Ms Littlefish's Stuff Showcase

[Ms Littlefish]

~A.K.A. Meg has too many hobbies~

Music for music's sake

- yep, music that was made just to listen to, no game, no project



Ocean of Stars first composed in 2010, this re-record is from 2020 during the lock down. A lot of my inspirations come from cosmic and natural elements but this was created for a music theory 1 class I took as a throw away elective in college.



Long September was first composed in 2009 and this re-record is also from 2020 during the lock down. It's maybe my second or third piano song ever and has an incredibly lame background. My first boyfriend broke up with me, LOL.

Traditional Art

- sadly most of traditional art was destroyed in a river flood

2007, acrylic, black and white only, based on a photo my uncle took of my mom in the 50s



Digital Art

- have not done a ton of digital art before and I legit do it with a mouse so honestly my wrist hurts

Spoiler

Paella, a forest dweller based on the saffron plant



Jack Sass, an irresponsible medic



my idea of a "slime" that is a chewed up piece of bubblegum

Astrophotography

- so space is cool, not like saying I'm a photographer or anything, definitely not, everything was taken with an iPhone and a telescope unless I note it's unassisted.

Spoiler

A lunar eclipse





Waning gibbous a few days later



Andromeda



G2 magnetic storm seen over Montana, unassisted view

Floral Arrangement

- surprisingly, a very expensive hobby...don't worry, I charge for weddings...

Spoiler

hand-tied wedding bouquet



hand-tied vase, small



hand-tied vase, large



table pieces



table pieces, crescent



Dr. Suess themed baby shower pieces

Thanks!
Bye!

 

[Holder]

Ah Ocean of stars sounds so beautiful. Such a relaxing piece.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Thanks @Holder ! No joke, if I could make it lucrative enough I think I'd spend my life making music you sleep to. Ya'know stuff for like spas and meditation tapes or something. LOL.

 

[MafuTofu]

So kewl! <3
Both musics are too good

 

[TESTOSTERONE]

You're too talented lady. Music - top notch.

Art... I mean come on... just look at this beauty:

 

[Ms Littlefish]

@TESTOSTERONE thank you, thank you!
And, I have other enemy line arts, I just have to color them! Bubble gum slime is probably one of my simpler ones even!

 

[TESTOSTERONE]

Are you gonna share them? This guy may be simple in design, but heshe is gorgeous in execution

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I definitely will once I get them all colored in! I’ve been putting off reinstalling photoshop CS5 for a hot minute since that usually results in a phone call to Adobe since they think it’s installed on a million machines when it’s not.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Aside from the new section at the end of the new version, the actual composition is almost virtually unchanged.

Who doesn't love a before & after?!

2014

Legit just the audio out of Finale stuck into Audacity



2023

Uh, a bit more than that!

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Digital Art







Well. That was a bit easier than using a computer mouse. This is the first time I’ve gone straight in digitally and not imported a pencil sketch beforehand.

I’m a very silly person…

…I’ve definitely owned an iPad for about 5 years. Apparently I had a very nice drawing tablet the entire time.

This is very much just a proof that I can make some competent-looking game art. When I move into legit concept arts I’ll have to use more reference images. I love the 3/4ths perspective but I definitely struggle with wonky eye.

I’ll also need to keep playing with how to form smaller/finer details in this style but I’m a long-term fan of minimalism.

Music





I plan for my game's music to take several elements from the various world and folk music styles I've participated in. I have the most experience in Celtic/Irish but I've also done bluegrass, big band, Klezmer, Polka, and even Taiko and Djembe before.

 

[alice_gristle]

Wow didn't know you do flower arranging! 2nd arrangement from the top: I ADORE THOSE BIG RED-AND-WHITE LILIES! Plus their scent is just outta this world. I had one in my yard but two winters ago it died!

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Yeah. I did a horticulture degree and for fund raising we’d set up a stem shop in the student union on holidays. As you can imagine, the department loves free labor so they’d teach us and we’d work the shop. After four years of that I got kinda decent so I help peeps with mooooostly baby showers and birthdays (and impressing MILs at dinner parties) but I’ve done a few small weddings.

And. YES. I love them. They kinda smell like bubble gum to me…but floral bubble gum?

 

[kyonides]

That sounds like you don't like to take a nap during daytime.

P.S. You got me lost after mentioning the bluegrass genre.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Oh man! Appalachia has so many interesting instruments. In many ways, bluegrass is an evolution of the Scottish and Irish music traditions. My games won’t really feature any bluegrass but I’m definitely using dulcimers at least. Love those things. Gorgeous sound.

