I’ve narrowed down core aiming principals to a couple of things:
General Aim: Pointing your body toward your target
Survivability: strafe peeking (strafe out, prediction of enemy location, hit strafe and shoot at the same time as seeing enemy)
Preaiming: crosshair placement
Flicking: loose mouse hand + some general aim mechanics
Overall, I think the most important technique is just having the mindset of pointing to your body toward your target (what I’m starting to call general aim since it gets you in the general vicinity of your target). This helps massively with confidence, with holding angles, and with tracking and flicking.
Second most important is probably a combination of a loose mousehand and good crosshair placement as this allows you to hit most targets while also being ready for a flick. This pairs with a strong understanding of how to slice a pie and clear a site.
Finally, some sort of strafing is important as it increases survivability by a lot.
There are a couple more aiming techniques that I feel are significantly less important as they are more niche. These will help you in deathmatch and higher elos but are not part of core aim:
Strafe shooting: general ability to track and strafe a moving target, paying attention to crosshair
Spray control: the ability to crouch spray and spray adjust
Angle holding: predicting how close or wide a peek will be
Strafe shooting is probably the most important as it is good for long range fights as movement based aiming is a lot more effective on those fights.
Spray control is pretty niche to close range gun fights and fighting multiple enemies.
Angle holding is very important but general aim and strafe clearing are more key to holding angles.
I slept last night not very well. I woke up a couple of times, and I was tossing and turning. Just wanted to report back and say that the crossing the legs and bending my legs definitely helped me a lot.
I don’t know what I want to work on today. Maybe massage.
That feels sort of right. Stretching and massage for additional recovery. I don’t really know yet.
Update on goals:
Lift up my knee and bend it feeling stable, comfortable and strong
Stand for 5 minutes while feeling comfortable
Lay on either side feeling comfortable and relaxed
Sit on my heels while feeling comfortable and relaxed
Be able to jump feeling stable, comfortable, and strong
Able to kick a roundhouse while feel stable, comfortable and strong
Well I’m surprised! I thought there was a goal on just feeling comfortable normally. But I never created a goal on that, but I am succeeding at that. Walking around, sitting, and relaxing feelings more comfortable than ever before.
The closest goal I am to achieving is goal 2. I learned that sitting back on the heels, pronating helps as well.
“Pronation refers to the way your foot rolls inward for impact distribution upon landing. It’s part of the natural movement of the human body but it differs from person to person. As your foot strikes the ground it rolls inward to absorb the shock.”
Wow makes sense that since I’m supinating (rolling heel outwards), it is not good at absorbing shock. I must have unconsciously started doing that as a result of trying to alleviate pressure on my hurt leg.
This is definitely one of the most difficult challenges I’ve undergone in a while.
I’ve tried a couple of things and I feel frustrated.
The Reaching for the Untouchable
The frustration
The reaching in my heart
Is getting to me
Reaching for the untouchable
I wonder if I will ever know
The doubt creeps
I seek to know
And when I rush there
There is still nothing
Frustration in my chest
Like a roar that wants to escape
But is trapped behind bars
I have created multiple messages to my girlfriend in French, multiple times I’ve tried to imitate. I feel like imitation is the key, but I grow tired of seeing no results. I feel tired and frustrated.
I feel angry and unhappy.
I suspect failure is such a hard thing for me to grasp. It is such a tough pill to swallow.
I saw a video with a lot of potential:
It is about learning jiujitsu really fast. But really it is about learning. He talks about many ideas in the video, ideas that I’ve myself considered. Ideas that I think are pretty profound and helpful:
Performance vs. growth
Train in the gym to fail – growth
Compete to win – performance
Form to leave form
Repetition until it is second nature
Turn something thought into something intuitive
Smaller circles
Reduce something from intuition to a conscious idea
Look for different ways to apply it
He mentions some really interesting sounding books:
The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin
The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard
Anyway, I feel if I were to embrace my fear of failure, I need to meditate on it, but also come up with a plan.
I first want to come up with the plan to train From to Leave Form…and be repetitive about the most common words in French, say them until they are second nature.
