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Anniversary 2025
Posted 2 months agoHey there, it's been a while.
I couldn't miss ASTRO's anniversary, but I'm not back yet.
In a way, a lot and very little happened since last year. I took an art break for most of it, to try and recuperate. That helped a lot. I'm still struggling with counter-productive thoughts that prevent me from truly enjoying the process of art, but it's miles better than the state I was in two years ago.
But I'm still also dealing with grief and trauma, that hasn't gone away. I don't know if it will ever, at least not entirely. I'm working on it. My partner has been a huge help dealing with all those subjects, preventing me from drowning when I was feeling weak, and propelling me when I was feeling better.
Speaking of working on it, I'm going to start, like, actual art classes, with teachers and all. I think I managed to get very far as a self-taught artist, but I need some structure, both for my motivation and my ADHD. So while the will to start drawing again has come back in the past couple weeks, I really hope that having classes will help me get even more motivated.
And I started working on the game again. It's getting somewhere, and it's gonna be a very personal piece of storytelling and art. Don't expect much right away, but it's currently my main focus when I can manage to do stuff.
Thank you for your patience, and trust me, when I'll be back, it'll be great.
Commemorative Illustration here.
I couldn't miss ASTRO's anniversary, but I'm not back yet.
In a way, a lot and very little happened since last year. I took an art break for most of it, to try and recuperate. That helped a lot. I'm still struggling with counter-productive thoughts that prevent me from truly enjoying the process of art, but it's miles better than the state I was in two years ago.
But I'm still also dealing with grief and trauma, that hasn't gone away. I don't know if it will ever, at least not entirely. I'm working on it. My partner has been a huge help dealing with all those subjects, preventing me from drowning when I was feeling weak, and propelling me when I was feeling better.
Speaking of working on it, I'm going to start, like, actual art classes, with teachers and all. I think I managed to get very far as a self-taught artist, but I need some structure, both for my motivation and my ADHD. So while the will to start drawing again has come back in the past couple weeks, I really hope that having classes will help me get even more motivated.
And I started working on the game again. It's getting somewhere, and it's gonna be a very personal piece of storytelling and art. Don't expect much right away, but it's currently my main focus when I can manage to do stuff.
Thank you for your patience, and trust me, when I'll be back, it'll be great.
Commemorative Illustration here.
Anniversary 2024
Posted a year agoTL;DR for people who don’t want to read a wall of text or read about dark topics:
I’ve been away for personal reasons, but I will be okay.
Now, for those who might want to know what happened to me.
My father died in January 2024. Lung cancer, just like my mother died when I was 13. I was still 30 when he passed. I was an orphan at 30. That’s not fucking normal. For a while, I was able to keep going through the sadness; I was on autopilot, doing all the chores and administrative stuff that needed to be done, and I was doing “alright”, all things considered. Except grief and pain were bubbling inside me, and in June, I broke down. Job was becoming too much for me to handle, art was a struggle, and I would randomly start crying at any point of the day. I needed to stop everything
Now, art always had been a struggle for me. I’ve never truly be happy with my art. Whenever I did a piece I was satisfied with, I sighed of relief, because it meant all that pain had not been in vain. If there are any artists reading this, you may know what I’m describing, but you also know it shouldn’t be like that. “Art is about the journey, not the destination” is something I was saying, but definitely not applying to myself. I was doing art the wrong way. I would have eventually broken down at some point, regardless of my father’s passing.
I still haven’t recovered from his death. The pain is unbearable. I feel I need to explain how the situation made everything worse; I was living with my father, taking care of chores he couldn’t do by himself anymore, when we got the news of his cancer. For 3 years, I did everything I could to make his life easier. He couldn’t do administrative paperwork, he couldn’t keep track of medical appointments or medications he needed to take, and of course he was more tired, so I was basically an in-house nurse. Despite having lost my mother to cancer, I was hopeful, and I had reasons to be. The doctors were amazed by how well my father was doing; the cancer was shrinking consistently, and he was taking chemotherapy like a champion, having little to no side effects. That lasted two and a half year. One day, out of the blues, as I was checking up on him, I couldn’t see him at his desk or in his bed. I was puzzled, those were the only two places he could have been. Then I looked down, and there he was, silently convulsing on the floor, unresponsive. The emergencies came, and save his life. It was epilepsy, caused by a metastasis in his brain. The doctors said he was not going to suffer any consequences from it. To this day, I am haunted by the idea that “It was just me checking in randomly. What could have happened if I was a little to late?”. Yes, even after his death, I am still thinking that.
The bad news started there. Suddenly, the cancer had grown, and his prognosis was now much, much worse. We discussed how to handle having medical equipment at our home, in case things went for the worst, so he could die peacefully in the comfort of his bed. Except it went much, much faster than we could have expected. Only two days later, he spent the day sleeping. “Just the after effects of chemo”, I thought, still optimistic. At diner time, he woke up, and we ate together, as usual. We talked a little, and he was still “there”. The next day he wasn’t. Another full day of sleeping, without drinking. I called the emergencies for the fourth time in a month. He wasn’t himself anymore at this point, even when he was “awake”. At the hospital, the doctor told me the whatever-perfusion they gave him didn’t take, and he was going to die. I can still remember the scene:
“How long does he have?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly” replied the doctor.
“An estimate?” I ask. “A month? A week? A day? An hour?”
She shook her head to indicate there was no way of knowing.
After three years of fighting, it all went downhill in a month, and two days before she told me that, we were talking like usual.
There are no words to explain how much it hurts. I still think “fuck, I forgot to book the appointment for the radiography” to this fucking day.
The only reason why I was able to keep going till June was the resilience of the auto-pilot mode I was in. But at some point, I needed to confront the sadness that was inside me. I needed to rest, to think, to process everything.
Thankfully, by some miracle, during the very short period of time I was “socially capable”, I met someone. Someone perfect, who understood my pain, and helped me through it. I still can’t believe I met him, and I love him so much. The rapid back and forth between pure happiness and intense sadness were very difficult to handle, making me realize I couldn’t keep going like I was.
Things are still difficult, but I’m slowly getting better. I started coding again, and as you can see, I am drawing again, now with a much better way of approaching art.
I don’t want to make any promise on “regular updates” or anything like that. I’m still healing, and I don’t want to put pressure on myself.
But I will be back.
Sorry for not updating anyone when I suddenly disappeared. Sorry to my friends I’ve neglected during the past few months. I will be back.
I’ve been away for personal reasons, but I will be okay.
Now, for those who might want to know what happened to me.
