Why, hello there! Now THIS is what I call a LONG TIME, huh?
How have you been doin?
There are a lot of things I want to say, so let’s skip the formalities and flourishes and just go straight to shit.
Welcome back, everyone! And to everyone new: hi! I’m CHIPY. Let’me introduce you to my little internet corner.
CHEAPCORE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
I think that last year was probably the most prolific in my entire life as an artist. It was the kickstarter for all of my still-in-mind projects. I met a lot of cool people, and overall did a bunch of things that I wouldn’t even consider remotely possible some years ago.
What I’m most proud of, as you may imagine, is CHEAPCORE, of course.
To make a website was always a dream of mine since I was a kid, but the idea grew even stronger so as my interests towards fiction and web-art became more refined.
Way before the beginning, I had a really specific vision on what I wanted to make.
I just lacked completely of the HOWs.
Which brings me back to some months ago. I was talking with noo-dll (webmaster of zona.plankton and a really cool pal), and mentioned my idea to recreate CHEAPCORE entirely, asking for indications of any good programmer who could accept to help me on this BIG undertaking.
He contacted his friend tsc-tsc-tsc (not only a master of codes, but an insanely talented musician as well), a regular collaborator in zona.plankton and, to my absolute luck, tsc accepted the request!
The rest, my friends, is history.
We started working closely on basically recreating the entire thing from the near zero. I stepped aside from the coding field and began acting more as a director of sorts? Sketching ideas and guiding tsc as he efficiently raised an entire system alone.
Inspired by the old win98 aesthetics that have defined the visual identity of the website, my idea was to create an entirely original theme - the CHEAP.OS (also refered to as cheapy98 in the files).
Below are the first sketches I made to show tsc-tsc my early ideas.
I could never do the due justice to his homeric work, so I’ll just let the guy talk about it himself.
Ladies and gentlemans, tsc-tsc-tsc!
I’m going to briefly explain what I used to rebuild CHEAPCORE.
First off, I used Astro as a static site generator.
For the beginners, a SSG is a tool that builds plain HTML from .astro files, that look a lot like HTML but have many quality-of-life stuff.
Some of the features are:
- Reusing components You can just make a header once and then you import it on all your pages, making it way easier to make small changes on it and not having to change all files that have it.
- Using templates You can create your own templates, and then reutilize them multiple times for pages that are supposed to look the same and have different content.
- Using markdown You can write a lot of stuff, for example blogposts with markdown, and astro will convert it to HTML, way easier to write more stuff without worring about HTML tags.
If you are making a blog for example, I higly recommend you to try astro, it has many tutorials around and very good documentation.
The second main tool I used was Turbo.
Turbo is a js library that replaces normal site navigation with partial loading.
What that means is, instead of normal navigation where you, every time you click a link, the entire page refreshes, Turbo replaces this behaviour with only partial fetching, making a much faster navigation, giving it SPA-like behavior (single page application) behaviour, but without changing the original HTML too much, you can still turn off your JavaScript and the page would still work just like it was before.
The best part about Turbo is how easy to make persistent components, for example, our music player wouldn’t be possible without turbo, it keeps playing the same song nonstop on multiple pages, because its a persistent element.
Endless sets of applauses for him, guys!
Going over all the new cool stuff would take some time (there are a LOT), but here are the hottest ones!
1) WEBSITE NEW THEMES! - If you click on the first special button up there, OH! WHAT’S THAT? That’s right, it’s a collection of RAD THEMES. We’ve made quite a few, pretty ones, to swit everyone’s taste. But you can always stick with the good old 98, if you prefer ;)
The website is also MOBILE FRIENDLY! Now you have acess to the coolest website ever right in your pockets! Read comics in the bus, listen to music in the work, damn, even in the shower!
(Please do not consume CHEAPCORE content in the shower, though. I don’t know how to feel about it.)
Take note, though, not ALL the website’s content is available on mobile! This still is, and always will be, a DESKTOP WEBSITE first and always. So if a certain content doesn’t work out well on mobile I will simply take it out from there. No changes will be made in favor of mobile acessibility if such changes end up distorting the original work in any way.
2) THE WEBVENTURES ARE BACK! - If you haven’t noticed the pretty card on the homepage, LIMINALIA is back! You can already read the new update.
I’m still working on this shitty, all day job, but I’ll find a way to update the story regularly. I missed these little guys, and I think it’s finally the time to see their story reach completion. Don’t you think?
tsc has made a handful cool functions to improve the reading experience, but mostly for me to facilitate the production of the pages. Believe it or not, about 60% of the time spent updating the story was wasted on putting it up in the server!
Now I can just open a document, write it smoothly and voila! A new page is ready to go!
On last year’s Halloween I made a little LIMINALIA music album, sonorizing the first act of the story. Now, thanks to our wonderful webdev, you can read the story with music! That’s right. Whenever you reach a scene in the story I have composed a music specifically for, you can read it while listening to the appropriate music! Isn’t it fucking AWESOME?!
You can listen to the first album here!
Which brings me to the next topic!
3) THE MUSIC PLAYER - tsc also made a really cool MUSIC PLAYER to keep da TUNES playing while you surf around! You can listen to my latest songs, which will be updated regularly on the player’s playist.
