I thought that programming was dumb and that I would never want to do that because using a GUI was "so much better".

The first version of Letter Mixer was made in Multimedia Fusion, that's why the version on this site is "3.0" (I'm not sure what 2.0 was, probably some early javascript experiment). 1.0 was pretty clumsy to say the least:

I think my first experience with actual programming was trying to make a Minecraft mod with Java. I didn't understand anything and just copypasted some random code, I only managed to add crafting recipes for new decorative blocks. I moved to Javascript to work on more personal projects shortly after.

After a few years of tinkering with Javascript and working on things like Volve, I started to grow tired of the problems in Javascript and the web browser as a platform. I'm not sure how I ended up using C.

I like making things from scratch myself, which has it's advantages and disadvantages. The only thing I don't want to do myself is interact with file formats, because the way I see it, someone else designed the format so they should provide a library for it too. There's no sense of creativity in programming a PNG file parser.

I would describe myself as a "hobby software developer". I wish I could make enough money from it to do it fulltime some day, but I don't have a vision of how to do that. I might in theory end up finishing a game some day, or something.

💀 The renderer 👻

One of the most persistent challenges in programming for me is rendering graphics on the GPU because I hate graphics APIs. I think in a very simple and data-oriented way, but OpenGL is anything but that. From what I can tell, Vulkan is even worse. I tried to use DirectX11 but it doesn't give error messages by default and I can't get it to give them at all, which makes it kind of useless.

I've tried to come up with a process for 2D rendering many times, but I just cannot come up with something that I'm happy with because the code that interacts with the graphics API always ends up SIGNIFICANTLY more ugly and convoluted and hacky than all other code in my project. It's not my API and none of them are open source anyway, so I can't fix it. The way I do things is probably fine, but I'm not satisfied with just fine

It's already annoying to deal with the quirks of the GPU such as the -1 to +1 coordinate system, so adding all the graphics API nonsense on top just makes for a really miserable slog of a time. I have significantly more fun programming when I'm doing CPU rendering, but CPU rendering has horrible performance so it's hard to make efficient programs, and if you want any special effects then you'll be diving whatever remains of your FPS by 10. I'd still rather spend time optimizing my software rendering than use a graphics API though.

My most successful attempt so far was my previous renderer for Volve, here's a video of it with my "infinite lights" system:

I gave up on that renderer too because it was too ugly and annoying on the inside, but I may use the light system for something. I want the lights in Volve to reach further, so I may not be able to use this light system for it.

Note: when I say "renderer", I mean whatever steps I take to render things. I don't make "renderers" or "engines", I just do the thing that I need to do.

To art or not to art

I did art for most of my life since I was a kid, but don't draw much at all anymore. I more or less lost interest in drawing when the last remaining furry imageboard that wasn't a fetish dump also turned into a fetish dump. I don't consider myself part of the "furry fandom" though and I'm not fond of most furry art so don't UwU @ me. These days I mostly do programming, but I'm still interested in art stuff.

The earliest memory of drawing I have is drawing upscaled copies of the art from Pokemon trading cards, and putting them on my wall. I never truly stopped drawing Pokemon until I stopped drawing. I tend to think of Gen2 as my favorite (Pokemon Crystal was the game I liked most), but there's some favorite pokemon in Gen1, like Meowth. Emerald was the last Pokemon game that I enjoyed, but I didn't finish it.

I really, really enjoy drawing 3D shapes, it's somehow very satisfying to make a drawing that looks mostly correct in 3D. It causes me struggle though because I also like highly stylized drawings, I've always wished to attain an art style that has both 3D accuracy and stylization. I also enjoy painting grayscale shaded images, it's like a game of figuring out where light and shadow should be.

Other than Pokemon, the thing I've probably drawn most is my persona (or "fursona" if you will). I frequented Tegaki-E a lot back in the day when it was much more popular, it's like a forum where you can only communicate with drawings and handwriting. Drawing has always been a very social thing to me, I rarely draw just for myself, I think it's a way for me to try to connect with other people somehow. Like "hello everyone who also likes things like this, show yourselves".