My father died in January 2024. Lung cancer, just like my mother died when I was 13. I was still 30 when he passed. I was an orphan at 30. That’s not fucking normal. For a while, I was able to keep going through the sadness; I was on autopilot, doing all the chores and administrative stuff that needed to be done, and I was doing “alright”, all things considered. Except grief and pain were bubbling inside me, and in June, I broke down. Job was becoming too much for me to handle, art was a struggle, and I would randomly start crying at any point of the day. I needed to stop everything
Now, art always had been a struggle for me. I’ve never truly be happy with my art. Whenever I did a piece I was satisfied with, I sighed of relief, because it meant all that pain had not been in vain. If there are any artists reading this, you may know what I’m describing, but you also know it shouldn’t be like that. “Art is about the journey, not the destination” is something I was saying, but definitely not applying to myself. I was doing art the wrong way. I would have eventually broken down at some point, regardless of my father’s passing.
I still haven’t recovered from his death. The pain is unbearable. I feel I need to explain how the situation made everything worse; I was living with my father, taking care of chores he couldn’t do by himself anymore, when we got the news of his cancer. For 3 years, I did everything I could to make his life easier. He couldn’t do administrative paperwork, he couldn’t keep track of medical appointments or medications he needed to take, and of course he was more tired, so I was basically an in-house nurse. Despite having lost my mother to cancer, I was hopeful, and I had reasons to be. The doctors were amazed by how well my father was doing; the cancer was shrinking consistently, and he was taking chemotherapy like a champion, having little to no side effects. That lasted two and a half year. One day, out of the blues, as I was checking up on him, I couldn’t see him at his desk or in his bed. I was puzzled, those were the only two places he could have been. Then I looked down, and there he was, silently convulsing on the floor, unresponsive. The emergencies came, and save his life. It was epilepsy, caused by a metastasis in his brain. The doctors said he was not going to suffer any consequences from it. To this day, I am haunted by the idea that “It was just me checking in randomly. What could have happened if I was a little to late?”. Yes, even after his death, I am still thinking that.
The bad news started there. Suddenly, the cancer had grown, and his prognosis was now much, much worse. We discussed how to handle having medical equipment at our home, in case things went for the worst, so he could die peacefully in the comfort of his bed. Except it went much, much faster than we could have expected. Only two days later, he spent the day sleeping. “Just the after effects of chemo”, I thought, still optimistic. At diner time, he woke up, and we ate together, as usual. We talked a little, and he was still “there”. The next day he wasn’t. Another full day of sleeping, without drinking. I called the emergencies for the fourth time in a month. He wasn’t himself anymore at this point, even when he was “awake”. At the hospital, the doctor told me the whatever-perfusion they gave him didn’t take, and he was going to die. I can still remember the scene:
“How long does he have?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly” replied the doctor.
“An estimate?” I ask. “A month? A week? A day? An hour?”
She shook her head to indicate there was no way of knowing.
After three years of fighting, it all went downhill in a month, and two days before she told me that, we were talking like usual.
There are no words to explain how much it hurts. I still think “fuck, I forgot to book the appointment for the radiography” to this fucking day.
The only reason why I was able to keep going till June was the resilience of the auto-pilot mode I was in. But at some point, I needed to confront the sadness that was inside me. I needed to rest, to think, to process everything.
Thankfully, by some miracle, during the very short period of time I was “socially capable”, I met someone. Someone perfect, who understood my pain, and helped me through it. I still can’t believe I met him, and I love him so much. The rapid back and forth between pure happiness and intense sadness were very difficult to handle, making me realize I couldn’t keep going like I was.
Things are still difficult, but I’m slowly getting better. I started coding again, and as you can see, I am drawing again, now with a much better way of approaching art.
I don’t want to make any promise on “regular updates” or anything like that. I’m still healing, and I don’t want to put pressure on myself.
But I will be back.
Sorry for not updating anyone when I suddenly disappeared. Sorry to my friends I’ve neglected during the past few months. I will be back.
Hiatus
Posted 2 years agoI’m going to post a bit less often for a while; I managed to do weekly posts for now, but my father’s health has declined further and it’s just taking too much mental/physical energy for me to keep up the pace.
Current Commission Status
Posted 2 years agoCommissions are open!
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Anniversary 2022
Posted 3 years agoRelated Illustration
Third year, somehow worse and better.
- Art wise: I started to feel good about my work more consistently, even more so recently. Nothing big this year, no big summer project, for personal reasons (more on that later)
- the GAME: Once again, a lot of work you haven't seen, and for the first my friends were able to test it! Thanks to their feedback (one of them is making cool adult furry games so the feedback was super interesting), I have a much clearer direction to go towards. Some of the feedback was harsh (deservedly so, I neglected the form and presentation), but overall positive, so I'm confident that with the correct changes, the result will be great.
- Personal life part 1, the bad: As said in a previous journal, my father was diagnosed with cancer. This is the reason why everything slowed down in the past few months, and why there was no big summer project. It's still very hard to handle, time and energy wise, but also emotionally. We'll have more definitive result at the end of the month, so I'm very stressed at the moment, and even talking to friends is a bit difficult.
- Personal life part 2, the good: I have been diagnosed with ADHD. I put this in "good", because at least now I fucking understand what was wrong with my (in)ability to work, and I have tools to fight it. The medication is doing miracles, and while it's not perfect, as I need to get used to its effects, I'm feeling a weight lift off me.
Overall, another weird year, with the highest highs and the lowest lows, no in between. Hopefully my father's situation will stabilize and the "impending doom anxiety" will stop crushing me.
Third year, somehow worse and better.
- Art wise: I started to feel good about my work more consistently, even more so recently. Nothing big this year, no big summer project, for personal reasons (more on that later)
- the GAME: Once again, a lot of work you haven't seen, and for the first my friends were able to test it! Thanks to their feedback (one of them is making cool adult furry games so the feedback was super interesting), I have a much clearer direction to go towards. Some of the feedback was harsh (deservedly so, I neglected the form and presentation), but overall positive, so I'm confident that with the correct changes, the result will be great.
- Personal life part 1, the bad: As said in a previous journal, my father was diagnosed with cancer. This is the reason why everything slowed down in the past few months, and why there was no big summer project. It's still very hard to handle, time and energy wise, but also emotionally. We'll have more definitive result at the end of the month, so I'm very stressed at the moment, and even talking to friends is a bit difficult.
- Personal life part 2, the good: I have been diagnosed with ADHD. I put this in "good", because at least now I fucking understand what was wrong with my (in)ability to work, and I have tools to fight it. The medication is doing miracles, and while it's not perfect, as I need to get used to its effects, I'm feeling a weight lift off me.
