If "Drawing" was an RPG skill!!

[legomaestro]

Suuper you're amazing man. What did you program this in hahaha! This is so cool! Dammit I want this plugged into the forum yesterday. But yeah that's always complicated stuff.

Time spent is a doozy. But we can let raiders honestly say how much time they've spent drawing in general I guess? That way if someone has spent a hundred years drawing and we don't see much progress, we can ask them how exactly their habits correspond to their other levels and try to make them focus on building up their skillset.

This RPG tool is very much a merit badge thing where we're showing off our progress, but it can be super helpful in letting people know how  much you're actually doing. I know we stay on the side of the artist more than the critic by default (e.g critics shouldn't be too harsh, should always be helfpful, and don't get me wrong i'm in support of that) but to be honest without a vague idea and some data it's harder for critics to point out useful information without a good idea of where the artist is.

For example you can definitely tell me to watch out when it comes to drawing my right hand since I did everything with my left hand. And when I get my background level up and out in the open it'll be almost too obvious to point out where I could improve upon. Stuff like that.


On feet:
Let's let the feet icon take that place for the random? It could also serve to highlight something a raider wants to work on personally and show off to the forum (or have the forum help check in and encourage their progress. Say if you want to do watches or something.)

[Suuper-san]

haha thanks
All made in notepad++ (just a text editor), using HTML and Javascript. I draw all the parts on a "canvas" object, which automatically has a right-click save image on it which saves any effort my end. I recommend learning HTML and Javascript as it's very friendly and you can use it for working out things and processing stuff, as well as writing tiny apps, like my gesture program back in the day (new version coming soon XD)

I try and keep a track of the time I spend on each page, so I can work out the average and multiply by the page count. Yeah since it's just one statistic it shouldn't cause too much hassle.

I never thought that it would be useful to critics as well to point out what you weren't doing. that's kinda cool. It would help to compare more objectively artists levels. like if an artist is wayyyy better, but they have done way more sketches, you have a target to aim towards, otherwise it seems that they are just magically better :P

I thought maybe have 2x star icons for 2x specials?
I'll work on a demo for that.

talking of demos, I've got the first interactive signature generator working now, using the level boundaries discussed earlier. It's still incomplete, as theere's more skills to add. It's a lot easier now I've got the main code down. Have fun :)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uoWd9UReuxzot5Qx_3fmoe1PKBSo03YS
download the file and click to run as before

[legomaestro]

You're impossible man. I can't believe you even coded changing colours and the like. Is it using the same Fibonacci level sequence? Daammit this is legit hahahaha! I guess I know what my next project is: Counting as much of my art as I can to be able to count how far I am. Better time as any, since I've committed to doing regimens.

Woooooooot

[Suuper-san]

if it's a lot of stuff, just crunch a small bit at a time and keep the totals. Or just pile by pile. I need to crunch mine, now it's all scanned.

Yeah the changing colours was just me being preemptive and just showing off haha. part of programming is preparing for the next step so your code can be upgraded more easily.

the sequence starts at 0, with an interval of 10, then the interval increases by 10 each time. A sort of softer fibonacci sequence. Each level has to be attainable but harder to reach.

aaaaaaand here the "final" version for now. I'm going to start crunching my stuff now. let me know if you've got any improvements or suggestions or comments, even if they are minor.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DsOy5-WA_zT2us1Snua5ArW9ueZjjxJl
as before, save the file and open it to make the image

added features:
-auto save so you don't have to enter it all again
-show level boundaries so you know exactly what you are aiming at
-custom skills and skill names, which are also disableable

my only concern is that the time statistic also requires a maximum of 50,000 for level 100. I'm wondering if I should cut the value in 5, to meet the "10,000 hours of mastery" ideal.

gotta fill this thing out now :/
here's mine with preliminary values.
I'm both proud of the coding and also proud of my levels


the special skills are disabled as I don't yet know what I will be studying, and if they are enabled, my overall level will be reduced as it takes it into account unless disabled.I wonder if I should make all the skills possible to disable.

need a few more skills methinks.
also need non-copyright icons lol

[legomaestro]

Your coding is amazing dude! It works so well hahaha! Damn!


Well I spent hours stacking my papers in 3 different piles - non originals, originals and all comics and finally got some data to plug in, but I'm nowehre near scanning all of them proper. Especially not with a flatbed scanner. Maybe ther'll be a weekend where I'm feeling particularly brave. My room is a mess now with all the stacks of paper and the thrown away stuff but yeah, that was interesting.

After counting everything it seems I've gone through 5,000 A4 papers over time give or take, not counting notebook sketches and the like, and some A5 scrap paper I found somewhere. So it's quite a bit.

It was nigh immpossible to estimate illustrations and faces. I mean which faces do I count? Almost every picture I draw involves a face being drawn, and for me especially there's a fine line between illustration and sketches so yeah that was tricky. I went with a low estimate.

For the hours I went low as well. I estimated how long it took me to draw comic pages and then added a little onto that, but honestly I feel there a lot more uncounted hours out there. I have spent several nights doodlign and drawing, and just the hands excercise alone took quite a bit of time.

