Where's Spencer?

I've been working since the holiday, I promise 😅 work has gotten busy, and some other family stuff needed to be prioritized. I know it hasn’t been that long, but sadly content creation loves consistency.

Let me give a quick update on things I have been doing:

• Working on a render art challenge (see WIP below). I'm trying my hand at grease pencil. I did it for the "Default Cube: The Game" thumbnail, but this is way more ambitious. Really liking it so far!

  • If you're wondering, "Why take up an art challenge? Don't you have enough on your plate?" Firstly, how did you know 😄 but I'm also working on an add-on, working title "View to Grease Pencil." It doesn't just convert an object into grease pencil -- it projects it to the current view. So no extra mesh pieces -- it's all properly culled and handled. So I've been experimenting with it on this artwork.

  

  WIP “David and Goliath”-esque (it’s got a Dark Souls vibe tho, don’t it?)

• I'm planning for BCON NA, coming up in April. I may speak on my game or the grease pencil add-on, we'll see. So tentatively planning for that.

• Figuring out my video for this month. It was initially my long-awaited "Visualizing room acoustics with Blender", but the freelancer I'm working with has had quite a few life events blocking him, so he hasn't finished. I don't have a lot of time, so it'll probably be more low-effort this month. Some options I'm thinking (let me know what you'd like to see!):

  • Talking about the above (finished) artwork + grease pencil add-on.

  • Last year's programming conference shared presentation slides, including two about Blender's rendering architecture. Figured that could be a good educational one to go over, sharing how they work under the hood.

  • More reflective or motivational (again), ie "Making art in 2026" kind of vid, answering other questions.

  Speaking of videos, some upcoming video ideas I have planned (no set time or order):

  • For my "Optimization in Blender" series, I have one planned around samples and noise, focusing on Cycles. It's kind of a "render optimization" tutorial, but focusing on why we wait so long: for samples to clear up, so denoising actually becomes effective. Really excited for that one.

  • Recording "course-worthy" tutorials -- basically a list of tips I've learned by making videos, after having worked with CG Cookie on my scripting course (I'm in the talks for another course, stay tuned!)

  • AI discussion, both in the art and coding worlds. They view it quite differently, which has been strange but also fascinating. I've actually been drafting and redrafting a script about this for several months now. Currently, it's how "no AI" or "AI is okay" isn't really enough anymore when it comes to rules and regulations around it. I was initially waiting for NoTheRobot's upcoming AI video to lead the discussion, but that hasn't happened and may not for a while. It’s a bold topic to want to discuss, especially when some viewers simply don’t like talking about it anymore, so we’ll see if I get around to it.

Let me know if any of these interest you! Happy January.