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Status: Gah MELTING

█ I suppose I'll just cut right to the chase, a few months ago I decided to take up RPG Maker and make a game using that. I didn't really feel like revealing that's what I decided to do with my time cause I didn't really feel like getting people's hopes up about such a thing, and then ultimately it leading nowhere. I'll detail my particular journey with that experience further down in this journal, but what I did manage to put together over the... 3-4 months? What I put together is essentially a proof of concept and is relatively bare bones. It's nothing too extensive since I was spending a lot of time learning how to code inside of it.

I have no particular place to host the file, so I'm using dropbox. The file is a little over 100 MBs in size, and if you can't download it just assume my dropbox hit the daily upload limit; which means you'll have to try again at a later date. I have no clue if that will be an issue or not since I have no clue how many people will attempt to download it after I post this journal, but fair warning regardless. I'm not sure how buggy or unstable it ultimately is, but I hope it works for the most part.

You can grab the file here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0t82k5hmg.....ct3.1.zip?dl=0

Basic info about the game itself that might need explaining since there is very little info given the user in the game's current state:
- Z moves forward into a menu/confirm.
- X moves back from a menu/cancel.
- Arrow keys for movement.
- You can increase player stats in the skills menu (You start off with 10 points, and gain 10 every level).
- The weapon equipped determines what the character's 2nd ability will be: (A cleave, heal, ranged attack, or a pull).
- The fight in the starting area isn't meant to be won, you'll have to retreat from it (It's there for me quick test edits to combat skills)
- The order of the areas in terms of difficulty is Right (garden area), Top (tech area), Left (crystal area); though the difficulties aren't that different overall.
- Quest items don't do anything, you just sell them.

I'll reiterate that this is all proof of concept, as such there isn't much variation on anything: I'll be elaborating on what plans I have later in this journal.

█ While I do intend to continue work on this game project, it's more of a passion project than something intended for making money. Which is basically me saying that I'll be going back into my previous commission journal and poking at people to see who still want a commission and all that for money to get my funds back up. Game development is still uncharted territory for me, so I don't think I'll be crowdfunding it; I know I can deliver on art, but I definitely do not know if I can deliver on a game.

█ I suppose now I'll just detail my game development journey now. To start I've always been trying to in one way or another learn how to create games, but learning how to code was always one of the biggest hurdles. Programming languages are notoriously fickle, unlike actual language where you can get away with misspelling, sentence fragments, and missing punctuation. You mess something up and the whole thing you're working on might just stop working. Worse still is when something is wrong, but everything still works properly up until it doesn't; and then you have to go hunting down the code that causes the issue, which could be something as simple as the order of how lines of code are written to something like flawed logic being used.

Much like with my art, I'm self-teaching myself when it comes to programming; so everything for me is essentially flying by the seat of my pants. Earlier in this year I decided to look more into game development tools to help with game creation, and I was leaning in the direction of RPG Maker. The motivation for it cropped up again when I went looking through some of my old files, which included some art assets that I put together for a game that I never finished. Art assets which I have yet to post or show (I probably should correct that at some point). The choice of RPG Maker got a little complicated since there's many different versions of the program, each with their own ups and downs. I eventually settled on RPG Maker MV as that one seemed to have the plugin support needed for me to pull off what I was going for.

Though what was I going for? I wanted a combat system similar to that of Darkest Dungeon, as it had a setup that allowed for these large graphical elements but required very few frames of animation. Most monsters only had 4 frames of animation: Standing, being hit, and two different kinds of attacks; and the player characters were roughly the same but had 6 different stills for attack animations. Going from a traditional JRPG styled game where you have a column of characters on the right-hand side of the screen combating monsters on the left to a row of characters fighting monsters on the left hand side proved to be a bit more complicated than I expected. It was made complicated due to me wanting to recreate the formation mechanics of Darkest Dungeon where character position determined what abilities could be used and what could be targeted. JRPGs don't really have a 1 to 1 translation of that combat engine so I spent weeks trying to replicate the system, with multiple dead ends. Most of the problems I had was ultimately due to graphical limitations: I couldn't overlap the player characters or graphical overlays and animations wouldn't display in the way I wanted. If I knew far, far more about JavaScript I probably could have figured out a more direct solution; but my ambitions were clearly far ahead of my abilities.