Anyhow just putting that all out there to say this counter is awesome and all but it's very subjective. I tried to be accurate as I could but yeah.

I'm pretty happy about the values. Not surprised at the background results at all. Illustrtations are kicking my ass, and I think I need to do less figures now.



Re: Time statistic yeah seems legit. 10,000 hours is for extreme mastery already, so it's nice to have that limit there rather than truly out of all manners of reach.

 

[Suuper-san]

glad you like it and used it (nice signature), and lovely to see all the numbers plugged in for someone else, it really gives a feel for the artist style and output.

5000+ pages should put you very near me though in page level though?
and.....wow 5000 pages! Even more than me haha great job!

yeah for most of the statistics I searched my digital pages which are named with the content (thank goodness) and assumed the same proportion was done in traditional as well. It'll take a while to fully sort it out.

-I'll make that adjustment for time in the next version.
-I might also add a date-stamp on the image so it's clear when it was last updated.
-also forgot to add the clothes skill

I also wondered if to include faces/hands if they were part of another image, and personally I decided against, partly because as part of a larger image, it didn't get as much focus as so doesn't have much impact as part of my experience, also because factoring them in would be a royal pain to count, and also because my study pages shadow them in numbers so it's not much of a worth to count anyway.

my backgrounds were mostly half sketches from manga and most are like just one door or object

my finished illustrations were also rather of a gradient into unfinished sketches, especially with traditional.

the bottom line is that it really is very subjective, for example I sketch quite small, so when I study hands, I can fit probably 20-40 on a page, but when I am super serious I can only fit maybe 4 per page. so the quality/value is different to the count anyway.

I'm wondering if to not have the specials count towards the user's level?
since they will change, and often back to a low number of what you are studying.

anywho, here's the newest version. (my internet's still playing up so I cant upload, so it'll be done ASAP)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VaCueGmZGsCoXE-xB5D-D0T53tleaQoh
-fixed the time adjustment
-added clothes skill
-fixed that empty square
-added a date
-colours now save
-width is now 35px wider thanks to the date box.

watch out when clearing data on your browser, as that will (probably) clear the saved numbers.

is there any point to the username showing? I mean, it's in our own signature.....

[MahluaandMilk]

Those look neato. I should probably really get my numbers together by the end of the week, haha. Thanks for all the hard work designing and coding! Jeez, I don't remember jack from my Multimedia and Webpage Design class in high school.

[Suuper-san]

Glad you like it. The link has been fixed now for V1.3

I almost forget everything each time I try and code something. I'm always googling stupid things like "How to use if-statements in javascript"

[legomaestro]

Wait you're right. I guess sketched pages for me would be all my pages minus my illustrations. Most of my stuff are sketches anyways. Will update.

The name is reduntant in this case, but I could use the badge elsewhere maybe? Dunno.

[MahluaandMilk]

Well, heck. I guess even plundering through what sketchbooks and files I still have, it doesn't amount to much. I tried to give myself a little wiggle room with hours, though, by giving myself anywhere from an hour to two hours per sheet of paper in each sketchbook to give some credit to my past self. Still, I'm a little disappointed...

[Suuper-san]

@Mahlua great to see it in use and filled out. although you might be a little disappointed, it helps to show where you've been putting effort in, and where it might help to have more focus.

and the level boundaries and so on are designed with absolute mastery at level 100, it's meant to be be hard to reach, so passing a single level for anything is actually a great achievement. each next level should be possible with a little more hard work, but far enough that it actually is hard work :P

it's also very open to interpretation, as Lego says, as to what exactly do you count for each skill, especially the finished piece count, does it have to be coloured, how sketchy can it be before it's not a finished piece, etc.

which reminds me I need to properly sort out my stuff, some of my figures might be wildly out >_<

I'm wondering if the skills are properly inclusive of a manga artists "most important skills".
I also think that finished illustrations should have at max, a cap of 10,000, not 50000 which is stupidly high. some of the skills need a rebalancing in that respect as well. I'll need to code that in at some point.
any input or feedback would be appreciated.

[MahluaandMilk]

For manga artists, I feel like important factors would be dynamic figures, familiarity with inking/lineart, comic pages, thumbnails, backgrounds, and percent completed works (comics) versus works in progress.

Then again, that may be my bit of bias showing through because I seem to have so many more pieces, which I believe are dubbed "illustrations" here, which I counted as either lineart or colored works.

I also wonder how my numbers would be changed if I counted the sketch phase of each piece and each figure and face and hand in a piece, because for my first three or four sketchbooks, I counted a piece as only an illustration unless something about it was very dynamic or important (such as a hand being a main focus point of it). But, man, ain't nobody got time fo dat.

[Coach Fro]

Totally tempted to make a "If Writing was a rpg skill" topic now...

Those stats look hella cool by the way.

[MahluaandMilk]

(In the meme of Patrick Star asking if mayonnaise is an instrument) "Are fanfiction and smut roleplays Writing RPG skills?"

[Coryn]

I think we could probably just simplify writing into a 'Tears' stat. The more full it is, the better writer you have become through pain.