And yeah…I don’t really take naps. Occasionally I get one on accident.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

First order of business. Yes. It’s this track again. The composition is old, familiar, and comfy. It was written in 2006 and has very simple chords and phrasing as a result. The only MIDIs I needed to alter were the percussion, so no need to worry about my sanity.

Second order of business. An incredibly large shout out and endless thank you to @TheAM-Dol

Seriously, I am not likely to become some ultra mixologist, but you sitting down one-on-one with me for several hours to walk through a mix is something I imagine people would spend a lot of money on.

Is this remix perfect? LOL…no. Did I probably make some things better and some things worse? Probably! LOL. Will I get feedback and make some tweaks before posting it for release again? YES!

Am I going to become a professional mixing engineer? No. Do I think I’ll be able to continue growing and better execute my compositions via the mixing process? Yes.

It's definitely different so hopefully it's better too.

Before Nolan Mixing School



After Nolan Mixing School



Anyway…so what did I learn in boating school? If some of this sounds very basic, it’s because (in the nicest way possible, I promise I have good self esteem) I am an idiot. I really wish music theory courses talked a bit about production!

I read two books. I will not bore everyone with the materials I consumed in those books. There is plenty of information out there about what all the various plugins do and suggested orders to take various steps in.

Here’s what I think made the absolute biggest difference between these mixes.

1. Instrument selection. Big fat “duh” but mixing starts way before mixing. If the sonic characteristics of your instruments clash too much you’re already fighting an uphill battle.

Which brings me a similar yet different topic...

2. What are we trying to accomplish when layering instrument patches? If the characteristics of the patches are too similar…what ARE you trying to accomplish?

3. Before panning an instrument, check in an analytic tool where the patch was recorded when the VST was created. If it was recorded on the left but you want to pan it to the right…swap the channels. BRILLIANT.

4. Using my eyes more. Yes. I knew this. I just did not have a very good habit. But, making a lot more frequent use of analytic tools to identify where problematic frequencies are peaking and where to compress. Well...it's better than guessing?

5. Making wider use of dynamic equalization. If a problematic harmonic is only peaking in the higher/lower register of your instrument…you don’t…need to…filter it the entire time.

6. Reverb and Delay Sends. "OK, Meg, how were you doing reverb and delay before?" I really don’t want to talk about it. But, yeah. This probably alone made the biggest difference.

And actually…

7. Taking more time. Believe it or not, I’m impatient as ****. But…I actually took a lot of breaks, did things pretty slowly, and checked it through quite a few headphones and speakers each step of the way.

I won’t get into the rabbit hole but I get a lot of migraines and unless I want to do absolutely nothing several days a week I sorta just pop an Ubrelvy, some NSAIDs, and bring a hot compress to carry on with my day. That, of course, means there have absolutely been times I’m mixing music with my ears ringing loudly the entire time and... go figure, that does not help. Wild.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Time for some art babble.

First of all. Art. It’s too large to upload to the forum and also too large for the online tools I’ve found. I don’t have the mental bandwidth right now to fiddle with sharing massive illustrations, nor do I want to get on my desktop where I have more heavy-duty options to try. So. Imgur link. It’s still giving potato salad but the Tumblr link below has a fairly high quality image.



Emergency Tumblr Link for All the times Imgur Sucks Eggs

OK. Babble. I will wait for the game thread to discuss the significance of any of the set pieces and design choices. Right now. Art Babble.

Color Scheme.

It’s still quite a few but these are the only colors I used. Every other resulting color is due to the layers and other elements mixing.



If I tweak anything in future concept and design arts, it would probably be Em’s main color palette. But…until I get a better grasp of the in-game colors (still a long ways away)…they do not visually offend me.

I very rarely use pure black or pure white. Overall green, red, and violet are pretty significant in my game world so I’ve used three very dark shading colors of those tones and all the “black tones” are a very muted and dirtied violet to compliment that the character has violet eyes.

Green in this character’s dominant color so a much purer and secondary green has been used for her dress.

The background and foregrounds I wanted to create a stark contrast of cool and warm and kinda make a color sandwich from back-to-foreground coming around the central figure (the character) and have the purer tone of green pull the eye away from the foreground and backgrounds.

The blue-greens and red-oranges in particular are direct compliments of each other, and then the lighter colors are tints of the mid tones. The blues and violets all have dashes of red in them so they’re not too, too cooled down. The darker pink is a shade of the lighter pink. Both are pretty dusty. Little purple, lots of white.

Composition.

In a game called “Three Trees” …only one composition made sense for my first concept art. Freaking. Triangles.

I think this will be easier to explain with a picture than anything else. There you go, triangles and there are three triangles in the composition.