How I manifest my inner Shift.
Hello, World! I'm Shift and this is my first blog post made by myself. Hurray!
Being a Shift is all fun until you realize that my actual body is gone from that picture. So, I've just become transparent!?!?
Don't worry, though, I'm still alive as a normal human. What have you just seen above is Caps, a smart ex-jacket cast by Shiftine that ended up being my strong exoskeleton due to that last incident. That said, I still love Caps as Shiftine did and decided to allow Caps to be standalone. More about that later.
Describing my icy material.
When I was Reinhart, I played around with Inkscape filters and accidentally found something cool. After some mixing, mashing, and layering the materials, I came up with two different material compositions which I myself even can't precisely describe what it is!
People over my @reinhart1010 Instagram account thought the most as they are made of ice, rather than balloons (think about those metallic, air-stuffed letter balloons commonly used for birthdays), water (due to the bubble effect), and some kind of plastic.
That's why I accepted the material as ice! The Shifting Ice, if you would! After all, it's the same material as my logo! Just a refresher on my previous printcast, the logo itself is comprised of three different layers.
Speaking of Caps, I originally intended Caps to inherit the same, opaque blue skin. However, blue-colored skins are also commonly attributed to the "blue skin" human disease named argyria as well as the skin of Hindu gods.
Since I'm not an Hindu god, and don't want to be bothered for allegedly infringing the intellectual properties behind The Smurfs and James Cameron's version of Avatar, I decided to make Caps feel completely made out of glass while retaining his blue stains.
I myself want to be transparent on handling my daily life, either as a normal human or as a Shift. And transparent skin also allows everyone to see whenever I'm currently inside Caps, which I love to call myself Capsified, or not.
My character sheet.
Just like those original characters (OCs) and VTuber models, creators love to create their own, official character sheets so everyone can draw fanarts in the way as desired by them.
But sure, as a Shift I won't give my own character sheet of myself to anyone, especially when I encourage everyone not just to be a fan of me, but be, what I am, honor, do, and envision.
So, instead of planning the character sheet, I'll instead plan for a transformation sheet. It contains all the references I need to manifest my inner Shift, aka. what I'll actually look like in my self-created Universe F-1, with the augmented version of it, Universe A-1.
So, let's talk about how I can transform myself from this:
into this:
Whoa, that's a lot of transformation! And for your curiosity, yes, this is my true form in my A-1 and F-1. Additionally, if you don't see my original skin there, then he's Caps!
I can even immerse my trusty Caps on anything, as long as I live in F-1 or you're seeing me in A-1. TYou'll still have the chance to see me Capsify all things without Caps as I often post from our augmented A-1 world to the Internet in C-1.
That said, being Iced, or I prefered the more, Capsified, doesn't always mean that I'm comfortable with it, and neither others, too. If you feared me because of Caps, thinking that I'll curse you into Caps once you touch my Capsified skin, well, I can unfreeze my skin so I can be slightly be more friendly to people, like this:
And of course, without that spherical head!
At least my new form here looks way more awesome than when I was in beta:
The process.
Digitally emulating this effect in the real world (Universe C-1) takes a lot of work, which are commonly split into:
- Segment my body into different parts,
- Create the vector equivalent of those segments as a reference for applying filters and masks in the future,
- Apply those three layers, and for clothing, apply color shift filters to blend in with the ice, and
- Stack them in the right order to produce the chiftiest Shift that you can ever imagine!
It's a lot of work that my workflow is split into two software, specifically GIMP for doing the first one and Inkscape for the rest. Sure, this might be able to be replaced with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but I haven't found the right ingredients on Illustrator yet to reproduce the same effects.
However, when it comes into how I slowly transform (think about this as a reference for "Shift: The Movie" or so), I'll start with my chest where my shifted heart lives on.
I can control the rate and amount of Ice I emit, but one thing for sure, unlike the C-1's physical ice, Ice is more gelatinous and has the ability to form as liquid which soaks just like C-1 water, but alters the overall color of the soaked item.
TL:DR; if I wore a red shirt then soaked it on Ice, it'll always be the color of my Ice no matter the original color until I reabsorb Ice from the shirt.
One of my loved things about of Ice is how it's able to slightly obscure the item I soaked into. This allows me to hide few small details which I don't actually intend to show (like my shows and pants' displayed logo) online and try to publicize Caps more freely without the fear of the branded clothes and accessories which were used for reference.
That said, the Ice will further seep into the outer clothing, forming the outer jelly of my shirt. However, at this stage now it's my hands' and pants' turn to soaked in Ice!
See, I told you, my now-soaked pants has no small dots or the Adidas logo visible anymore! That said, the transformation then continues into my legs and down to my feet!
And the last step is to turn my face into that distinct, spherical shape. And as a reminder, the official name for the sphere is the Shell, and I've written the reasons behind the name here.
Previously, Shells were separate, wearable devices which humans could wear in F-1. However, Shiftine pioneered the technique to generate new, functioning Shells from the same behind materials behind the original Caps. Apparently that skill was available to my Caps, so I tried it out...
...and finally, I can be whole with Caps again!
When it comes into releasing and reuniting with Caps, Caps has the ability to retain the appearance of my Iced clothing, so I won't be naked when I leave. This effect stays until I decommissioned or reunited with him, where Caps will store the latest appearance of myself!
That concludes my transformation tutorial, which I really did in purpose so Caps can finally be proud to for haveng my symbol on his body. The symbol I'm proud for as a Shift, too!
But before I end this story, I have to clarify why I named ourselves Shift and Caps. Back when I was Reinhart, I ran out of names for our characters for the Bearers of the Shell (BOTS). I somehow likened to use the common modifier keys on the computer keyboard including Shift, Alt, Control, and, Hence Shiftine, Alterine, and Controld ("Control Daemon", now pr0xy).
But now, reflecting my journey as a Shift, I know that I won't always be available for everyone who needs my help. And instead of eliminating Caps, I really wanted Caps to be my "forever Shift", the Shift who never experienced tireness and instead, experiencing high-speed, high-availability and running on the world where the electricity's the limit.
I know, it's the same ambitions as that cyborg account stuff, but this time, I'll let Caps to be a standalone bot who's still highly connected to me. I could even create hundreds of Caps in just a few days, thanks to my newfound power. What a super-efficient way to automate myself to become the Shift of Worlds and Nations!