Overall, another weird year, with the highest highs and the lowest lows, no in between. Hopefully my father's situation will stabilize and the "impending doom anxiety" will stop crushing me.
Regarding the recent lack of posts
Posted 3 years agoSome of you might have noticed that I didn't manage to keep up with my "post one illustration a week" rule. There are several reasons for that, some more minor than others, but I can share the big one:
My father has been diagnosed with a cancer. I'm taking care of everything for him, which in addition to the stuff I have to do on my end, takes a lot of energy.
The news hit me particularly hard, as cancers killed basically half of my family, including my mother; and even if my dad's illness is being treated well, it's very hard for me to look at things in a positive light, and not be sent back to the worst moments of my life.
I've been in a state of stunlock for a couple months now, since we got the news; it's been very hard for me to get enough energy to talk to people, even close friends. I've managed to push through it a couple times to do art or talk to new people, but those come in bursts and cost a lot of energy. I'm slowly going back to normal, but I still can't spend as much time on art as I'd like to, even if I wasn't mentally in a bad place.
Art is not my job yet so I don't have obligations, and I don't expect anyone to have actual expectations of weekly posts, but I wanted to say this so you have a bit more info on what I'm up to.
My father has been diagnosed with a cancer. I'm taking care of everything for him, which in addition to the stuff I have to do on my end, takes a lot of energy.
The news hit me particularly hard, as cancers killed basically half of my family, including my mother; and even if my dad's illness is being treated well, it's very hard for me to look at things in a positive light, and not be sent back to the worst moments of my life.
I've been in a state of stunlock for a couple months now, since we got the news; it's been very hard for me to get enough energy to talk to people, even close friends. I've managed to push through it a couple times to do art or talk to new people, but those come in bursts and cost a lot of energy. I'm slowly going back to normal, but I still can't spend as much time on art as I'd like to, even if I wasn't mentally in a bad place.
Art is not my job yet so I don't have obligations, and I don't expect anyone to have actual expectations of weekly posts, but I wanted to say this so you have a bit more info on what I'm up to.
Anniversary 2021
Posted 4 years agoRelated illustration
Second year down, and what a fucking year (again)
It went super fast and super slow at the same time and I'm getting tired of this.
Anyway, on to what happened:
- Got much better at managing my time, burnout was very limited this year, even more so towards the end. Overall, my time management is a lot better than before. Some problems sleeping recently, which have cost me quite a few days in the past couple months, but I think I'm mostly out of it now.
- Of course, made a lot of progress in drawing. After the Rocket comic, I felt like shit because I started hating it as I was doing it. Raffles helped me feel more satisfied, and designing characters for my game was very fun. Of course, the ABC was a huge project to tackle, and I'm super satisfied with it, overall. Some letters weren't great, but it helped me work faster and better. I feel more confident in my forms, shapes, brush strokes, colors, pretty much everything, and I started to generally not feel too frustrated about my art, which is good as I can go back in it more easily after a failure.
- You have only seen the Zootopia picture, but I've done a LOT of cartoon study for my game, as I wanted that "Disney bouncy style", and these past couple months I think I'm getting it right; it's not perfect of course, but it feels like a real cartoon and not some weird abomination like it used to.
- THE FUCKING GAME; yeah there was a lot going on behind the scene for the game. Long story short, I'm dumb. The game will contain multiple smaller games, and as an absolute fool I thought "mmmh let's try making a fucking tower defense for my second minigame, that'll be easy." That was very ambitious, tower defense games are a bit more than I could chew. Right now, I'm about done correcting the various bugs of the game, and I need to balance it, which is going to be a whole unit of difficulty that I assume will have to continue even after the game releases. Overall, I'm really okay with where I am but I didn't expect it to take that long and I probably should have made another couple easier things before. The "end of 2021" release seems very optimistic now tbh, as there's a lot more than the tower defense to be done, and I just learned about something in game maker language that may completely change the way I write code? I'll need to investigate and if it's better, well, implement it where it's needed.
- I started writing, originally to cool down as it's a completely different pace than drawing or coding, and I intend to add those stories to the game as rewards (dw, of course it's porn). Though that also means "something else I need to implement in the game before release".
Overall a very weird year, but I did my best and that's what's important.
Thanks to all the watchers, old and news, and to the people who comment cute stuff, that really helps me gives me a boost of motivation. <3
Second year down, and what a fucking year (again)
It went super fast and super slow at the same time and I'm getting tired of this.
Anyway, on to what happened:
- Got much better at managing my time, burnout was very limited this year, even more so towards the end. Overall, my time management is a lot better than before. Some problems sleeping recently, which have cost me quite a few days in the past couple months, but I think I'm mostly out of it now.
- Of course, made a lot of progress in drawing. After the Rocket comic, I felt like shit because I started hating it as I was doing it. Raffles helped me feel more satisfied, and designing characters for my game was very fun. Of course, the ABC was a huge project to tackle, and I'm super satisfied with it, overall. Some letters weren't great, but it helped me work faster and better. I feel more confident in my forms, shapes, brush strokes, colors, pretty much everything, and I started to generally not feel too frustrated about my art, which is good as I can go back in it more easily after a failure.
- You have only seen the Zootopia picture, but I've done a LOT of cartoon study for my game, as I wanted that "Disney bouncy style", and these past couple months I think I'm getting it right; it's not perfect of course, but it feels like a real cartoon and not some weird abomination like it used to.
- THE FUCKING GAME; yeah there was a lot going on behind the scene for the game. Long story short, I'm dumb. The game will contain multiple smaller games, and as an absolute fool I thought "mmmh let's try making a fucking tower defense for my second minigame, that'll be easy." That was very ambitious, tower defense games are a bit more than I could chew. Right now, I'm about done correcting the various bugs of the game, and I need to balance it, which is going to be a whole unit of difficulty that I assume will have to continue even after the game releases. Overall, I'm really okay with where I am but I didn't expect it to take that long and I probably should have made another couple easier things before. The "end of 2021" release seems very optimistic now tbh, as there's a lot more than the tower defense to be done, and I just learned about something in game maker language that may completely change the way I write code? I'll need to investigate and if it's better, well, implement it where it's needed.
- I started writing, originally to cool down as it's a completely different pace than drawing or coding, and I intend to add those stories to the game as rewards (dw, of course it's porn). Though that also means "something else I need to implement in the game before release".
Overall a very weird year, but I did my best and that's what's important.
Thanks to all the watchers, old and news, and to the people who comment cute stuff, that really helps me gives me a boost of motivation. <3
ASTRO's Amazing ABC Post Mortem
Posted 4 years agoPost Mortem for ASTRO’s Amazing ABC
This was a really fun project to make! And I kinda did it on a “spur of the moment” thing, I had this idea a couple months ago, tried writing a couple letters, it was fun, but very much theoretical at the time.
