A Bit of Nostalgia & Pattern-making Mishaps

Thanks to the rediscovery of the fun things I used to love as a small hobbyist webdev/designer/blogger/etc., I started returning to those old (and still existing) directories, web cliques, and fanlistings. I loved seeing all kinds of pixel art and forming communities with them, knowing I needed a stronger background in making pixel graphics. We were all young and carefree back then. I also discovered that there are still existing, as well as new, personal websites and blogs that still go by the old-school nostalgia trends of hobbyist web that dated way back to the early 2000s. Yeah, I was one of those fun people.

As we all know, technology evolves quickly. This goes with the way we build our websites too, be it personal or commercial. Some of us hobbyist web peeps moved on to turn their passion into a career. Some of us remained as hobbyists as we continued to live our life. I was with the former, but at the same time, I also wanted to change careers. I was currently looking for entry level job openings as a data analyst, however, part of my mindset got distracted and wanted me to pursue further into the field.

And then, my previous domain for my blog, adriculous.life had been expired. I went to Namecheap to renew it, but then I was appalled by the renewal price. During this time, I was keeping an eye on my personal budget and didn’t want to indulge more into stuff that aren’t practical. At that point, I decided to just give up on personal, non-niche hobbyist blogging because I rarely blog over there anyway. I was completely in too deep with my hobby love for vTubers¹ that I practically abandoned blogging about my “life.” I ran out of steam with drawing simple diary art because of lack of motivation was another reason why I rarely write there. I converted The ADRICULOUS Life into an art diary and use my messy diary art as featured images instead of using stock photos and anything similar. But, as explained before, it really didn’t work out.

I was just going to end my decades-long non-niche blogging right then and there. However, I also didn’t want to let it go because those were many years of maintenance right there. Still, at the same time, the backend was simply a mess. I converted the adriculous.life domain into a WordPress multisite to create fanlistings and other fansites under the domain, but I simply just ran out of steam. At the same time, my life outside the net had been very messy, disorganized, right to the point that I lost motivation with anything hobbyist web-related. Those were years ago.

It’s 2024, Year of the Dragon, the Chinese Zodiac animal that I was born under. New year, new beginnings, right? That was when I decided to let go of The ADRICULOUS Life and everything that I wrote there since 2008. Those were my 20s-early 40s. ADRIANNE’S SPACE begins in my late 40s and beyond. I hope I would live long enough for me to keep this blog going, so that I can set my own personal record of being a hobbyist blogger during the senior years. Maybe.

Well, that’s it for the random babbling as my intro. Continuing!

Some dumb oversights with making pattern background images

I’m happy that I was able to design some sweet, original pattern backgrounds. I’m offering them for free for digital and printed products. Originally, they were going to serve as nice website background images too, but I overlooked the specifics of the files themselves. Like every (hobbyist) art students out there who can’t afford to attend an art school or a local art atelier, we go by free tutorials on YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, and other specialized art sites. Some of us pay for online programs² through platforms like Skillshare, 21Draw, Domestika, or CLASS101+. I personally take courses from CLASS101+ and in one of the digital design shops like Design Cuts, as well as on YouTube.

I started learning the basic patterns, such as the stripes, checkers, Gingham, etc. They’re quite easy to find and easy to make in whatever digital drawing software you like using on YouTube. But this time, I also started drawing a few complicate designs with Procreate pattern toolkits available for sale in Design Cuts, as well as Creative Market and good ol’ Etsy. From those shops, I purchased two kits:³

• Pattern Design Toolkit by Lisa Glanz
• Pattern Builder Toolkit by Ouss Mezher

I started learning how to make complex pattern designs with Lisa Glanz’s Pattern Design Toolkit first. The toolkit was very well-made and was based on .procreate files that I can just duplicate and then use the duplicate as my base. They were really fun to make and as a result, I made five original designs available for free download in the Goodies section. However, I made an oversight with this one because of the default dimensions and the file size that are too large to be used as website pattern backgrounds.

First, the default canvas size was 2800×2800 px with the pattern image size of 2000×2000. I have to crop the pattern image itself first before I export it as a PNG file. After putting them up, I checked the file size and learned that all of them were over 1MB, and that made me slap my own face. I even checked the original Procreate files to discover that the default is 300dpi, which is suitable for printed projects, but not as website background images. I tried to experiment, by resizing the canvas to 1800x1800px, so the pattern image can be cropped to 1000×1000 at 72dpi. Sadly, that didn’t work. I’ll still continue on experimenting on how I can resize the existing patterns small enough to be web background patterns⁴ using this pattern design toolkit.

I’ll start learning how to use the second toolkit probably tomorrow and see if I fare better with this one for web background patterns. From the looks of it, the Pattern Builder Toolkit is completely different from the Pattern Design Toolkit. The Pattern Builder Toolkit has stamp brushes instead of a whole .procreate canvas. This can mean that I can create the pattern design in any size, so I can just start off with 1000×1000 px right off the bat. That’s all for now.

Some closing stuff

I would normally call this a conclusion, but none of my “conclusions” are even related to what I just wrote. Instead, I’ll share some tidbits:

• I feel that I worked on ADRIANNE’S SPACE a lot more meticulous than I did with The ADRICULOUS Life. I still wanted to have that paper background feel, but I decided to experiment again using the Astra Pro Parent Theme’s core features for my child theme. I’ve never made a home page on a blog site before. My front page had always been the blog itself when it came to personal (and sometimes niche) blogs. I finally did with the core features and some bit of CSS magic. I’m happy with my child theme work!

• vTubers is my current loves right now. I may write about general stuff about vTubers here, but I do have a HOLOSTARS fan blog that I’ve opened since last year: Starpura Space I don’t blog as much there because there’s too many things going on in their scene, and of course, there’s work and life too. But I do update the sidebar, which contains the boys’ current and upcoming events, as well as their official merch.

• I’ll start working on my art site soon. I’m planning on enrolling in a UX/UI Design course in the future to update everything I’ve learned from college, and try to get into the UX/UI Design field again.⁵

• I’d like to (re-)join as many existing directories, cliques, and (probably) fanlistings again. At the same time, I also would like to make my own fanlisting(s), as there are none dedicated to vTubers. But where shall I apply? I’ll figure that out at a later time.

• I made this default featured image as my “placeholder featured image” if I can’t find a good feature image or that I’m lazy to make a quick artwork for the post. So, if you see another post with this featured image again, don’t be alarmed. This is just Adri being lazy.

That’s all for today’s entry. I’ll do what I can to write more here.

Till next time!