started off with her first album, and similar features is a stone cold banger

it took about a day and a half to get this thing round. i could have shortened that if i'd spun the lathe faster, but i played it safe. the rounding of this piece was hard on my equipment in a way i'd never seen before, even when turning bigger and heavier work. between those first two photos the powerhead of the lathe became almost hot enough to fry an egg on. the change in camera angle comes after a few hours' cooldown period. i added an intermittent temp check to my checklist whenever i turn the machine off. like how they taught you during fire drills in school, with the back of the hand.

my only experience breaking a wild horse comes from the first Red Dead game and i think a little in Breath of the Wild, but this is sort of how i imagine that was for my characters in those games: a big, heavy thing was perfectly happy before you showed up. and now it's going to defend itself (read: try to fucking crush you to death) as you pig-wrassle it into submission. you've got to read its cues and stay on top of it mentally or you're gonna have problems. that's rough turning.

roughing/rounding is, to me, the most stressful part of the work. on a tactile level there is no pleasure in it for me; that comes later. you, your piece and your tools could all be broken if your attention lapses or you misread some tactile information the piece is communicating to you. it fills my blood with cortisol.

but: it's not all bad. there's something thrilling about it in a Steve Irwin-y sort of way. i enjoy danger and risk. it feels natural to be a little scared, to be up on the balls of my feet. i get a little high off the stress; i'm fully engaged in the task, since anything less multiplies the inherent danger.

this period will pass. the gnarly, wild piece of nature will become balanced, reliable and shaped to my purpose. and, as the terror and juddering stress give way to predictable responses, we develop trust.

but, sometimes the material can give me reasons to mistrust it and wonder if the whole project of taming it will turn out to be a waste. that's for another post.

thanks for reading. more forthcoming.

been updating my portfolio. this was an exploration i did for some idea i had about fishermen and extinct giants. it's nice to step away from things for a while bc now i can appreciate what i learned when i made this even tho i was pretty frustrated with myself in the moment of creation.

I am making more progress on my roller coaster editor. My main focus is improving the editing tools in order to make the application more user-friendly, which requires some experimentation to see what works.

It would have been within reach for quite a while now to add the option to attach the camera to the track as the ride is simulated, but it took until now for me to actually implement that. I probably should have done that sooner, because the on-ride camera reveals how much care and effort you need to put into placing the control points in order to get smooth movement and banked tracks that do not wobble excessively from side to side. It is really hard to get that right with the current state of the editing tools I have implemented so far so my main short-term goal will have to be to improve those tools. Still, I am really happy with the fact that the way I choose to model the track and its bank angle makes it possible to create really good looking rides, even though it is really hard to do at the moment!

The design is based on this coaster which operated in my home town from 1997 to 2002 until it was sold to another theme park.

Previous posts: part 1, part 2, part 3