And when it was pride month I wanted to do something, wasn’t sure what but this sounded okay, and work went (mostly) super slow during June so I could afford to try.
As far as time management, I did 27 pages in 35 days. With my mandatory “one break a week”, I could have been done on the 1st of July, so I’m only 4 days late, which honestly I’m fine with, especially considering I got slowed/stunned by a cold (yeah I know, it’s summer, don’t rub it in). So that’s cool.
As far as motivation went, I started to dip around R, which was just before the cold, and explains the slowing down around that time. Some artistic doubts at some point, the usual “I’ll never do X good”, but I know it’s temporary, it just feels bad on the spot.
Anyway, as per tradition, my projects have a secret agenda: me practicing something specific. This time, I tried a couple things with lines, and the goal was to make stuff look good without cell-shading it. Before that, I usually found myself in a situation where I was desperately trying to apply shadows to my forms, in order to make the result look decent. But as the proverb says, you can put as many cool decorations in your house, if the base of the house is unstable, it’s gonna be shit. Not sure that’s verbatim, but it’s the idea. So this time, I was trying to make the base look good, without relying on shadows to make the result look convincing. Overall? I think it works, I feel like I’ve improved quite a lot.
Another thing I was working on was, well, work. I tend to work in terms of “tasks”, like “today I’m gonna do X, Y and Z tasks”. This system has its upsides, but also downsides when one of the tasks is harder than expected (you feel bad cause you didn’t succeed), and also created an environment where it was easy to go a bit lazy in between tasks, so if I had a lot of little tasks, it became super hard not to get distracted (cost of entry of an activity etc). This time, I just crammed as much as possible, and I’m pleased to say that I can do that now. The only problem was exhaustion, but that’s a normal problem, not a “I have trouble focusing” problem. So that’s good as well.
In terms of content, I went at the limit of what I enjoyed, especially for S (not THAT much into scent), and R, which is the closest to non-consent that I’ll ever do. I also don’t like BDSM that much and it’s the second time I drew Kinbaku SOMEHOW
Overall, super happy with this project, I don’t like everything the same amount, and I tended to go with longer texts as it went (looking at A it looks so short now lmao), but that’s because that’s how I work; even if I try to go small, I can’t help but overcomplexify stuff.
Also I really like some of the characters so I’ll probably re-use them, and some pages are technically canon in my settings already.
And thanks to everyone who liked, shared, or commented, that really meant a lot to me, more so than you can even imagine.
What’s next? Gonna focus on coding for a moment, I still want to release VRcade around the end of the year and I’m far from done. Also I miss drawing Rocket so I kinda want to work with him, no comics yet cause that’s a lot of work and I have to focus on the game.
This was a really fun project to make! And I kinda did it on a “spur of the moment” thing, I had this idea a couple months ago, tried writing a couple letters, it was fun, but very much theoretical at the time.
And when it was pride month I wanted to do something, wasn’t sure what but this sounded okay, and work went (mostly) super slow during June so I could afford to try.
As far as time management, I did 27 pages in 35 days. With my mandatory “one break a week”, I could have been done on the 1st of July, so I’m only 4 days late, which honestly I’m fine with, especially considering I got slowed/stunned by a cold (yeah I know, it’s summer, don’t rub it in). So that’s cool.
As far as motivation went, I started to dip around R, which was just before the cold, and explains the slowing down around that time. Some artistic doubts at some point, the usual “I’ll never do X good”, but I know it’s temporary, it just feels bad on the spot.
Anyway, as per tradition, my projects have a secret agenda: me practicing something specific. This time, I tried a couple things with lines, and the goal was to make stuff look good without cell-shading it. Before that, I usually found myself in a situation where I was desperately trying to apply shadows to my forms, in order to make the result look decent. But as the proverb says, you can put as many cool decorations in your house, if the base of the house is unstable, it’s gonna be shit. Not sure that’s verbatim, but it’s the idea. So this time, I was trying to make the base look good, without relying on shadows to make the result look convincing. Overall? I think it works, I feel like I’ve improved quite a lot.
Another thing I was working on was, well, work. I tend to work in terms of “tasks”, like “today I’m gonna do X, Y and Z tasks”. This system has its upsides, but also downsides when one of the tasks is harder than expected (you feel bad cause you didn’t succeed), and also created an environment where it was easy to go a bit lazy in between tasks, so if I had a lot of little tasks, it became super hard not to get distracted (cost of entry of an activity etc). This time, I just crammed as much as possible, and I’m pleased to say that I can do that now. The only problem was exhaustion, but that’s a normal problem, not a “I have trouble focusing” problem. So that’s good as well.
In terms of content, I went at the limit of what I enjoyed, especially for S (not THAT much into scent), and R, which is the closest to non-consent that I’ll ever do. I also don’t like BDSM that much and it’s the second time I drew Kinbaku SOMEHOW
Overall, super happy with this project, I don’t like everything the same amount, and I tended to go with longer texts as it went (looking at A it looks so short now lmao), but that’s because that’s how I work; even if I try to go small, I can’t help but overcomplexify stuff.
Also I really like some of the characters so I’ll probably re-use them, and some pages are technically canon in my settings already.
And thanks to everyone who liked, shared, or commented, that really meant a lot to me, more so than you can even imagine.
What’s next? Gonna focus on coding for a moment, I still want to release VRcade around the end of the year and I’m far from done. Also I miss drawing Rocket so I kinda want to work with him, no comics yet cause that’s a lot of work and I have to focus on the game.
Overabunded Post Mortem
Posted 5 years agoOh god where do I start? Intentions first I guess.
Same as for my "game made in a month" (check it out here if you haven't already), the goal here was to make a comic. I aimed for "short", which is laughable in retrospect.
What you saw was 5 or 3 pages uploaded every week, but of course, I had a lot of work done before I published the first page, as I started working on it in March and started uploading in late July.
And oh boy it shows, I cringe when I look at earlier pages. I cringe when I look at most pages tbh. I feel like I either rushed in some aspects, or am no longer satisfied with those.
Points I like: Some poses are nice. I like the humor.
Points I dislike: the lettering is atrocious, the paneling is uninspired, the colors are bland and repetitive, the fuck is going on with the anatomy, or the details, or anything, oh god just thinking back on it I want to delete everything.
Clearly I started out as "I have no idea what I'm doing", and ended up "I started like this and I gotta finish it up so I can move on so I'm going to rush some stuff". I didn't go in this with the right mindset, not for something that's almost 50 pages long. It would have worked if it were like, 15 pages. Learned from that.
