Zircon's Museum posts

Introducing the new partner program

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

As tradition with independent sites, linking to each other is great way to make them discoverable, and on Zircon's Museum™ it's little more ellaborate and with benefits, but first, how do YOU become my parthner?

First and foremost, you need a site. Not a strawpage or some bogus thing put toghetter from an youtube tutorial, it needs effort, beauty and value, second, you need a button/badge, an 88x31(i will include non-standard sizes if the badge is cool enough) image so i can put in the collection.

Now, with these conditions meet, in order to apply as a parthner you just need to DM me, zircon_2 on discord or ZirconUwU on twitter.

And what is the "benefit" i mentioned earlier? Simple, you will get your own theme! It will try to mimick the look and feel of your site, or the most prominent part, i will do the theme entirely on my own, if you want to help or suggest something just let me know. And not only that, you also get permission to use my themes on your site if you feel so inclined.

Is this thing on?

2025-11-08T00:00:00Z

It's been a while, wasn't it? Things didn't go very much as i expected, like how i got a massive burnout from making this site, but here we are, trough thick and think.

Well i did some extra renders here in there, nothing spetacular or extremely revolutionary as i imagined, frankly is like i have hit a wall, incapable of trully developing much further. What pissed me off was posting 3 emergency renders in a year, at least 2 of those were made in the same year and weren't rooting in my files like the "retarded sunset", with a very fitting name.

But the Ritsu birtday one was disgusting, i was really going insane and wondering if i could get away with something low effort with toonish-shading, very questionable of my part to do an experiment like this and the awnser is a resounding "NO", which is reliefing in the sense that there are still people with standards and taste but infuriating that i didn't find a cheat code to sucess, well besides using popular synths, speaking of which i am going to try experiment a little more, specially Defoko, i always wanted to do renders with her and her mini renascense thanks to synthv teto is indeed an interesting oportunity.

Back to the second topic, another thing that really got frustaded with myself is animation, i just can't fucking do it no matter how hard i try, it eithers look ridiculously choppy or i hit a stupid snag thanks to my fuckery with the models. Animation really seams like something with a good interest, judging by what passes as good nowdays, outside of MMD mind you, really simplistic shadings, with everything invested on the animation itself, voices and of course, humor, and overall a complete inverse of my skillset in 3D.

Dispite everything, i still stand by Ford's quote, if you ask the avarage voicesynth fan, or fuck it, the utaufag with a lot of esoteric knowlage what kind of fanart they would like to see of thier characters, nobody* would say "MMD models in photo-realistic lighting". But i do believe on what i do has potential, that something great can in fact be created by using a real 3D software and realist lighting. But alas, it may take some time for me to trully learn this, out of my ego and taste to not do 1 generic miku render a week or simply a skill issue.

You know something i been wating since 1 year after i learned MMD? A rival, someone who i would look foward to outmatching and they would try to match me as well, i believe it would be the motivation i need to re-invent myself and discover new techniques. The next statement may be extremely egocentric of my part, but i am yet to find a worthy opponent, few MMD users trully pushed the boundaries of what that software can do, but i never had the pleasure to cross paths with those individuals, and many have left art or the internet a long ago. But with blender? I don't think it's a fair comparison, aggainst the mmd noobies or even the legendary artists of old in most instances, MMD is in fact a glorified model viewer with animation support, and basic shading with the MME pluin, where as blender is simply THE industry standard generalist 3D software.

Now i did find some interesting people, some with the knowlage of Ritsu's existance and of 3D renderering, but never putting those two toghetter, voicesynth blender 3D artists(what a mouthfull) are popping up in recent times, to the popular synths of course, but it may one day trickle down into the depths of this fandom, as i hinted earlier they are mostly animators who make simple and funny(sometimes) skits, but in the japanese fandom i seen some absolutely insane and crazy stuff, a lot of eye candy with little substance sure, but still technically impressive. But nobody doing the exact thing i do, even back in my MMD days you would have some Ritsu artist here and there doing MMD renders, but i believe those guys left nowdays, or just became extremely innactive.