One of the main plugins I was interested in was the character creator one, and one of the reasons why I picked using RPG Maker MV. This was both a blessing and a curse. Initially I figured this would be a natural fit for stuff I've done in the past before, since I've done a number of flash animations that did some asset swapping to create different characters; and for the most part that held true. The problem was that how it updated character assets was somewhat restricted in fashion, I spent a fair bit of time searching and looking for ways to update character assets while in combat to no avail. Once again it's a case of ambition being ahead of my ability. I eventually settled for some less than ideal work around, with any true asset swaps happening outside of combat. This isn't something that's in the current build and something I need to hammer out whenever I put more work into the game.

In essence the biggest hurdles I've had with game development so far is related to graphical assets and how they're managed. There's a lot of different work around and tricks I've had to use to get things to look right. It's all the more trickier because the engine was designed with sprites that are in the area of 30-60 pixels high and across, and I'm using graphical assets that are in the 300x300 range. Though I'm not too worried about cleaner and more crisp graphical assets until making sure the game mechanics are more hammered out.

█ So what stuff needs to be hammered out? Basically everything. I believe most of the hard work is behind me, except for User Interface Design. That's a can of worms I have yet to open, and I dread to.

Equipment and Ability Mechanics
This is the biggest thing I intend to work on next. What I have intended is that the equipment worn determines what abilities a character has, but ATM only the 2nd ability reflects this. Certainly one of the more major things is having abilities to help shuffle party position into more ideal spots, as the only player movement option is "charge". In addition abilities to manage the STUN bar, and more abilities that interact with enemy row positions.

Ability Interactions and Resource Management
I intend to add in an "exhaustion" mechanic of sorts when a character runs out energy for attacks, as well as enemies using different attacks if their STUN bar is high. Currently neither resource bar does too much.

Character Customization
This one isn't really about programming, but more so me sitting down and creating a bunch of different character assets so people can build their own character. This one is somewhat hard to commit to since I have to be sure that what I put together in roughs will work; cause if I create more finalized assets and they don't end up working I'll have to create all new assets from scratch.

Enemy assets
Same problem roughly applies here as with the character assets, especially if I'm putting together the action frames in addition to the standing ones. Course plenty of monster types to add into the game, and their related abilities. I of course intent to add in my ants into the mix as well.

Map Assets
Currently the maps are using default graphics, and I'm unsure of how I want to move forward on that front. I think ideally I'd want to use the system Darkest Dungeon uses, showing the party moving from left to right with a map showing the actual layout of the dungeon. This would be far more compatible to my art style, but I suspect it would take me a long time to code together. Everything is still up in the air, and this is probably the last thing I'll be working on until I get a better idea how I want the player to explore or end up in combat situations.

█ Anyways! If you decide to check out the prototype I hope you have fun with it. I know there isn't that much to it, but I did want to put something together to show for the time and effort I put into learning for the past while. I can't promise anything more will come of it, cause I certainly know that projects being abandoned is not all that uncommon. Though as of this journal post I certainly do want to keep working on it, but I still need money to eat; so expect some art to show up in the near future as I do that!

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Status: Back to the grindstone!

█ Please Read My Commission Guideline Before Replying, Thank You.

█ Opening up general commissions, I have no particular theme in mind so feel free to ask for whatever! I'll try to do what I can for the next 2-4 weeks. I can't think of anything else to say, so come what may!

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Status: Uuuhhh...

█ This journal post is probably gonna contain a bunch o' Beastars spoilers (at least for the anime) but I highly recommend watching it, for me personally it's my favorite show I've watched and contains my favorite characters to date. I don't say that lightly either, and really it's a testament to how well written the characters are and the struggles they go through. The simplest way to explain it is to frame it as "Zootopia: Dark." Which is to say if you enjoyed Zootopia, then you'll likely enjoy Beastars as it roughly the same premise; but is willing to go down paths Zootopia is unable to. If you're aware of the earlier drafts of Zootopia, it certainly runs closer down that premise. An interesting side note is that the author of Beastars had her story rattling inside her head, but didn't think anyone would care to read it, but after seeing the success and how well received Zootopia was she buckled down and started to draw her manga.

