In my last post I talked about dusting off Illustrator and jumping back into vectoring. But before putting up anything new, I wanted to raid my old stash of anime girl vectors and put them online.

Yorokobe, weeb – and for the rest of you normal visitors, brace yourselves – for today is the day. You can now find my old work under Projects → Current Projects → Vector Art. Or if you're terminally lazy, you can click here.

Timestamp apocalypse

At some point about 10 years ago, my files got moved around so much that every modification date got wiped. All completely leveled, as if my entire vectoring career happened on the same Tuesday.

And of course, this was after I'd already done most of my work.
(TL Note: by 2015 I was basically retired.)
(TL Note #2: I'm ancient. Holy shit.)

Luckily, I clawed back a few dates with this massive beast of an incantation:

exiftool -r -json \
    -ext png \
    -ext svg \
    -ext ai \
    -api largefilesupport=1 \
    -d '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S' \
    -FileName \
    -FileModifyDate \
    -CreateDate -ModifyDate -DateCreated \
    -XMP:CreateDate -XMP:ModifyDate -XMP:MetadataDate -XMP:HistoryWhen \
    -PNG:CreationTime -PNG:ModifyDate -PNG:DateCreate -PNG:DateModify \
    -SVG:Date -SVG:Metadata \
    -PDF:CreateDate -PDF:ModDate \
    ~/path/to/my/vectors

That dig revealed the earliest survivors were from 2009. Peak nerd years, peak anime binging, peak vector output. Checks out.

The good, the bad, and the horny

Some of it still looks damn good – like that Ilya from Fate/Stay Night, which somehow survived both bitrot and my questionable taste:

Other pieces, honestly top-tier work. But… also dripping with fanservice; no nudity, just enough skimpy outfits and suggestive angles to make me wince today. Hey, we all were once young, okay? Anyway, they stay locked in the vault where they belong.

And the rest? Pure filler. Quick traces with barely any gradients, stiff poses, flat expressions. The kind of thing you'd scroll past without a second glance. Honestly, I can't imagine why I bothered to draw half of them.

From thread fodder to town square

Back then I was grinding away in threads with a half-life of twelve hours. Blink and your post was buried, so the game was speed and volume – crank out another trace, another shiny gradient, another waifu to feed the queue.

Fifteen years later, I'm still clinging to those files like precious artifacts. About half survived the shame filter, and they're online now. And yeah, I know it's a funny thing to say right after I broke my years-long retirement with exactly one (1) fresh file – but still. The mindset has shifted. I don't need the horny engine anymore to make something worth doing. This time, I want to slow down, polish until it gleams, maybe even dare some originals instead of just traces (!!)

So, the plan now is simple: fewer vectors, better vectors. More work I can actually be proud to hang in the town square without, you know, feeling like I plastered a body pillow on city hall.

(Not that I'm swearing off bikinis forever: you can leave the basement, but the basement never fully leaves you.)