One of the goals was to give myself an excuse to brush up on Scott Mccloud's books on comics, which I read a while back, but couldn't really absorb as I had never tried actually making a comic; turns out you can read a lot of theory, it's not going to stick until you practice a little. So now that I've done that, I'm re-reading the books, with a better appreciation for what the author meant.
So, same as with the game, I made something, it had (a lot of) problems, but I'm going to learn from them and do better next time. I'm also working on my lines because my slow process was a big issue when making a fucking comic, so I gotta do better and faster.
Next comic?
First, I'm not sure yet, I've had this idea for a while that I wanted to do but I thought it would be too long for a first project (and yet I started with 45 fucking pages oh my god I have a problem), or the follow up to this story. I'll probably end up taking a break from rocket, I like him a lot but right now it's too much.
Second, it's not going to happen right now, I need a fucking break, and I can't wait to go back to coding more seriously. In the meantime, you can expect illustrations or character designs, as I need to populate my games.
Same as for my "game made in a month" (check it out here if you haven't already), the goal here was to make a comic. I aimed for "short", which is laughable in retrospect.
What you saw was 5 or 3 pages uploaded every week, but of course, I had a lot of work done before I published the first page, as I started working on it in March and started uploading in late July.
And oh boy it shows, I cringe when I look at earlier pages. I cringe when I look at most pages tbh. I feel like I either rushed in some aspects, or am no longer satisfied with those.
Points I like: Some poses are nice. I like the humor.
Points I dislike: the lettering is atrocious, the paneling is uninspired, the colors are bland and repetitive, the fuck is going on with the anatomy, or the details, or anything, oh god just thinking back on it I want to delete everything.
Clearly I started out as "I have no idea what I'm doing", and ended up "I started like this and I gotta finish it up so I can move on so I'm going to rush some stuff". I didn't go in this with the right mindset, not for something that's almost 50 pages long. It would have worked if it were like, 15 pages. Learned from that.
One of the goals was to give myself an excuse to brush up on Scott Mccloud's books on comics, which I read a while back, but couldn't really absorb as I had never tried actually making a comic; turns out you can read a lot of theory, it's not going to stick until you practice a little. So now that I've done that, I'm re-reading the books, with a better appreciation for what the author meant.
So, same as with the game, I made something, it had (a lot of) problems, but I'm going to learn from them and do better next time. I'm also working on my lines because my slow process was a big issue when making a fucking comic, so I gotta do better and faster.
Next comic?
First, I'm not sure yet, I've had this idea for a while that I wanted to do but I thought it would be too long for a first project (and yet I started with 45 fucking pages oh my god I have a problem), or the follow up to this story. I'll probably end up taking a break from rocket, I like him a lot but right now it's too much.
Second, it's not going to happen right now, I need a fucking break, and I can't wait to go back to coding more seriously. In the meantime, you can expect illustrations or character designs, as I need to populate my games.
Anniversary 2020
Posted 5 years agoRelated Illustration
I started my FA page exactly one year ago, managing to fight my fear of displaying my art online.
It's been a heck of a year, with 2020 being a thing and all.
I've made a lot of progress since last time, even if you can't see what's behind the scene, I feel much better about what I do. Still far from my goal, but I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with my art.
Still! I worked hard, and it payed off, so I'm happy. I started working with Game Maker, made a first game, and the second is in active production.
I picked up a lot more consistency with my exercises, I'm doing much better with my concentration, and my mental health is much more stable.
Now I'm really focusing on trying to manage a normal working schedule, as I still do tend to have an unhealthy cycle of "work without a break until you burnout and become unable to do anything for 3 days". And tons of stuff I could improve on; again, I'm a WIP.
Also, I haven't replied to all comments, I wanted to do that at first but I need to fight my social ineptitude to do so (hey, another thing I could improve on). However, don't think they go unnoticed, I read them all and they do make me very very very happy, like you have no idea.
You may also have noticed I don't "thank my watchers" on their page, I kinda hate that practice tbh, it sounds fake to me, like wishing a happy birthday on facebook (which people do because they are reminded by facebook, so idk, it feels insincere) , but I'm hyped by the number of new people coming in, especially since the start of the Rocket comic.
What I'll do, to thank you for the watches and the views and everything, is that after the comic is fully posted, I'll go back and make stuff like free art raffles for several milestones of watchers, views, etc. It's gonna be in a while, but we already have several milestones passed, and I'm super hyped for all that's going to happen, I have a couple ideas I think you'll like.
Thanks for this year, and to another year of improvement (and more regular posting, that's close on my watch of things I need to do).
I started my FA page exactly one year ago, managing to fight my fear of displaying my art online.
It's been a heck of a year, with 2020 being a thing and all.
I've made a lot of progress since last time, even if you can't see what's behind the scene, I feel much better about what I do. Still far from my goal, but I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with my art.
Still! I worked hard, and it payed off, so I'm happy. I started working with Game Maker, made a first game, and the second is in active production.
I picked up a lot more consistency with my exercises, I'm doing much better with my concentration, and my mental health is much more stable.
Now I'm really focusing on trying to manage a normal working schedule, as I still do tend to have an unhealthy cycle of "work without a break until you burnout and become unable to do anything for 3 days". And tons of stuff I could improve on; again, I'm a WIP.
Also, I haven't replied to all comments, I wanted to do that at first but I need to fight my social ineptitude to do so (hey, another thing I could improve on). However, don't think they go unnoticed, I read them all and they do make me very very very happy, like you have no idea.
You may also have noticed I don't "thank my watchers" on their page, I kinda hate that practice tbh, it sounds fake to me, like wishing a happy birthday on facebook (which people do because they are reminded by facebook, so idk, it feels insincere) , but I'm hyped by the number of new people coming in, especially since the start of the Rocket comic.
What I'll do, to thank you for the watches and the views and everything, is that after the comic is fully posted, I'll go back and make stuff like free art raffles for several milestones of watchers, views, etc. It's gonna be in a while, but we already have several milestones passed, and I'm super hyped for all that's going to happen, I have a couple ideas I think you'll like.
Thanks for this year, and to another year of improvement (and more regular posting, that's close on my watch of things I need to do).
Update for Overabunded, the Rocket Raccoon Comic
Posted 5 years agoHey, just a quick update;
for the first two weeks I posted 5 pages on Sunday, but I'mma do something else from now on:
One page a day, Wednesday (included) through Sunday (included).
So still 5 pages a week, just spread out.
This is for several reasons:
- Mass uploading is a chore, especially on FA (no scheduling function, no draft posts, and having to reupload the art every time because the size is > to 1280 pixels??), and doing it in bulk kills me inside.
