Empire Ants

Wtf did I just watch? I haven't the foggiest idea. Haven't been following Kollok, so your guess is as good as mine. But I felt like iconning the aesthetic, which lowkey reminds me of early 2000s music videos. So here we are.

From a cursory googling adventure, these videos - Sink, Shock, Succumb, and Swim - appeared to be promos for Kollok 1.09: Mammon, so that's how I saved and labelled them. Then I realized the promos were released a couple weeks after Mammon, so. Uhm. Oops? I guess these are actually promos for 1.11: Forward, featuring a scenario from 1.09. Or... something. Mammon has a stillframe from these promos as its thumbnail on the wiki, hence the confusion. Also, round two of utterly confounding myself: apparently the character Ethan's playing is AJ Greer, though I swear he's called Jay or Jade in these videos by what I hear - possibly JA, according to a wiki page. (Look, I tried, okay?)


( Even if this is just me on my death bed, dreaming... Why can't I dream my friends? These rocks will do. )

The second I saw this video today, I knew I had to icon Ethan's new look.


( There's so much that even I don't know! )

You think he makes silly faces? Just wait until you see what he can do with his ankles! I sorted by date when doing these, which means he's probably mid to late 20s in the beginning of the first half and he's in his 30s by the end of this half, which includes photos collected as recently as February 10, 2022.


( Don't be nibblin' on my giblets. )

Idk what happened to my download of this video, or VLC, or... whatever part went wrong in the process, but I had to trash about a quarter of the caps made and over half the icons because they were just too fuzzy and low quality to justify saving. It looks fine on YouTube, even on a 4k television, so... That's weird af. Maybe I caught all the off-frames or something? I mostly did these to capture Ethan being a flaily dork, though, and I think I managed alright. Or at least alright enough not to endure the effort of re-downloading and re-capping.


( I need water! I need sustenance! My body needs something! There's too much athletics; I'm gonna pass out! )

More of the blue floof, made from random images (and a few gifs) I had laying around. He's adorable, okay?


( Commit once, measure... nonce. )

There's a surprising variety of expressions here (and in the first set) from smiling to goofing off to grumpy and some really niche things - like drinking from a gigantic bottle of water - in between. That's my excuse for the absurdity, and I'm sticking to it.


( Knock, knock, knock... Don't have to knock to get into my own home. )

Microexpressions! I got overwhelmed with pruning these and just rolled with everything that made a reasonably clear icon. I'm sorry both to my future self and anyone else who has to pick icons from this set... which was actually large enough I had to break it into two pieces even with my new post format. Oops~


( Knock, knock, knock... Don't have to knock to get into my own home. )

More Ethan, from back in 2017 when he had partially blue-dyed hair. I can't tell if I overdid the adjustments or didn't apply enough, so I'm sorry if any came out too blueish or pinkish.

Caps made by me from "THE IKEA ADVENTURE" in which Ethan and some of his friends vlog a trip to the titular furniture store.


( Commit to the bit! )

The amount of purple in this gives me life. No, really, that's the primary reason I iconned these; the expression range was just a sweet bonus. Also, Eef Ethan is adorable, so there's that.

Caps made by me from a pair of Twitch clips which may or may not have come from the same stream but definitely used the same setup and clothing.


( Girls are so pretty. Also guys are so pretty, too. )