I gonna be honest, what i do is not hard, sure i may suffer a lot in some renders, get tired, get annoyed, get silly, but at the end of the day? Is not hard once you learn it, recently what i struggled most is ideas, and trying to do things that are new to me, i really don't get it how i am seamily the only one doing what i do. As i said before, is not hard, someone else could have gotten the same models and beat me to the punch, but in 2 whole years nobody ever tried. It's hard to imagine new talent getting here, considering the most obscure parts of the fandom are dying out and the populars synths are getting inflated a lot further than the bouble, and i guess is natural for artists gravitates towards this, it's what everyone is talking about, it's what's getting updated, it's what have new things coming out, it's what people are mastur- You get the idea.

I have been thinking a lot of moving out, searching for my fortune in some other fandom, but i just couldn't, not only is starting from 0 again, but i simply don't enjoy anything else to the point i want to make renders about it, i am in fact OBSESSED with utau and i can't see myself trully leaving unless something catastrophic that will tricke down into the utau sub-fandom happens, but i may just stay around, very bitter but still doing my own thing. I have considered the touhou fandom, it's really big with a lot of artists doing various things and quite similar to my line of work, but i still believe i could stand out, maybe meet the right group, form some bounds, stuff like this, the problem is that i don't like touhou very much, none of the characters really captivate me, to the point i want to do renders with them, they also aren't as much of a blank slate as most voicesynths are.

But to finish it off i don't think i am going anywhere any time soon, i am not as skilled as i should be, or have the "correct" mentality to make what is popular and in demand. I may have been late to the party, most of the great artists and events related to utau have already happen. But my works will transced my person and i will march foward until the very end.

What's next?

2025-07-22T00:00:00Z

Well, on the latest 2 posts i talked a bit about the site, but nobody starts a blog to talk about itself, right? So here i am going to lay some ideas of posts i have

Album of the month

Originally was something i had in a friendgroup, until everyone lost interest and i think the site is perfect for it, basically i would pick one album, distribute a download link, and talk about it, on the group we used to wait after everyone listened to the album and then talk about it but this wouldn't work here. The albums i picked would mostly be voicesynth, specifically utau related, i have a lot of things that are pseudo lost media or just not available on youtube so i think the album distribution itself would be interesting for those looking for original HQ utau songs.

I may or may not do individual songs, but i want the posts to be fairly long so i probably will refrain from that, but who knows?

The making-off

It's simple really, posts where i talk about the making off a specific render, tell about my inspirations, ideas, scraped things and show off beta images, not all of my renders are suitable or interesting for it, but the ones i do will make for very interesting posts.

I could also extend this to covers i guess, but currently my site doesn't have a space for them and it's really rare for me to make one, but who knows.

Headcanons

Probably the most boring and/or cringe of my ideas, i don't really demonstrate it but i have a lot of headcanons, and i guess a few ships but i woudn't call myself a shipper, honestly i have more hated ships than liked ones, whoever i will refrain to post negativity on this site, for now.

Conclusion

Anyway, if you have any other ideas for things for me to write on this site, or even do in general like a render feel free to message me.

Themes galore

2025-07-21T00:00:00Z

"Themes, themes, it's all you talk about!"

As you could have noticed if you have a functional scrollwheel, 2 fingers and javascript this site has a variety of themes, and on this post i will talk a little more about them.

Opressing Darkness & Empowering light

The respective light & dark theme, starting with the light one i used Nord colors for it, something i haven't seen done before, and even as a "i don't like my eyes burning at night" enjoyer i find the theme quite nice and i know there are squizophrenics out there who prefer light themes, so this is my response.

As for the dark theme my idea was to make something that would look interesting on oled screens, altrough i wouldn't consider the site really dark friendly, simply due to the gallery, as for the font it was just convinient, i was looking for NerdFonts compatible fonts and found the 3270 font at the top, it looks nice but very stylized, and i think it makes a cool edgy futuristic asthetic on the dark theme, but it may also work for a future theme one day.

