Hello there! This is going to be the very first post for my website, so an introduction is in order. My name is Will, some people call me ‘acid’ as it is the first word in my online moniker, and I am a 27-year-old nerd. Passions and interests include computers, books (reading and writing, prose and poetry), film, music, animation, video games, coffee, tea, swimming, and 3D printing. I have lived a lot of different places, but hail from Washington State, and feel at home anywhere in the Pacific North West. I don’t get out much, but if I do, it’s to get a coffee or a beer with family or friends, or to try something new (like sky-diving - highly recommended). Listening to some smooth piano jazz, right now, but I listen to almost anything.

I have always had a love for great stories, no matter the medium. From epic tales, like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, BioWare’s Mass Effect Trilogy, or Jim Butcher’s Dresden files, to smaller and more personal stories like Patrick Rothfus’s Name of the Wind, Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series, and many more. Stories that are all about the characters, and their growth and their journey always capture my imagination and give me ideas of my own. I suppose that is what initially lead me to make this website. Several years ago, I purchased this domain with the intention of posting my own writing online. I began posting poetry and the starts to some stories I had on my mind - only to get quite busy with my career and had to put things on hold. After a while of this, I let the hosting die, though I held on to the domain. Any free time I had was put into 3D printing. I posted a little bit on here about it, but never put in the time to finish up the website, though I did much in the 3D printing world and currently I help administer a very active community of 3.3k members, all very passionate.

I found what I loved doing though in 3D printing - artistic pieces. Not sculptures, but color changes after only a few layers and such. I started churning out custom badge holders for things like Penny Arcade Expo, plastic business cards with words and logos on the front, and QR codes on the back. But all this work was not done using a CAD program; I completed it in a vector image program called Inkscape, (a free, open-source program similar to Adobe Illustrator). I had used it before, but now I had begun really digging in, and discovering its power for creative ideas realized both physically and digitally. For those who aren’t exactly sure what a vector image is, I will give a brief description: a normal (rasterized) image is made up of lots of tiny squares with color information (pixels). a vector image is more like a bunch of dots (vertices) connected by lines. These lines can have curves to them, and using math, and make all sorts of shapes. The resulting image is then an assembly of all the shapes used, and the colors that fill them. Because this is stored as math instead of dots with color information, a vector is both a very small file, and can be scaled to any size before export. this means that you can have the same vector be on a stamp or business card, and could also be on a billboard, because you are just increasing or decreasing the numbers used. this also means that I can design something in Inkscape, down to the millimeter, and import it into a cad program to make it a model for 3D printing. It is all very interesting to me - I only hope that was a good explanation.

I began toying around more with it off and on over three years, until this last December. I have been enjoying anime as a medium for several years now, and I binge shows. I finished all the seasons of Friends in a week (about 83 hours). Darling in the Franxx memes were everywhere, and one of the main characters, Zero Two, had a lot of artwork, and seemed interesting. I figured, maybe I will give this show a go. Finished it in a day, and was blown away by some of the artwork, the shots, the colors, and the technical expertise in the show. I really enjoyed the characters on a personal level too, and regardless of how you feel for the way the show ended, I was sad to see the show end, as they had me caring for pretty much the whole cast.

I had always played with the idea of doing vector art of anime scenes and trying to get them to look almost just like the frame I was looking to imitate. After seeing DitF, I decided I would try it for the first time. 11 hours later, I had finished my first one. It was very satisfying, and fun! I then did another, taking even longer at 13 hours. I was hooked though. I figured, If I keep doing these, it might be a good thing to have a website for. So here we are.

As of this initial posting, there has been 3 full pieces done for Darling in the Franxx, 1 full piece for Komi-san, and some silhouettes done for several characters from various shows.

Most updates won’t be as long as this, but I plan to do an update for every piece I finish from here forward!

-Will / acid
Keyboard Kadabra

Galleries updated with this post: Darling in the Franxx | Komi-san