- I want to post on several websites, so everything in one day would take me hours.
- I could use some more visibility, and spreading the uploads across the week will probably help that.
So, next Wednesday, the 12th, new page, and from there the schedule I mentioned above.
Now I gotta upload the first 10 pages on other websites.
for the first two weeks I posted 5 pages on Sunday, but I'mma do something else from now on:
One page a day, Wednesday (included) through Sunday (included).
So still 5 pages a week, just spread out.
This is for several reasons:
- Mass uploading is a chore, especially on FA (no scheduling function, no draft posts, and having to reupload the art every time because the size is > to 1280 pixels??), and doing it in bulk kills me inside.
- I want to post on several websites, so everything in one day would take me hours.
- I could use some more visibility, and spreading the uploads across the week will probably help that.
So, next Wednesday, the 12th, new page, and from there the schedule I mentioned above.
Now I gotta upload the first 10 pages on other websites.
Latest Game: Two Buttons Hooker Delivery
Posted 6 years agoIf you want to try out my first game, here's the link:
https://astrograph.itch.io/two-butt.....ooker-delivery
If you want to ready my notes on the game, in the form of a post-project journal, here's the link:
EDIT: Pastebin seems to think that my language was offensive, and privated the text, so I'm adding it just below
Questions? Shoot them in my DM or on twitter.
Next Project? Not sure yet, I have ideas that I want to try further, but which one will come first idk.
SAVESTATE OF THE OLD PASTEBIN:
TL;DR: I made a gay furry game in 30 days, play it here for free: https://astrograph.itch.io/two-butt.....ooker-delivery
There are two passwords you can enter by just typing them when you're in the Title Menu:
"dick" to skip the intro and tutorial.
"go easy on me daddy" (spaces are not required) to prevent enemies from spawning.
#Wall of text:
Why write a wall of text?
Two reasons; one, I do intend to eventually live off my art, I'm in no rush for that but I do believe in transparency on these subjects. I personally like when artists I like talk about their process, how far they are, and what lessons they took from what they did. Two, this was quite an experience, and a very positive one at that, despite the hurdles, and I need to share it for my sake, and if it can help or motivate even one person, it'd be all worth it.
Why a one month project?
Inspired by Yahtzee's gamedev series, in which he vowed to make 12 games in 12 months basically. I identified hard with what he said, which I'm going to paraphrase: "I tend to overthink big projects, and thus my projects never go complete". I really tend to do that, I started Gamemaker casually 5 months ago and I jumped from one unrealistically big project to the next, each time thinking "this one will be my first".
Nah. I needed something really simple, with a clear deadline, so I could experience "the whole package" in a limited amount of time. A gamejam 48-72h project would have been too hard since I'm new at this, 1 month seemed feasible. I started on the 11th of November, and I finished yesterday.
What's the idea behind the game?
Short answer, I tried an autorunner (autoskater?), as it seemed simple enough, yet had potential, trying to bring something new to the table. That clearly didn't happen, all my original ideas were scrapped midway as they were bad ideas. But that's good actually! More on that in "What I learned"
Known Bugs:
- When taking hits when at low speed, gaps can appear in the buildings // the length of the buildings isn't always what it was supposed to be.
Annoying, but doesn't break the game. Stems from my core code that would have needed an overhaul if I were to restart the project from scratch. I tried to correct it "cleanly", but there were always bugs some places, and since I didn't have time for an overhaul, I applied a bandage on the bug. It still shows but it's bearable.
- When you jump and go past a balcony, you'll sometimes stick to it, basically losing all momentum as if you fell on it.
More annoying but happens "very rarely"; it's also from the core code that would need a complete rewrite. I implemented an idea for the direction I had in mind very early, and when I realized it was a bad idea I removed it, but this is a remnant of that function that I can't remove without breaking the code or redoing it.
If it was a longer project, I would have worked on those, but considering the time limit, I think I was right to focus on other parts of the project.
If you notice other bugs, do send me a message on twitter, mail, or FA. As I'll say later, I don't really want to add more to the project, but if there are problematic bugs, I am willing to patch them.
What I learned:
- Spend more time working on and thinking about the core game design directions; I got the idea, went for it the next day. I was pretty much in a gamejam mindset, but it's okay for gamejams because people usually are more experienced, and they only have two days. I should have spent another couple days testing basic stuff and thinking about it. Will do that in the future.
- There isn't one optimal workflow, but that doesn't mean mine was good. Overall I made better workflow decisions as time went by, but the early stages were a mess. Hence the bad ideas I implemented too early in the code, making it unviable long term. Quicktip: early dev, make simple sprites, not full on sprites that will appear in the final game, but do decide on the exact size and hitboxes of the sprites early on, implementing the sprites was a lot of trouble I could have avoided if I had decided on a sprite size when I started coding and stuck to it.
- Don't underestimate "simple tasks". Making a menu? Easy. Text? Easy. Tutorial? Easy. No, no and no. Well, it wasn't hard per say, but it did take up some time, as there was always a bug somewhere, a variable that didn’t respond like I wanted. A friend told me "always double the time you think a task will take", and it's pretty much a good advice. Thankfully I didn't postpone those tasks too long, so I was able to do everything I really wanted to, but time was shorter than I expected.
- Fun>Original. Depends on what you're doing ofc, but generally my initial ideas were fun in theory, but very clunky in practice. Stay simple, a simple good game is better than a complex game that feels horrible to play. Not that I'm comparing, but think of Mario 64: during the first month of development, Nintendo just had Mario in an empty room. They spent a month making sure the controls were crisp and super responsive. Again, not comparing what I did to M64, but eventually as the project grew, I focused more on making the base skating more fun.
- And finally, code. This is where the big deal is. Learning through tutorials is fun and all, but the best way to learn is to try do make the game do what YOU want. Learn smarter coding, learn to face problems you might encounter. Near the end, my code was much cleaner and smarter than at first. I'm really glad I made the game, mostly for that. In tutorials you see stuff like Switch, for loops, etc, and you think "yeah I see how it can be used", but if you're starting, you have no idea how far it can. I still have no idea how smart a code could be; an experienced gamemaker dev would look at my code and faint, and I already feel bad about some of the earlier parts. Learn by doing. You will have to find smarter and better ways to work as you go.
What I couldn't do:
- Balancing; The game is not really hard, as most enemies can be avoided by staying on the ground. The score can appear random, and it kind of is, as I didn't have time to make a tight formula, so I went for something that felt good, but if you focus on it, it's a mess. Balancing in general is really lackluster. It's fine for what the game is, a one month small project, but it'd need a lot more focus on a more complete project.
