Erasmus can be boring. When my school year ended in June, I suddenly had a ton of free time (even though I wasn’t that busy before) with no ideas on what to do with it. Of course, I watched TV shows, YouTube, and played games, but after a while, I thought it would be a good idea to try and learn some creative, productive activities. It would also let me do something that isn’t my master’s thesis and not feel bad about just slacking off. Ahem. But that’s beside the point.

So, I quickly want to go through all the activities that helped me pass the time towards the end of my Erasmus. And this time, we’ll add some photos too! You can even click on them to zoom in (even though for the zoomed in version I was unable to show the caption — pull requests are welcome!). Only the most modern technology for my blog.

Guitar#

When my parents came to visit at the end of winter, they brought my guitar with them. When I was little, I played a lot and went to music school regularly, even if I didn’t want to. I’d say I did pretty well at my recitals and usually got a decent round of applause from parents and grandmas in the audience. In high school, however, I lost my desire to play and didn’t touch a guitar for a long time. In uni, I’d occasionally pick it up when I felt musical or sometimes I’d strum a few chords at a campfire, but it wasn’t very often.

I missed my guitar a lot in Norway, so I was happy to finally have it with me again. I mainly played things I already knew, but I also tried some new songs. I was completely out of practice and wasn’t very good, but I still enjoyed it. The main problem, however, turned out to be that we didn’t live alone, and I’m too shy to practice new things when my roommates are constantly walking around. In the end, I didn’t stick with playing for very long, and my family took it back with them to Czechia when they came for a holiday in July to make my move in September easier.

Writing#

I’ve got a pretty long history with writing, too. Even as a kid, I was always writing something, making up different characters and stories with very unoriginal plots. After all, my Wattpad account still exists, even though I’ve half-lost access to it (I have to email support about once a year so they don’t delete it). I’ve always enjoyed creative writing, and when I get into a good wave of inspiration, I can write all day.

That’s why I started this blog in June. The initial idea was to describe my rather unusual health situation and give my friends and family a way to peek into my life without having to ask complicated questions. The topic of the hospital and treatment turned out to be a really rich source of inspiration, and my first posts focused on it just flew out of me in a few days without any major writer’s blocks. It’s actually therapeutic to be able to share all these things that my partner and I had been dealing with mostly on our own. And another fun part for me was that I can host the blog so easily (and for free!) through GitHub Pages, so even though I haven’t coded in a long time, I still feel at least a little bit like the programmer I’m supposed to be.

Fake programming in full swing. The photo is from my phone instead of a screenshot to make it look more interesting.

After a few health-related posts, though, I started thinking that it was all terribly negative. How can I expect others to keep reading my sad stories and have their good moods ruined by them? I also don’t want it to look like I’m in the hospital all the time and I don’t do anything else, because that’s definitely not the case. The problem is with creating more positive posts. When it comes to treatment, I’m confident that it’s quite interesting and can hopefully hold the reader’s attention, but with regular everyday thoughts, I’m worried it won’t be as interesting. But in the end, I told myself, “What’s the harm?” It’s better to write something than to agonize for months over whether anyone will read it. So here I am, writing this, and maybe it will be worth something.

Photography#

During their second visit, my parents also brought me a birthday present, a new Motorola phone. I chose it mainly because it’s smaller than my old Xiaomi, and it’s supposed to be powerful and had generally good reviews. But it also has a very good camera. So, when I was in the mood, I tried taking photos of different things, and I hope to keep improving over time.

At the same time, I hope my amateur photos can also serve as a showcase of interesting things and places I’ve come across here since my birthday (July 18th). So I’ll try to put up a few pictures here and at least test if this part of the blog works.

A beautiful midnight sunset shot from the balcony of our old apartment.

A photo of Gloshaugen and Studentersamfundet from the pedestrian and cyclist bridge over the Nidelva river, which we only discovered after seven months.

Cool arcade games we just went to look at because we're too broke to play.

Mini-golf with interesting interactive levels and magical blue lighting.

A pretty two-toned flower of an unknown species that I found in front of the hospital.

An amazing handmade flask from the game Outer Wilds that my friends made for my birthday.

I don’t know if this is particularly praiseworthy, but I’m happy to be able to share my favorite photos here at least. I’m a bit bummed that I didn’t take the photography course that was offered here at the start of my Erasmus. Maybe it would be nice to take a course sometime when I’m back home in Ostrava.