If you have zero intention of watching Beastars and/or don't care too much about mild spoilers you can get a quick (semi out of context) taste of what the anime is like by doing a search for "Legosi X Haru" and watch the video that shows up.

I suppose since I mentioned Zootopia I'd give a few brief thoughts on it. It's certainly a well crafted, fun, and beautiful world; but it wasn't something that really grabbed me past the surface, and didn't really give me too many reasons to rewatch it. There was however one moment that resonated with me deeply, and that was when Nick was talking about his past; of how when he was a kid he was chased away from something he wanted to do. Though nothing to do with being "different" but more along the lines of where "Winning is everything" met "Try your best" and you can guess which ideal won out. Past that the emotional drama and tensions were rather generic.

Beastars for me was way different when it came to how relatable the characters are to me. Two of the three main characters resonate with me in deep yet different ways. Even the third one I relate to on a deeper level than I did with Judy or Nick in Zootopia. I suppose one of the main reasons why is because the characters are essentially lost and mostly drifting through their lives trying to figure things out. Most media have characters that are driven from the start, and the character only tends to stumble a little bit; or slight bits of character growth.

More spoliery stuff starts here I suppose as I talk about the characters more in depth. Beastars has two male leads: Legosi a wolf who hides his strength to fit in, and Louis a deer who strives to be perfect despite his weakness; they are polar opposites in terms of personality and drive, yet if you were to combine the two you'd end up with someone who's similar to who I am as a person. My dragon characters of Endium and Erinsis are what you get if you split my personality across different traits (mostly along the lines of apathy/empathy, impulsive/cautious, and pragmatic/idealistic). I at times do want to try and present their character stories and backgrounds, but I need far more knowledge and practice at such things before I'd feel comfortable enough to attempt it.

Something that drew me towards Legosi the wolf from the start was how he's visually presented: He stands hunched over by default. It's not something you see often, and I've never really seen it used as the default pose for a main character. It's something that struck at me deeply from the start because I spent a lot of time when I was younger in that pose, even told to stand up straight on more than one occasion; but never really having the strength or motivation to do so due to how depressed I was at the time. Legosi is ultimately someone who's always at a distance, numb to a lot of things in life, resigned to being used to how things are. His complete and total social awkwardness cuts to the bone as well, since I have a complete inability to start any kind of conversation. Getting numb to things is certainly how I went through a lot of my life, and in a lot of ways I still do; though not really by choice. Legosi does find his way out of that place, but I'm still somewhat trapped there; though I'm for the most part okay with it.

This does bring me to Louis the deer, who I relate to far more than Legosi; far more than I realized upon my first and second viewing. It was the third time around that I realized how much I was like Louis in the past, it was just I didn't recognize it because I had moved so far from that point in my life. He's a perfectionist, and not really by choice; there's a constant weight on his shoulders to be the best, the absolute best. It is crushing and suffocating, he can't escape it because that's all he knows how to do; and he has to do it, he will do it. While this isn't exactly an uncommon trope or personality type, what made me realize how similar I was to Louis was when he was driven to his breaking point. Everything he had been, everything he worked for, all of his beliefs; it was all for nothing, it was worthless and he gave up. He had a gun and he pulled the trigger, and on my third watch through I remembered that point in my life and even to this day that I would have done the same and without hesitation. I only felt that for a second, but in such things a second of weakness is all it takes.

In a sad kind of way, who I am is a combination of both Legosi's and Louis's weaknesses, and virtually none of their strengths.

Which brings me to Haru the female lead of Beastars, who I don't relate to at all; outside how she goes through life: The not caring at what others think, how ultimately I'd be happier if I was left alone. It's not a happy way to go through life, but sometimes it's enough... a world full of fake smiles. I think I shared the same levels of resignation and defiance as Haru did as death closed in on her, but there was no one save me; it was just darkness at the end. I've been spending years since clawing my way back out of that void.