- Sound! I made a couple loops for the game with garageband, but they were... not as upbeat as I would have liked. See, I can do art (not saying I'm great but I can handle a couple things), but I can't into music. I also wanted to put sound effects to give it some more punch, but we come to the second problem I had with sound: I had a lot of bugs. Bugs that would have required me to delve into the way sound work in gamemaker in a lot more details than the couple posts and tutorials I looked for. Sadly, that came pretty late in development, so it was ultimately scrapped completely. I'll work on it for future projects; my personal experience with sound in porn games is "mute that shit right now", so it wasn't the most urgent thing imo, but I definitely would have liked to have it as an option. Next game.
- More art. Couple scenes in the sex scene I would have liked to have more art, but as you can guess, it was another issue of time, and lack of planning.
- Same way, I would have liked several levels and all, but I chose to focus on one level and one sex scene. Better to do have one thing that works than several things that don't. I guess.
Notes:
- Originally, the game was supposed to be 1 button controls. It was supposed to be much harder to climb the buildings, and you would lose if you were below a certain height after a while. After playing, not only was the 1 button control unplayable, but the climbing felt like a chore, and quite unfair. But the speed multiplier felt like fun, so I went more towards that direction, and scrapped the original idea. That was the best decision, and I took it because I had my alpha playtested by friends. DO NOT leave your game untouched by other players for too long, you might think you're going in a good direction, but you can tunnel vision into an idea that is detrimental to your game.
What now?
- I won't work on this project anymore; it was an exercise, it was fun, I'm glad I did it, and even if my friends told me "there's potential for more", I'll keep that energy for another project. While I'm really into the idea of a game with replayability, several routes, etc., I don't feel this game is the one for it; core gameplay is too limited, adding new stuff would be harder than redo it from scratch, and, well, the base promise was to finish one game in one month.
- That doesn't mean I won't make another autorunner, nor that Vif won't reappear in a future project, far from it. It's even very possible that my next game is TBHD2, this time more complete and all, but this very specific game is done.
- I think I'll redo another project like that in the near future; rn I need to focus on stuff I put aside this past month, and I have work and stuff, so I can't give you any date for when or what. I'll probably do more than one month next time tho, now that I have an idea of what to plan out, I can tackle a bigger project, I'm thinking a 2-6 months project would be manageable, more would probably be a bit more than I can chew.
- I have a lot of basic ideas that could be cool, but what I'll do is try them out individually in a very very small scale pre-alpha, to test them out, in order to have a clear idea that I know is good before I start the next project.
Final note:
- I don't know what I should have said, I tried to be comprehensive, but you never know what you missed, or what was useless info. I'm not an authority of any kind of the subject, but my experience as a newcomer could be useful for some people. All I hope is that there's one person among you readers who was maybe thinking about making a game, or any other creative media for that matter, and who was a bit inspired to do it themselves. Do it. Check Yahtzee's Game Diary series for motivation, check Shaun Spalding for tutorials on gamemaker, check game design channels for theory. Do it. Create. Finish a project. I have twenty if not more projects that I kept as work in progress for years, basking in the glorious "it will eventually exist and it'll be perfect", but your project will never exist if you don't start. Is your idea too big? Start smaller. But start. Go slow if it's too new or too hard. There's no rush. And so what if it's bad? Heck, I love this game as an experience, but it's very very basic and it's my first time doing sequential sex, I have no idea if it's sexy or not, I have no idea if I'd even bother playing this game if I wasn't personally attached to it. But I finished something, and I learned from my mistakes (some of them, I probably didn't even see a lot of them).
Music, art, coding, it all works in a similar fashion: you learn by doing, and the best way not to succeed is to never fail. Make. Fail. Learn. Redo.
BTW if you played the game and have notes, positive or negative, on the art, narrative, gameplay, gameflow, anything, please do tell me, it'll help me make something better next time!
https://astrograph.itch.io/two-butt.....ooker-delivery
If you want to ready my notes on the game, in the form of a post-project journal, here's the link:
EDIT: Pastebin seems to think that my language was offensive, and privated the text, so I'm adding it just below
Questions? Shoot them in my DM or on twitter.
Next Project? Not sure yet, I have ideas that I want to try further, but which one will come first idk.
SAVESTATE OF THE OLD PASTEBIN:
TL;DR: I made a gay furry game in 30 days, play it here for free: https://astrograph.itch.io/two-butt.....ooker-delivery
There are two passwords you can enter by just typing them when you're in the Title Menu:
"dick" to skip the intro and tutorial.
"go easy on me daddy" (spaces are not required) to prevent enemies from spawning.
#Wall of text:
Why write a wall of text?
Two reasons; one, I do intend to eventually live off my art, I'm in no rush for that but I do believe in transparency on these subjects. I personally like when artists I like talk about their process, how far they are, and what lessons they took from what they did. Two, this was quite an experience, and a very positive one at that, despite the hurdles, and I need to share it for my sake, and if it can help or motivate even one person, it'd be all worth it.
Why a one month project?
Inspired by Yahtzee's gamedev series, in which he vowed to make 12 games in 12 months basically. I identified hard with what he said, which I'm going to paraphrase: "I tend to overthink big projects, and thus my projects never go complete". I really tend to do that, I started Gamemaker casually 5 months ago and I jumped from one unrealistically big project to the next, each time thinking "this one will be my first".
Nah. I needed something really simple, with a clear deadline, so I could experience "the whole package" in a limited amount of time. A gamejam 48-72h project would have been too hard since I'm new at this, 1 month seemed feasible. I started on the 11th of November, and I finished yesterday.
What's the idea behind the game?
Short answer, I tried an autorunner (autoskater?), as it seemed simple enough, yet had potential, trying to bring something new to the table. That clearly didn't happen, all my original ideas were scrapped midway as they were bad ideas. But that's good actually! More on that in "What I learned"
Known Bugs:
- When taking hits when at low speed, gaps can appear in the buildings // the length of the buildings isn't always what it was supposed to be.
Annoying, but doesn't break the game. Stems from my core code that would have needed an overhaul if I were to restart the project from scratch. I tried to correct it "cleanly", but there were always bugs some places, and since I didn't have time for an overhaul, I applied a bandage on the bug. It still shows but it's bearable.
- When you jump and go past a balcony, you'll sometimes stick to it, basically losing all momentum as if you fell on it.
More annoying but happens "very rarely"; it's also from the core code that would need a complete rewrite. I implemented an idea for the direction I had in mind very early, and when I realized it was a bad idea I removed it, but this is a remnant of that function that I can't remove without breaking the code or redoing it.