Tsun

I tend to save almost everything that I draw and try to collect things that I find appealing in some way. I analyze my own drawings a lot and try to figure out what makes the good parts good so I can hopefully learn to do it more consistently. That's what allows me to do these big collections of random drawings.

It was in 2021 when I finally put my drawing tablet into the closet for the first time since I hadn't used it in a while. Perhaps one day I will make my own art site or imageboard and regain my desire to draw.

Or perhaps I will need it for a videogame.

The last proper drawing that I remember making was this request for an imageboard:

These characters are from a videogame where, if I recall, the companion loves your character regardless of which gender you pick.

Most of my art is trash and I have a lot of bad habits like making heads too big and missing a lot of obvious problems that I then notice later, and sometimes I can only produce complete crap and am unable to see how to fix it, but collecting my favorite drawings into one place like this and pretending that the crap ones don't exist makes me want to start drawing again.

For some reason I've never learned how to draw eyes properly. I can usually draw them fine with the power of intuition and mimicry, but if they turn out wrong the first time around, then I probably won't be able to fix them. That's one of the things I still wish I could learn, I just don't have any kind of logical process for drawing them.

Here's some drawings of mine that I like.

One of my favorite drawings I've ever made. There's a bunch of problems with it, but I really like this character and the colors and the mood. This character is called "Faith" and it was made for an imageboard community.

I like dreamy stuff like this, but it's hard to draw colorful things like this deliberately, it mostly happens by accident when using blend modes.

Libbie drawn for old 8chan's /tech/ board. There was huge drama regarding this character and LiberOffice back then which made her popular there.

This is based on a similar image of a deer that was run over by a car.

Experiment with drawing a grayscale image and then colorizing it, I've done that a few times but this is one of the better outcomes.

I don't like drawing mechanical things, but I usually like how they end up looking, I like how some of the forms in this drawing look.

Based on this image.

This is a very unusual drawing for me because there appears to be some kind of story behind it (it's just random stuff though). I also like some of the 3D-ness of it.

This was a request for someone. I like how fluffy it looks.

I originally made this for a secret blog imageboard that only I knew about.

Some sketch request? I forgot what this was for. There's something about the body proportions that I like here. The tail also has a very satisfying shape.

I like the design of classic Spyro, this was an attempt to draw him at different ages. Also an attempt to do Cynder in the same style.

It's unlikely for me to draw Spyro and not end up liking the drawing. I think I just like the character rather than my drawing though. That said, I haven't drawn him as much as I would think.

Avatars I made for Deviantart. This ended up becoming pretty popular as an "avatar base" (a template that allows people to make their own version with their own character).

I use Krita and usually draw on a 8000x8000 canvas while zoomed out, it gives me plenty of room, and the drawing ends up with a pretty high resolution even if I only used a small part of the canvas.

Stories

I've always been drawn to very heavy and dramatic themes. I don't particularly like gore or violence in itself, but do the meaning and consequences of it. The idea of someone being in an inescapeable situation, dying, or getting a permanent injury gives stories some kind of weight that appeals to me.

I wish I could see the original version of Zootopia.

At some point I thought of this as one of my favorite drawings. The drawing is meh, but I like the contrast of how serious of a thing happened and how the character reacts to it.

I also like things that are "dreamy" and immersive, something that makes you sink into a deep fantasy. I tend to think of movies like Legend of the Guardians and Jiang Ziya (Legend of Deification) as my favorites because of this deep fantasy feeling they have.

I've always held Legend of Mana in high regard in a similar way. The quests and gameplay are not very praiseworthy, but the art and music and sounds and effects and certain themes are very appealing. The entire world map screen feels like you're in a dream.

That said, games that I actually like playing the most are sandbox games like Terraria and Factorio, and certain kinds of open-ended adventures like Elder Scrolls and Stalker.