Hah, I suppose these thoughts have been rather dour, but that's kinda due to the characters being written more 'real' than most I've seen. It's not written as "Here's a problem, and then later it's solved" rather "Here's a problem, and it's going to be following you for a long time; maybe even the rest of your life" and the story is about how to live with that problem. There's certainly a lot of problems I've been living with, some that I could certainly be doing a better job of with as well. I still find myself more distant with people than I like, but such is what happens when one gets burned too many times; each time it gets harder and harder to close the distance again, simply because the threat of the pain of getting close is just so great.

Something that's not so gloomy... Something of a coincidence is that early in the story Louis is praised for his performance in a play, and in my youth I have a vivid memory of getting complements for my role in a play adaption of "The Wizard of Oz". I played the Wizard, and I remembered the shift in tone I did for the booming voice and the meek man behind the curtain I had really gotten into the moment and afterwards quite a few adults complimented me on it. I think I was around 10 years old at the time, and in retrospect I guess I had to have done rather well considering how terrible child plays are; how much of a drag they are to get through. I certainly didn't anticipate any kind of particular attention from random adults in the audience. At least that's how I remember that day, it was a good and happy day.

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Status: My brain aches from coding this project

█ Animation temporarily stored at https://www.furaffinity.net/view/26414870/ while I take commissions on it. What I'll be doing is adding in more head assets. You can type in "Erinsis" in the name field to see what a reskin looks like. I might tweak elements of this interactive animation down the road, but for the most part it's 'finished' (rather I had to put an end point on it or I'd be working on it forever).

- Suggested price range will be $30 to $70 range to create a head asset for this animation. (Some heads will end up being more complicated than others to do)
- Can also request toy shape and background suggestions as these are bare bones at the moment.
- I haven't coded in changing the color/pattern of the suit yet. So no guarantee I'll be able to do that should you request different color/patterning, but you're free to ask regardless.

If you're interested leave a comment below with your reference.

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Status: A little headachey!

█ Sure got a lot done in a few weeks, and will be continuing to go through the commission list through next month as well; though admittedly probably will be a bit slower output going forward. Hopefully not too much slower as I'd want to get it done before December! Once everything is worked through will mash together together the commissions that will allow for it into a college for Halloween 2019!

I might try to do something similar for December and Xmas, but will see how well my sanity and energy levels hold up. I'm sure a bunch of people would certainly go for a 'toy-themed' thing. Sure a part of me says I'm insane for going through the whole journal list, maybe it's even a big part; but I think I'll be able to keep up the pace.

There's also going to be a non-Halloween themed upload in the near future as a sort of intermission to break up the kinds of uploads. Completely unintentional, but I'm sure will be welcomed for a number of reasons!

Course never know what the future will bring, and plans might change. Either way thanks for all of your support, and hope you all have a good one!

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Status: A lingering cough haunts me!

█ I'll be uploading the last set of commissions over the next week.

█ So it's that time of year again! If you want a Halloween themed commission, leave your references and description of what you want below! They'll be single image pictures as I intend to mash them together into a larger collage like in some previous years. As they are single image they'll probably be 20-30 depending on what's asked for.

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Status: Summer has melted my sleep schedule

█ Gonna do something a little different this time around, something I haven't exactly done before so I can't really say I know what the end result will be. So this round of commissions is gonna be a pay what you want kinda affair.

So a bit of background as to why I'm doing a set of rough/sketched out comics: Often people have a lot of things they want shown, but the nature of the time it takes to put a comic together is rather long; so a lot of trimming down on what the initial thing was often is done. I can actually sketch and layout a comic pretty fast, but things tend to grind to a slow once it comes to inking out lines. At times I estimate it takes up 50-70% of the total time I work on something (I also find it to be the least fun part of the whole process).

█ So as a summary what I think I'll be doing is a sketched version of whatever kind of script is provided, can still color it (but can skip that if requested if you want to give inking/coloring a shot), and a cleaned up layout and dialogue.

█ I don't know how many of these I'll do, really depends on how fun they end up being to do. I also plan on streaming putting these comics together at https://picarto.tv/Endium (I'll probably do journal notifications for when I do). Again I haven't really done something like this before so I don't really know how this will all play out in the end!

