Greetings Weblings!

[TheGlitchyBits]

Hey all! I'm TheGlitchyBits, but you can call me Glitchy for short. I'm a backend programmer who is interested in finally getting around to learn the frontend of things too. To give my spiel, I grew up alongside the internet, being born around the time things really took off. From a young age, online forums and communities gave me a special love of the web, presenting a colorful, exciting space where I could be whatever I wanted to be. When I started getting into gaming at a similarly young age, a spark was lit within me, and I just had to know how everything worked. Thus began a long stretch of learning different programming languages, and eventually earning a degree. By the time I had felt confident in my skills though, it appeared the era I grew up in had passed me by.

While I was able to use what I learned to carve out a nice career for myself, it always felt like something was missing. Over the last year though, something rekindled that spark within me. This was actually VR of all things. When I got my first headset, I really got into exploring VRChat as well as joining the EmuVR community. While a lot of the web seems so corporate, VR communities still feel very creator-owned, and I wanted to be a part of that. In a spat of nostalgia this led me to search up how the internet used to be, and then I found the web revival community. So yeah, that is how we got here.

As I have implied, my backend programming techniques are well-honed at this point, but frontend and visuals are something that has languished over the years. I'm working on relearning some of those old skills as well as picking up some new ones, especially with regard to 3D modeling as I want to be able to create spaces that others can explore and interact with. Once I get a few more things moving, I plan to share my website where I will be posting about things that I love as well as updates on projects I plan to work on! In the meantime, I look forward to chatting with the folks here! 

[thistlequest]

Welcome! It's really nice that you were able to rekindle your passion!! What you mentioned about 3D modeling sounded cool-- what kind of interactive 3D spaces would you want to create? What are your inspirations?

[TheGlitchyBits]

Welcome! It's really nice that you were able to rekindle your passion!! What you mentioned about 3D modeling sounded cool-- what kind of interactive 3D spaces would you want to create? What are your inspirations?

Right now I am really into the 'digital museum' concept. Effectively creating an environment that can be walked through to tell a story or pay respects to something that you are passionate about. One of my greatest inspirations recently is kewlbunny, a VR artist and musician who last year released 'The Sensory Rooms' to VRChat. This is a world which is a hybrid digital museum/game concept that is a love letter to the different aesthetics of the old internet.

My first project would likely be something similar, but with different eras of gaming being the basis. I want people to be able to navigate the space and see how different genres evolved from generation to generation up close, also drawing attention to shared design philosophies that developed in this time. The digital gaming museum concept also makes for a decent beginner piece, as there are assets that can be pulled from the games directly in some cases. In cases where that is too difficult, there are plenty of reference materials to work from rather than doing an entire design from scratch. It will be more about stitching a story together and learning the ins and outs of environmental design with a lighter focus on asset creation at first.

Eventually though, I want to create art that provides little vignettes into the lives of people. Be it through the use of environmental storytelling to have the viewer enter into a place that was once inhabited and piecing together what happened there, or by directly putting the viewer in the shoes of another. I think VR art has a real potential for a new kind of 'radical empathy' wherein the user can place themselves directly into the story of another, understanding the struggles of other people and emotions then invoke. I suspect these works will be a whiles down the line, after I have built up more 3D modeling and asset creation skill. That said, it is a vision that I fully hold myself to.