Drawing#

Another thing I wanted to get into was drawing. My laptop has a touchscreen, so it can also be used as a graphics tablet. A few months ago, I tried some digital art using the graphics program Krita. My original plan was to draw a set of flowers from Minecraft, and I started with one of my favorites, the Azure Bluet. After a few days of working on this picture, I kind of lost interest, maybe because my skill issues with Krita combined with my perfectionism forced me to spend a huge amount of time on relatively pointless things. Unfortunately, I never managed to get to the shadows.

The final state of my attempt to draw a Minecraft flower. Its real appearance in the game can be seen on the label in the pot.

If I were to go back and try again, more realistically, I’d probably reduce the overall size of the pot and the number and size of the flowers in it. Just a few would probably be enough, and they could be bigger; then I might not get burned out so quickly during the creation process.

After moving to the new apartment (which was rented to us by an Irish interior designer, so it’s overflowing with creative inspiration), I wanted to give drawing a second chance. This time, I decided to try again but start from the very basics. I found a simple-looking video that focuses on the absolute beginnings of digital drawing and shows a manageable 30-day plan. I told myself I was a speedrunner, so I’d do it in 15 days, two drawings each day. Below are some of my favorites.

Day three, my first attempts at creating more complex shapes and shading them.

Day four, I really like the little eyeballs here.

Day five, not that interesting, more just for the count.

Day six, here I finally felt like my circles were starting to be actually circular.

In the end, unfortunately, I didn’t finish this drawing challenge, I only got to day seven. In part, I started to get really annoyed that my laptop’s monitor seemed to be crooked, so I was drawing crooked lines not by my own fault but by the laptop’s. It was frustrating. And the main reason was another creative activity that I got into much more, and I told myself I’d rather focus on that. So that’s the last thing we’ll talk about here.

Pixel Art#

My friends and I have been saying for a while now that we’d like to try and make a game someday (and ideally, finish it). In the end, one friend and I agreed we’d try to code a simple, short game that would be perfect for a pixel art style. As the more artistic person of the two of us, I immediately took on that job, bought and downloaded the great tool Aseprite, and got started with pixel drawing.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about our game, especially in case we don’t manage to reach a successful end (which, of course, won’t happen, but you can never be too careful). But the pictures and animations I’ve created in the last few days are something I want to show off at least a little. I’m a total beginner, but I think they look nice anyway.

I started with simple characters, which aren’t really worth sharing yet. To learn to work with larger resolutions (this image is an incredible 128x128 pixels), I tried drawing a forest in the moonlight. The picture was originally supposed to have more things, but in the end, I was so intimidated by it that I left it in an unfinished state, and I didn’t even finish some of the shadows. Even so, I think it’s a decent attempt, and I’d like to go back to it someday.

One of the first things I wanted to try: a simple forest scene with a monochromatic palette.

Then I dove into simple items and their animations. These are things I’m quite proud of — for first attempts, they’re animated pretty smoothly, and hopefully it’s easy to understand what I was trying to convey. Each of these animations could take me several hours, it’s a great way to kill time.

The bow was the first thing I animated. I'm especially proud of using a *smear frame*, which adds a sense of motion and power to the arrow's release.

The dagger was simple -- it just speeds up, flies for a bit, slows down, and then breaks. The fluttering string took me the most time.

The berry just wiggles its leaves for a bit and then bounces like a piece of gelatin.

I really like the coin -- it sparkles nicely and can also crash into things (with a bit of dynamic motion) and break.

Everything is relatively simple in Aseprite, and I’m really happy with the results. How the game itself is doing is another matter. It’s going great, I swear. For fun, I also want to show the sprite sheet for the bow animations, as a little peek behind the scenes.

Each animation is on a new row. As a bonus, the arrow itself is included too.

This is a real asset that the game can work with and animate. I’m really enjoying the whole process so far. I think I’ve put together a very nice palette, and everything more or less fits together. When we finish the game one day, I think the graphics could look really nice. Of course, I still have a lot to improve on. But the main thing is that I’m having fun and it’s helping me get through the last few weeks I have left here. After all, there’s less than a month to go, and then we’re heading home.

So that’s all for my activities#

So, this was a quick overview of my attempts to stay creative and productive now that I have so much free time. I think I’ll miss this time a little, but on the other hand, I’m really looking forward to getting back to school and work, where I won’t have to find my own assignments and motivation. But I hope that even with that, I’ll still have time for some occasional creative hobbies.

I hope you liked today’s more positive post, I’m happy I could share it with you.