█ If you're interested in this kind of commission leave a reply below with the following:

- Character references
- Scene references (if you want something more specific background wise)
- A script: Basically what you want shown panel by panel / page by page, as well as what dialogue is spoken in them. The tighter the script the better, but even a rough one is fine because either way I'll have to do editing on my part to make the scene flow more smoothly. No particular limit on the script length, but try to be reasonable or at least have a decent script if it's something more extensive.

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Status: I hurt my foot at some point

█ I really shouldn't let these things lapse for so long, buuuut that' just part of how my brain operates I guess, but I'm sorta back! Though, not sure what being back means too much specifically. I do have a backlog of submissions I'll be uploading over the next few days, and maybe I'll be taking commissions again afterwards.

I'm considering setting up the FA shiny tipping system, and I have a bunch of thoughts in regards to that I'll probably elaborate on in a future journal; always gotta need money and all that jazz, which does also lean into me opening up commissions sooner than later.

Though with that said I've been working on my programming skills some more as of late, and may attempt to put together another game. One thing I've learned about programing and design over the past few months is that what I'm doing is essentially working on a fractal. When you start work on one thing, it branches off into smaller bits of detail, and each of those branches will break off into even more into infinity. Something I've gotten a bit better as such is building the major required branches and to not worry too much about the smaller things because you can literally work on the minute details forever and there will always be even more tiny details to work past that. Don't know how much time and energy I'll be able to put towards it, I need to put together a proof of concept together first anyways.

When I do go back to drawing and such I'll probably be streaming it. I did some troubleshooting a few weeks back and I think I've managed to fix the connection issues I had when doing it. In short the wireless signal my tablet was getting wasn't strong enough and I used the soda can hack to boost the wireless signal.

Hope you all are having a good summer! Personally I can't wait for winter to come back, I just don't like the heat and the mosquitoes! Like the one that's been buzzing around in my room that I have yet to smite.

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Status: Riding the wave

█ Been awhile since I've done a stream of thought journal, and I have various things rummaging around my head so I figure I might as well put them out there.

I suppose the first thing on my mind is my mood cycles, they're still there (and probably always will be) such is the reason for why there was a dry spell on the art from me. This is of course is something I've talked about previously over the years, and I find metaphors increasingly more useful and that perhaps one of the challenges of life is to find ones that will work for myself personally. The one that currently works the best for me right now in terms of my mood is that I'm surfing on the high point currently. The low point will of course come, but better to be floating over the water waiting for the next high point to come than to be thrashing about feeling like I'm drowning.

Something else I'm starting to figure out is the cycle of my brain, which is a bit different than the one of my mood: It flips back and forth between artistic and technical, and not necessarily in rhythm with my mood; and sometimes there's overlaps. When the overlap happens is when I seem to end up doing my larger animation projects. The artistic mood is pretty obvious as that's when I'm most active in posting art. My outlet for technical things tends to lean towards games, usually ones that have mechanics that have min/max mechanics; I end up going into deep dives figuring how to do uncommon or unintended things. The creative side of me tends to remain active regardless. Some other outlets sometimes is thinking about architecture (minimalist as to the min part of min/max), or coding (the various times I put time in to learning how to code). Though currently I think I'm somewhat settling into a mix of the artistic and technical parts via putting together comic pages, or at minimum working within that standardized space. This is something I might play around with in another direction in the future as I'm sort of doing an experiment on this front, but the results of it aren't dependent on myself. I'll probably elaborate on this in a future journal.

Another concept my brain has been playing around with has been around the idea of the 'blank slate' and the application of 'nature' vs 'nurture.' I somewhat think the blank slate idea is true on the surface, but the trick is what's under the surface. Not all parts of the slate are the same density, some parts are hard, other soft; and you don't really know where they are. What might be easy for some to work on, might be extremely difficult for another. Sure you can get the slate of two people to look very similar, but it's going to take different levels of effort on different parts to achieve it. This is also of course ignoring possible mistakes that can be made while doing it. Once you've made the imprint, you're not going to be able to undo it, you can only really make it deeper.