Talking about playists, now you can listen to all my albums right here, on CHEAPCORE! Well, not all of them yet. As of now, the time I’m writing this, I still need to make mp3s of all my old albums and upload them to the website. It may take a while… but eventually they’ll be here! New albums will be uploaded here from now on, along my usual plataforms of choice. But who knows? Maybe you can listen to some extra exclusive content here and nowhere else.
Take a time to check all the little, the big and the FUCKING GIANT stuff tsc have crafted. I reiterate: nothing, but absolutely NOTHING would’ve been possible without him.
To cellebrate CHEAPCORE’s Reopening, tsc-tsc will also be our illustrious guest on this month’s exciting INTERVIEW! Coming out by the end of the month!
So, what does this means to the future of CHEAPCORE? Well, there sure is a bright path ahead of us!
During this big hiatus we’ve been passing through, I couldn’t stop thinking about this website. I couldn’t stop thinking about the future. There wasn’t a single minute in the big span of time that consists a day where my mind wasn’t constantly forging concepts, revising ideas and creating designs.
You see, this website is, albeit no one but me can see it right now, my biggest project I have and will ever make. It’s hard to make sense of a big project to anyone because no one can see what’s in your mind, and it’s even harder to visualize it possible when everything you have are words and a few ugly sketches.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to DO what I want to do, but I really, REALLY want to. And, regardless of the stumbles and pauses, I will never cease to try to make it possible. And I hope to see you here by the end of everything.
This is vague and confusing and just endless, existential rambling LOL Sorry for that. I’m just feeling kind of melancholic, you see. Why don’t we bring some cool NEWS, instead? I have collected quite a few, haha!
> Bringing DA COOL News
I’m too lazy to organize da news in precise cronological order, so I’ll just write it as they come in my mind. Let’s go!
An emo album(?)
Probably the most unexpected one, but I made a midwest emo album last Christmas, called Esporte Fictício (it translates in English as “Fictional Sport”). It’s also the name of this side project I’m making to host my experimentations on the genre.
Kind of like a “band”, except everything is played by me - who appears to NOT know how to play any rock instrument. Confusing?
I’m planning to go further in all of this really soon, but to summarize it for now, Esporte Fictício is a MIDIwest Emo project composed and sang by me. It was born from my love for emo bands such as American Football, Modern Baseball and Não ao Futebol Moderno and my desire to make something cool and new, and to experiment with writing lyrics and singing, something I have never done before.
You can listen to the first EP on Youtube and Spotify. It’s also on Bandcamp, if you want to support it.
It is pretty rough, specially on the mixing, but overall I’m really proud of it! It was a fun experiment, and I’ve learned quite a few things thanks to it. I’m already finishing the second EP, by the way! Once it’s out, I promise to go deep in the make-ofs and such (probably in the form of a Writings post), and maybe give you a few recomendations to listen to. ;)
D'Lírio
So, remember a loooong time ago when I mentioned I sent some songs to brazillian animatior Gio Feriani, offering to work on her indie animation, D’Lírio?
Well, why don’t you look at this?
THAT’S ME ON THE (* MUSIC NOISES *)!
I never worked with a team before, so everything is new for me, but oh boy does it feels good! I can’t overstate how much of an honor is to me to collaborate on such a cool project! Everyone is so talented and nice! :DD
You can watch two old pilots in D’Lírio’s official youtube channel. Please consider to support the project on catarse.me/tobogangs.
A new episode is already on the works, and so is the soundtrack for it. Stay tuned!
zona.plankton and da zine
A long time ago I was surfing around the MelonLand forums and stumble across a thread about cool artists or something, I don’t recall exactly. Anyway, a singular post sparkled my attention, about a guy called noo-dll and his cool website, zona.plankton. I was impressed by the art showcased on that post, and got even more impressed when I entered his awesome website.
Now imagine my surprise when I found out this bizarrely talented guy was from Brazil, a country I was surprisingly born in?
So I sent him a message on Newgrounds, asking for an interview.
And that interview triggered a fantastical chain of events that culminated in you reading this post on this fucking awesome redesigned-website right now. Pretty rad, huh?
I can say confidently that noo-dll is probably one of the most talented guys I ever had the pleasure to meet. I’m constantly shocked by his versatility on so many different mediums while still being able to make the coolest thing you’ll ever see in all of them. Comics, music, zines, you name it. The guy is a machine.
So, when he and tsc-tsc asked me if I would like to make something for zona.plankton’s MEGA-ZINE, you can probably imagine my panic.
I didn’t feel confortable with my skills to make a full piece for it (the new art you’re seeing here were, in fact, the first time I grabbed my wacom since October!), but they were cool enough to let me participate anyway. So I did some little sprites for the zine cover!
I can’t express how happy I am to have met these fellas. And I’m forever grateful for the opportunities I have received to work with such talented, lovely folks. Thank you, guys!
Oh, and PLEASE go read the zine! It is genuinely one of the most impressive things you’ll get to see!
THE END, FINALLY
Well, I think that’s basically everything I had to say. LOL so little.
Thank you if you read it all ‘til the end. If you’re an old visitor, endless thanks for staying during all the way up until now. And, if you’re new, welcome! Thank you as well.
Thenks noo-dll and tsc-tsc for all the help.
And I hope to see you, my dear reader, by the end of the next month!
Sincerely,
- CHIPY :o)
NOW PLAYING
NEWS