If it was a longer project, I would have worked on those, but considering the time limit, I think I was right to focus on other parts of the project.
If you notice other bugs, do send me a message on twitter, mail, or FA. As I'll say later, I don't really want to add more to the project, but if there are problematic bugs, I am willing to patch them.
What I learned:
- Spend more time working on and thinking about the core game design directions; I got the idea, went for it the next day. I was pretty much in a gamejam mindset, but it's okay for gamejams because people usually are more experienced, and they only have two days. I should have spent another couple days testing basic stuff and thinking about it. Will do that in the future.
- There isn't one optimal workflow, but that doesn't mean mine was good. Overall I made better workflow decisions as time went by, but the early stages were a mess. Hence the bad ideas I implemented too early in the code, making it unviable long term. Quicktip: early dev, make simple sprites, not full on sprites that will appear in the final game, but do decide on the exact size and hitboxes of the sprites early on, implementing the sprites was a lot of trouble I could have avoided if I had decided on a sprite size when I started coding and stuck to it.
- Don't underestimate "simple tasks". Making a menu? Easy. Text? Easy. Tutorial? Easy. No, no and no. Well, it wasn't hard per say, but it did take up some time, as there was always a bug somewhere, a variable that didn’t respond like I wanted. A friend told me "always double the time you think a task will take", and it's pretty much a good advice. Thankfully I didn't postpone those tasks too long, so I was able to do everything I really wanted to, but time was shorter than I expected.
- Fun>Original. Depends on what you're doing ofc, but generally my initial ideas were fun in theory, but very clunky in practice. Stay simple, a simple good game is better than a complex game that feels horrible to play. Not that I'm comparing, but think of Mario 64: during the first month of development, Nintendo just had Mario in an empty room. They spent a month making sure the controls were crisp and super responsive. Again, not comparing what I did to M64, but eventually as the project grew, I focused more on making the base skating more fun.
- And finally, code. This is where the big deal is. Learning through tutorials is fun and all, but the best way to learn is to try do make the game do what YOU want. Learn smarter coding, learn to face problems you might encounter. Near the end, my code was much cleaner and smarter than at first. I'm really glad I made the game, mostly for that. In tutorials you see stuff like Switch, for loops, etc, and you think "yeah I see how it can be used", but if you're starting, you have no idea how far it can. I still have no idea how smart a code could be; an experienced gamemaker dev would look at my code and faint, and I already feel bad about some of the earlier parts. Learn by doing. You will have to find smarter and better ways to work as you go.
What I couldn't do:
- Balancing; The game is not really hard, as most enemies can be avoided by staying on the ground. The score can appear random, and it kind of is, as I didn't have time to make a tight formula, so I went for something that felt good, but if you focus on it, it's a mess. Balancing in general is really lackluster. It's fine for what the game is, a one month small project, but it'd need a lot more focus on a more complete project.
- Sound! I made a couple loops for the game with garageband, but they were... not as upbeat as I would have liked. See, I can do art (not saying I'm great but I can handle a couple things), but I can't into music. I also wanted to put sound effects to give it some more punch, but we come to the second problem I had with sound: I had a lot of bugs. Bugs that would have required me to delve into the way sound work in gamemaker in a lot more details than the couple posts and tutorials I looked for. Sadly, that came pretty late in development, so it was ultimately scrapped completely. I'll work on it for future projects; my personal experience with sound in porn games is "mute that shit right now", so it wasn't the most urgent thing imo, but I definitely would have liked to have it as an option. Next game.
- More art. Couple scenes in the sex scene I would have liked to have more art, but as you can guess, it was another issue of time, and lack of planning.
- Same way, I would have liked several levels and all, but I chose to focus on one level and one sex scene. Better to do have one thing that works than several things that don't. I guess.
Notes:
- Originally, the game was supposed to be 1 button controls. It was supposed to be much harder to climb the buildings, and you would lose if you were below a certain height after a while. After playing, not only was the 1 button control unplayable, but the climbing felt like a chore, and quite unfair. But the speed multiplier felt like fun, so I went more towards that direction, and scrapped the original idea. That was the best decision, and I took it because I had my alpha playtested by friends. DO NOT leave your game untouched by other players for too long, you might think you're going in a good direction, but you can tunnel vision into an idea that is detrimental to your game.
What now?
- I won't work on this project anymore; it was an exercise, it was fun, I'm glad I did it, and even if my friends told me "there's potential for more", I'll keep that energy for another project. While I'm really into the idea of a game with replayability, several routes, etc., I don't feel this game is the one for it; core gameplay is too limited, adding new stuff would be harder than redo it from scratch, and, well, the base promise was to finish one game in one month.
- That doesn't mean I won't make another autorunner, nor that Vif won't reappear in a future project, far from it. It's even very possible that my next game is TBHD2, this time more complete and all, but this very specific game is done.
- I think I'll redo another project like that in the near future; rn I need to focus on stuff I put aside this past month, and I have work and stuff, so I can't give you any date for when or what. I'll probably do more than one month next time tho, now that I have an idea of what to plan out, I can tackle a bigger project, I'm thinking a 2-6 months project would be manageable, more would probably be a bit more than I can chew.
- I have a lot of basic ideas that could be cool, but what I'll do is try them out individually in a very very small scale pre-alpha, to test them out, in order to have a clear idea that I know is good before I start the next project.
Final note:
- I don't know what I should have said, I tried to be comprehensive, but you never know what you missed, or what was useless info. I'm not an authority of any kind of the subject, but my experience as a newcomer could be useful for some people. All I hope is that there's one person among you readers who was maybe thinking about making a game, or any other creative media for that matter, and who was a bit inspired to do it themselves. Do it. Check Yahtzee's Game Diary series for motivation, check Shaun Spalding for tutorials on gamemaker, check game design channels for theory. Do it. Create. Finish a project. I have twenty if not more projects that I kept as work in progress for years, basking in the glorious "it will eventually exist and it'll be perfect", but your project will never exist if you don't start. Is your idea too big? Start smaller. But start. Go slow if it's too new or too hard. There's no rush. And so what if it's bad? Heck, I love this game as an experience, but it's very very basic and it's my first time doing sequential sex, I have no idea if it's sexy or not, I have no idea if I'd even bother playing this game if I wasn't personally attached to it. But I finished something, and I learned from my mistakes (some of them, I probably didn't even see a lot of them).
Music, art, coding, it all works in a similar fashion: you learn by doing, and the best way not to succeed is to never fail. Make. Fail. Learn. Redo.
BTW if you played the game and have notes, positive or negative, on the art, narrative, gameplay, gameflow, anything, please do tell me, it'll help me make something better next time!