That line of thought led me to another, of basically wearing down a path each day. That we'll naturally follow the path we've set out every day, wearing it down day by day and it being easier to travel along each time. Course it can get too easy and it will become increasingly harder to move off the path you've created for yourself, to the point that you've created a trench for yourself; something you can't climb out of. In this case your only option is to wear down the sides of said trench so that you can possibly create a way out. Of course just like with the blank slate idea previously, some paths are easier to wear down than others; wandering off the easy paths is hard, if not straight up impossible so it's easy to find yourself back on the same path you walked yesterday. Creating a new path involves a lot of moving slightly off your beaten path day by day, clearing the brush wearing down the earth; you can't jump straight into the brambles and think that you'll get anywhere.

So the problem I've been working on is how to widen the path I'm on, and to do that I've been figuring out what kind of choices I run into everyday. For example every now and then I get up to get some water, during this I usually end up getting a snack as well and that's counter productive in my efforts to lose weight (which has been pretty stable and as such I haven't been gaining back the 30ish pounds I've lost from a year ago). Saying to myself "Don't get a snack" doesn't work (does it for anyone?) so instead of giving my brain a hard-stop in terms of a thought, I figured it made more sense to nudge it in a different direction: Since I always want to do something else when I get water, I've been instead inserting the thought of "What do I want to snack on" I replace it with "What one thing can I do to clean up while I get my water?" The act of cleaning is a replacement for the void of the missing snack, and it's been working better for me than saying to myself "no snack." I suppose it's because instead of enjoying a snack, I'm enjoying that I cleaned up a thing.

█ Another series of thoughts I've had for awhile is in regards to the masculine and feminine, and how they relate to an individual. It occurred to me that most people seem to innately know the difference between the two, and I suppose it only makes sense on an evolutionary level; if you're going to be reproducing you definitely need to tell the difference between the sexes. In some species gender identification is used to trick others; ranging from tricking males combating each other allowing a male pretending to be a female to get close to the actual female to mate, or other species mimicking being a reproductive member of another species to use for their own survival or reproduction. Amusingly such themes end up in my art now and then, have to wonder how far ingrained some of these behavioral patterns are within us.

Reflection upon the questions of "How masculine am I?" and "How feminine am I?" made me think of like a scale between 0 to 10, and for myself I kinda place myself at 3 and 2 respectively. I don't really view myself as either that masculine or feminine, I suppose my mindset is I'm closer to androgynous, and if I was pressed I'd have to say I'm more masculine than feminine.

Then a different question arose of "What do I feel about both?" I suppose I could answer with that I'm comfortable with both aspects of myself, leaning towards embarrassment of how I fall a bit short of what I'd feel to be 'average' masculinity and to be expressing any sort of feminine type trait (which is a lingering effect of the idea of being weak to express emotion). I don't feel any particular pressure to be more manly, nor to suppress my feelings (which is different than suppressing my opinion, which might be a topic for another journal if I ever feel brave enough).

Being embarrassed about my own masculinity and femininity did put me on the train of thought of what other emotions can end up being placed there? Love? Hate? Seems to be the case with other people. Certainly there are those who are extremely uncomfortable, if not straight up hostile to one, the other, or even both. I imagine it being rather unpleasant to love one and hate the other, while physically being the part you hate; and that's as far as I'll go with that line of thought as I'm certainly not going to be guessing at how others feel about themselves.

I can only speak to how I view those two aspects of myself, and though I don't really feel I have much of either I think I can safely say that I'm comfortable with both and to an extent love both aspects; and I do end up expressing it in my art here. Not something I really think on to often, but such is the nature of the rabbit hole of exploring the various facets of my personality.

█ There's of course various other things on my mind, but I'm certainly not brave enough to go into more touchy topics of the day. I think however I can talk about more generalized concepts.

I think the first thing is give things time: At least a day, more ideally 3 days or more; even a week or a month and see if you still care. So many people are angry all the time, every day it seems. You should ask yourself what were you angry about a week ago? A month ago? Last year? If you can't remember it might not actually be all that important to you.