Nord & Gnome

Starting with Nord, the default & first theme, as i said in the previously post it was choosen because it's my favorite linux theme, that i use on literally any software that has it available, also the colors of the former site, i just find it pretty and a good default. The gnome theme is literally Nord but green, that's it, i just wondered how hue-shifting the nord theme would look like so here it is, i quite like it, it's comfy and good on the eyes.

Rome

I had an idea for a medieval-ish theme, but i wanted something great, and what was greater than the Holy Roman Empire? Altrough this theme doesn't do it much justice, if i called the theme "chinese" i think people would have brought it, but oh well, i was planning on giving this theme a background, initially i planned Rome or a red sunset but neither satisfied me. Whoever i do plan on updating this theme with the inclusion of legate Namine Ritsu, if you are seeing Ritsu on your screen right now say hi to him.

Fair lady

This theme was heavily inspired and uses this Sekka Yufu artwork, the colors are just incredible, and who knew beige would look great with white? another thing that inspired me to do this theme is the Still alive in love song by FALL/lakeside, not only the song is great the visuals are full of soul and very inspired.

Aquamarine

So far one my favorite themes, i really like the ocean and light blue colors so i really had to put it toghetter in one theme, this was in fact the hardest theme i made so far, i did the background image in blender, it was harder figuring a way to make it do a smooth loop but that was impossible with a 4D texture so the animation looks like a curve, slightly changes and then reverts back to where it was. Another pain point was putting it in the site, you may be wondering why i called it an image, the .gif format is technically an image file that was hacked to be animated, but it's fucking ass so i used an animated .webp, that's right, webps support animation and they are fairly good at maintaning quality, not as a good as video format, for instance the original .mkv file is 9Mb, but converting it to webp goes to 26Mb, and this is a lossy conversion, making it lossless would go to 500Mb, but at least it maintains a good framerate and colors unlike gif, thecnically i could put the video itself as a background but is not very web friendly and i would need to change the theming system.

Conclusion

And those are all the themes i made for the site's launch, not sure how to handle new ones, i could just edit this post but i don't think it fits the "spirit" of a blogpost to willy-nilly edit stuff back. If you have suggestion for themes write them in guestbook, and if like it may even add your theme and credit you in the process.

Introductions

2025-07-20T00:00:00Z

Welcome, this is the first formal post on my site, i gonna be honest i don't know what to write about, this site was created more for the utility of the gallery, somewhere i can neatly put my works including things i don't feel like putting on social media, altrough it turned out to be the opposite, you won't find my shitposts here.

You know, speaking of utilities work and whatever i will do a breef story on my previous sites, starting with my first ever draft of one.

The core idea was already there i suposse, a top bar with all the navegation you need, and all 4 of these categories are still present in today's site, i was considering cutting off the feed feature but since how well it was integrated with the 11ty layout... Also making the things in the navbar odd numbered.... Did really convince me to keep it, about aesthetics i really like it, the wallpaper is pretty and the blurry transparent glass is gorgeous, i may make that design language a theme for this site honestly, speaking of themes this will be a future blogpost.

Now, to the second site.

This is the former site, unlike the first i managed to make the gallery but still no blog function, i was actually planning at the time to just write all the html manually, a glimpse of my insanity because i failed to learn HUGO, something else you can notice in that site is the Nord theme, it's what i use on my linux system since i first discovered it, the colors really do please me, not too dark not too bright, not too pastel not too solid, also being the first and default theme that was developed to this site, before i even made the theme system.

Current site

And the rest is history, this site started development in 17/07/25 and trough days of work and a weeks of slacking off here we are, i have high hopes for this site, having my own little corner on the internet where i have almost absolute freedom & customazibility, if you interestted in making a site of your own i suggest you try out 11ty be warned you need to be a little savy with computers and not afraid of oppening a command line & do your own research and troubleshot to even being making a site on the level of mine, but you can always just do a simpler one with only html, Neocities has a page with a bunch of good resources to get you started, that's it for the first blog.