iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Pico-8 is super cool but you gotta be down to code everything and I mean *everything* Very capable (looking at the examples people have made!) but also that means all from scratch 🫠 and probably will want to code in an external editor and copy+paste or import because the pixel font is an eye sore

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Des Walsh @deswalsh.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

When the genAI stuff started to pick up steam a couple years ago I changed to do this with artists and refence and other forms of inspiration. The tech strips people away from their work, the data it feeds on but we can be the opposite we can credit, lift and just celebrate each other with no effort

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This is my work in progress on a puzzle adventure game in the style of Myst(1993) made in Godot. It's been a great learning experience, and Godot has proven to be excellent as a low-footprint, high-functionality game engine giving me all I need to create the game.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Right now I'm using many instances of objects, but the texture maps are quite large which is ballooning the size of the project a bit too much for my liking. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments! I'd be happy to answer them if I can.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Ideally later on once I have everything laid out, I'll remodel the environment and split it into chunks that can be culled easily to save on texture memory and performance.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This is about 3 weeks work, if anyone is curious. I utilized some free assets from the Godot store such as the day/night cycle, dither effect and water shader. Although all have been customized for my use cases. The models are a mix of things I made myself, models I bought or free models.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

But, it being fully 3D behind the scenes, I have all the advantages of real-time lighting! I just got the inventory UI working, shown here as a bunch of generic books. Next is implementing actually picking up items, being able to inspect items, starting to work on the first few puzzle integrations.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

With my game, I'm trying to capture that retro aesthetic with fixed camera angles, a dithering compositor effect and low-fi sfx. I even limited the FPS to 12 to get that jerky motion found in pre-rendered video of the Myst era.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Myst was probably my earliest memory of a captivating computer game, and I always loved how they managed to create such an engaging and interesting world with the technology at the time.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The project has gotten me flexing my programming abilities and I'm constantly learning new things. Better object oriented programing techniques and ways to handle implementing all the varied features I'd like to have.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Day to Night, dithered. (sped up to see the difference)

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Day to Night, dithered. (sped up to see the difference)

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Manually cutting out a bunch of custom modular map tiles for D&D.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Manually cutting out a bunch of custom modular map tiles for D&D.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Still can't believe they turned the idea of what if The Dollars Trilogy but Star Wars into what if a Boba Fett became a dad to a baby yoda and they went on adventures together... forever

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Ok genuinely enjoying the last third of this because despite still very much being Star Wars it's not just doing the "GUYS REMEMBER STAR WARS" as much and actually has some fun unique sequences. The fight with the two big robots was pretty neat, and the Hutts wrestling. Friks coming to the rescue...

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Stephen McKinley Henderson as Gatori Get it? Because he looks kind of like an Alligator

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Grogu walks with a cane despite being a baby because REMEMBER YODA YOU GUYS! Also, can move an entire human body with force powers but cannot grab a fish off a hook with them.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Grogu hides Mando from the droids under some leaves, when there is the technology to y'know see heat signatures and stuff. Sure, whatever.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Jabbas: take Mando's Helmet to sell on the black market and to dishonor him Also Jabbas: throw helmet into the pit with still-alive Mando

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Grogu is rescuing Mando with a bunch of Babu Friks. This is so dumb.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Still can't believe they turned the idea of what if The Dollars Trilogy but Star Wars into what if a Boba Fett became a dad to a baby yoda and they went on adventures together... forever

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

And then this random side character gets a full head and prosthetics only to look like devil priest. Just weird man.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

While I think Grogu as a puppet is cute and endearing, it's weird that there are so many other characters that could have benefitted from just makeup and prosthetics and they just went full CG. Like the Mandalorian's Pilot/helper/whatever.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I'm watching The Mandalorian and Grogu, out of curiosity They really dropped the ball with turning this into a big Star Wars and not keeping the simple Spaghetti Western stylings. It really shows in the mismatch of the Mandalorian musical Theme being juxtaposed with these big sci-fi set pieces

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I get more traction on LinkedIn than here with my art btw. Not that it’s led to any work, but Im suprised that on Bluesky I barely get any engagement, save for a retweet every so often by a thoughtful follower with more followers than me. Just saying, it’s be nice to have more eyes on my stuff 🥲

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Hex map Island example. I might need to make more cell types to get the fully fledged features Im looking for but this was such a cool first step to get done! Really happy with the result

Printed hexagonal map tiles creating an island 1

Printed hexagonal map tiles creating an island 2

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Hex map Island example. I might need to make more cell types to get the fully fledged features Im looking for but this was such a cool first step to get done! Really happy with the result

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Made a modular hex grid map for my D&D campagne. I’ll be sure to post some examples once I get them all cut up

Pages of hexagonal map grid cells, yet to be cropped.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

10/10🧵 If you read this thread all the way through, thank you! Feel free to share your experiences with this in the comments, repost my work or reach out to chat! :)

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

9/10🧵 This is about 10hrs of work so far, and will likely be another 20 before it's completed. It may not be efficient, but the process continues to be extremely meditative and satisfying, and I think the result will be superior to the version I made from the Al generated reference image.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

8/10🧵 The contrast on the reference is high to easily pick out highlights and shadow for the initial pass, while filling in the mid tones will be mostly using my own line work rather than the reference.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

7/10🧵 I put together my reference in Blender using free 3D assets but deliberately left many details out (on the character specifically) to be filled in as I work.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

6/10🧵 With this piece, Im using a single pencil brush that allows for some variation with tilt and pressure but greatly limits how quickly I can work on filling in the illustration. I have to be patient and diligent.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

5/10🧵 It's been important for me lately, when working digitally on illustrations, to approximate as best I can that which I enjoy about traditional methods. To go back to my roots, as it were.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

4/10🧵 I even experimented (with this very illustration, previously) to create the reference using Al but still doing the final illustration from a blank canvas. Still, it did not end up feeling fully mine, and that I was laundering someone else's work off as my own.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

3/10🧵 Having experimented with generative Al on and off for the past few years, I saw all of this really start bubbling up. Sure, it made nice results depending on the prompt, but it was robbing me of much of the enjoyment of solving problems myself and executing the final result to its fullest.

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⭕️ Red Hed 🔴 @patrickcaldes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

2/10🧵 So, I learned software since it provided many shortcuts. Textured brushes, filters, layers, macros. But I found the more I tried to create workflows to expedite the creation process, the less creating I actually ended up doing.

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