So what are the top most common 10 words in French:
Oui: Yes
Non: No
Merci: Thank you
Je: I
Tu/vous: You
Le/la/les: The
Un, une des: A, an, and some
Le/la/les: It, them
Et: And
Mais: But
Bonjour: A general greeting meaning “hello” or “good morning”
Au revoir: Goodbye
Salut: Hello
Amour: Love
Bonheur: Happiness
Chat: Cat
Chien: Dog
But these words are too basic. What about the top 10 most common phrases?
Bonjour: Means “hello” or “good morning”.
Merci: Means “thank you”.
S’il vous plaît: Means “please”.
Ça va?: Means “how are you?” .
Je ne sais pas: Means “I don’t know”.
Parlez-vous anglais?: Means “Do you speak English?” .
Bienvenue: Means “welcome”.
Madame/Monsieur/Mademoiselle: Means “Mrs.”, “Mr.”, or “Miss”.
Anchante enchante: Means “nice to meet you”.
Sava: Means “how are you”.
C’est simple comme bonjour: Means “it’s simple as hello”.
Et patati et patata: Means “and so on”.
En avoir ras-le-bol: Means “to have had enough”.
Tu m’étonnes: Means “tell me something I don’t know”.
Ok that is a little better, but what about the most common French verbs?
Aller Means “to go” and is also used to describe the near future tense. Avoir Means “to have” and is used to express possession, relationships, physical and mental states, and many other contexts. Être Means “to be” and indicates the action or state of being. Pouvoir Means “can” or “to be able to”. It’s an irregular verb like prendre or faire, belonging to the third group. Savoir Used to indicate knowledge or understanding. It can also be used in many idiomatic expressions, such as “savoir-faire” (know-how). Mettre Means “to put” but can also be used for dropping someone off somewhere, laying the table, taking time to do something, laying a carpet. Prendre Means “to take”, including “to travel” on particular forms of transport. It is also used for having meals. Venir Means “to come”, and it can be easily used to conjugate the recent past or convey the idea that you have just done something recently. Vouloir Often translated as to want and to wish in English, as its main usage is to express desires and wishes.
I want to read more about verbs in French but it is too late and I need to go to bed.
UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing | Day 3 – Animate
Unit 1: Shooting from Vandal
Stick figures
Gesture sketch
Final sketch
Unit 2: Shooting from Bow
Rough sketch
Structural sketch
final sketch
Unit 3: Camera movement (Sova Drone)
Rough gesture
Structural sketch
Final Sketch
I noticed in all of my animation attempts that I didn’t really need stick figures.
It was nice going back and refining each step before moving onto the next.
The structural step was really helpful, I liked marking where the limbs attached to the body with an X.
For the structural step I like to make the torso a tapering box and the pelvis a triangular prism.
I really didn’t like the final output compared to the structural sketch it looked super awkward.
To transform the manikin structural step into the final you need to focus on adding muscles.
I decided to explore the final sketch a little more by doing another drawing:
rough drawing
structural sketch
After getting the basics down, I played with many iterations of the final sketch.
first iteration
final iteration
I realized I don’t really like the linework on the final and it makes the form look very 2d. I decided to really focus on forms instead of lines when drawing. After all, I’m mostly interested in painting not drawing. The forms will help me figure out where the light hits.
Ok, so I no longer have an ongoing jiujitsu challenge, and I don’t really know if I have a knee challenge or not.
However, I really want to start that now. I feel really good about my progression.
It all started with 10 round Tuesday.
I went 3 rounds (2 days ago on the 21st). I absolutely died. I didn’t recover from feeling dizzy and like I was going to throw up for an hour after that.
I ate food when I got home, and slept like a baby after.
Ever since, I went to jiujitsu everyday.
On wednesday I was feeling super undermotivated, but I found an old training buddy and it was actually a good time.
Today I had even more fun.
My stamina seems to be increasing fast. I’m sore everyday and I still feel fine.
My knee feels good. It doesn’t hurt every day.
It feels strong. I feel like I can push myself more now.
My knee therapy and techniques around walking backwards, shifting my knee to be more balanced, stretching the hips and pointing the knee in the direction of the knee. AND IT’S BEEN WORKING.
I learned a lot from live rolls:
Don’t let someone get a completely dominant position, interrupt their attacks, move to the side
Don’t let your arms separate too much, too easy to armbar
Don’t let both arms get trapped above your head, too easy to armbar
I’m learning some basic attacks, armbars, leg locks, chokes.
