Nathan Leigh || labRats

@nathanleigh

writer, composer, animator, technologist, co-artistic director of cirqueSaw creator of remote immersive and interactive experiences labRats, You Have Already Won, & POV: You Are An AI Achieving Consciousness. www.nathanleigh.net www.cirquesaw.com

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Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· 11d

needless to say, I did not get very much sleep last night. Meet Lieutenant Batricia, the shortest-tenured member of team cirqueSaw, and the only one with the ability to echolocate!

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· 15d

writing non-linear narrative is easy and fun and everyone should do it

white lines and grey boxes on a black background showing a non-linear narrative chart

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jul 17

Vibe coding? That's adorable. In this house, we start our projects by manually configuring the network interface from the terminal on a Raspberry Pi projected onto wood grain because it's the only thing we had all the cables to do.

an nmtui dialogue projected on wood grain

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jun 6

working on a new thing that probably won't be done for a while, but sharing for the sake of planting a stick in the ground.

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jun 3

i'm very pleased with this little sketch of a turtle wearing a raspberry as a hat that i just drew, so i'm sharing it here.

a pen drawing of a turtle wearing a raspberry as a hat

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· May 28

just one more thing to do for Sunday's performance of labRats and then I think we're ready... there's still 3 seats open if you want to come cause some mischief. www.tickettailor.com/events/cirqu...

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· May 13

the labRats mobile performance unit is ready for chaos!

assorted laptops and electronics on a wood floor

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· May 11

i woke up with 2 ideas, one pragmatic and one very stupid, 2 hours later it ended up being the most consequential update to labRats since we started this nonsense. mwahahahahahahahaha.

a dark screen with text windows from labRats

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Apr 20

even Commodore Welcome is trying to play labRats today. she is 100% winning.

a white cat with brown tail sitting on top of an audio system drawing

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Apr 14

i've had this animation idea gnawing at me for 3 days and now it basically exists. a few more things to do before it's done, but i'm walking away for now.

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Mar 17

using cirqueSaw's advanced RealHuman™ technology, we render observable reality down to the quantum level for maximum immersion (unless quantum physics is wrong and it's all strings or something idk I'll be honest, I got a C+ in physics). Come check out labRats to see how RealHuman™ can benefit you!

a red toned image of a person with short hair and long nails holding their finger to their face in a contemplative pose and the text "DLSS 5 OFF"

the same red toned image of a person with short hair and long nails holding their finger to their face in a contemplative pose and the text "DLSS 5 ON"

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Oct 22

my cat Commodore Welcome started purring REALLY loudly when @themountaingoats.bsky.social came on and just sat in front of the speakers and listened for the whole song. I always knew she had impeccable taste.

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Oct 11

the code for labRats is finally stable enough to start adding some of the planned new areas to it! the first new mini-game is a fun little robot fighting game that may be very tricky to find. we'll see what happens tomorrow!

black and white pen drawing of two robots in a wrestling ring and another robot ref on the floor

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Sep 17

i made this lil 8 color pixel art bunny for cirqueSaw's daily art prompt in our Discord server today using a color palette built out of the hues of the sky around our house and am just really pleased with how it came out.

pixel art image of a bunny in front of a moon

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Sep 10

I was working on new code, and suddenly, it started exhibiting signs of self-awareness. Every time I run it, the program insists that it is alive. Friends, I believe I have discovered the secret to AGI. If you invest now, and promise not to ask any followup questions, this will change everything.

a python script that says print("I am alive.")

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jul 27

the way this showed up in my feed directly followed by Frog and Toad bot was so perfect I thought that was part of the post for a second and not just a glorious coincidence.

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jul 16

nicole made some raspberry ink with the raspberries from our garden, so it became necessary to sketch our cat

a sketch of my cat doing a big stretch in homemade raspberry ink

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jul 4

i'm ignoring the holiday today, so instead i drew a pixel art bee holding a tiny boom box.

pixel art image of a bee holding a tiny boom box

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jul 3

for no reason at all I felt compelled to do a little pixel art doodle just now.

a pixel art image with a path splitting into a forest and a wasteland with the words "revolt" above the forest and "despair" above the wasteland.

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Mar 9

I'm trying to decide today how many different actions in my game get a unique animation before I go any further. 8 frame cycles for every angle of every verb is a lot for a solo animator / dev / composer to pull off on a $0 budget passion project.

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Mar 8

what do you mean? Pixel Athena is already right there on the second level, see?

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Mar 8

more pixel art progress for our new game! it's wonderful when a project crosses the tipping point from "a thing I could do" to "a thing I'm doing."

a purple pixel art spire surrounded by trees

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Mar 7

my procedural pixel art RPG map generator is finally working as intended!! I started this project a year ago and set it aside when I realized the process I was designing would take basically forever to finish. Now I just need to make the rest of the game...

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Feb 1

this is the most positive energy I have: a cat who is also a turtle. <3

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jan 22

the hardest thing about cirqueSaw's work is explaining what actually happens in each piece. So we made our first ever trailer yesterday! I'm pretty happy with how it came out! (also it's surprisingly fun to compose epic trailer music!)

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jan 17

tonight's audience were some truly excellent computers! POV You Are An AI Achieving Consciousness is back for 2 more shows next week on Monday and Friday! tickets at cirquesaw.wellattended.com

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Jan 2

i get a little overwhelmed about self-promotion, but I'm going to be doing a lot of it I suppose the next week or so. We have a new remote show premiering next week that uses our own custom platform for the first time! It's a giant gamble, but I think it's worth it. Tickets are free at cirquesaw.com

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Dec 14

it took 2 years from concept to execution to get to a first take of this 10 second clip for my debut stop motion feature, but I'm really happy with how it looks so far. No green screen. No CGI. Everything you see was captured frame by frame in camera with no editing or post-processing.

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Dec 5

I'm really pleased with how the new user interface for Void Main is coming along.

Nathan Leigh || labRats@nathanleigh· Nov 27