Second thing is to be extremely aware of your own confirmation bias, and especially of how powerful it is. This ties back into the stuff earlier about the blank slate and wearing down a path, it's very hard to move from the path you've taken; you can barely move yourself off the path, so the odds of someone else moving you off isn't going to happen. Any kind of blockade or redirection someone else puts on your path you're going to throw out of your way. More and more people are entrenching themselves into anger, and other people getting in your way only feeds into that path of anger; making it more and more impossible to leave that path.

The third thing is try to think critically. This is very hard to do, if it were easy then one would hope it'd be a grade school course that's as important as English and Math. Perhaps the easiest way to think about it, is to think of it as being the opposite of confirmation bias; it's not accurate, but it's accurate enough I think. Essentially it kind of boils down to "Prove yourself wrong. If you can prove yourself wrong you put yourself one step closer to the truth; though this for most people is utterly impossible because confirmation bias is simply that powerful. The more entrenched you are in a line of thought, the more crazy other people will become to you.

The fourth thing is the vast majority of people just live boring uneventful lives: They fret about fiances and look for entertainment they enjoy. Which is just a fancy way of saying "Don't assume other people are evil." Most people just want to live their lives in peace and to be left alone, but everything these days is clickbait. With so many people screaming for attention and well... the craziest voices are the ones that are going to get the most attention. Some people wants to be 'first' for maximum attention, consequences be damned; most people won't care a week down the road anyways. I think most people will probably think "What's the big deal?" yet such an innocuous thought can get extreme reactions from others.

The last thing is to ask yourself the question "Who are you?" take a step back and figure out it means to be you. This journal post is essentially a partial answer to that seemingly simple question.

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Status: Gotta get back to works!

█ Tis that time of year again. If you'd like a commission leave a reply in this journal with a reference and what you want drawn. I'll be prioritizing stuff that fits the theme, but you can ask for any particular thing. I'll get through what my energy levels allow for.

A usual I try to work for about $10-15 an hour, and single character images take about 2-3. Sequences more than 3 depending.

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Status: contemplative

█ Shortish journal, but yes still alive! Just been grinding my energy levels back up, with that said...

█ Time to get back on the saddle and draw some more, gonna resolve to try and do at least one picture a day. With that in mind will take single image (or single 'page') commissions for the moment. Stuff that will take me 2-4 hours ideally (at around $10-15 an hour price wise). I'll get through what I can over the next week or two before posting a new journal.

If you're interested leave a reply below with what you want drawn and a character reference.

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Status: Melancholy

█ Today I said "night night" one last time to my dog. She was over 14 years old (basically 100 in dog years), and was part of a good chunk of my life. Complications from colon cancer ultimately led to her having unbearable pain and the family had to let her go. The past couple of months and past couple of week I've been doing my best to take care of her needs, and she had the strength and energy to take walks up until the last 24 hours of her life when her health took a steep dive. I massaged her sides as she struggled until she could relax, but it wasn't something that was going to get better and she struggled throughout the course of the day. We had hoped she would last long enough for her to be able to pass at the house, but since it was a long weekend it had to be done at the veterinary hospital. As a family we let her go together. I had a dream a few days earlier that she was with my grandmother, so I asked my dog to keep her company. It's a nice thought to have.

She had quite the personality, and perhaps well spoiled as she'd get bored of food after two days. She'd turn her head at leftovers, or even freshly cooked food if it was the same thing on the third day. It was kinda funny to see her refuse a porkchop or piece of chicken simply because she had it two days in a row already. The exception was beef, she always liked it. She was a Siberian Husky, so I never was worried about her killing herself with bones; she was rather smart about eating such things. Part of the reason I suspect was because she was used to eating 'people' food, so was probably able to pace herself better. Another interesting side effect of this was that often she'd prefer petting and attention over food. I'd sometimes hold food in one hand in front of her face while giving her rubs, and even though she wanted the food she'd hold off taking it as long as possible because she valued the attention more. It probably helped a lot that she was seldom ever alone, so she never developed separation anxiety; she got used to people coming and going in and out of the household. She loved winter much like I do, so I'm glad that winter stayed a little bit longer this year so she got to enjoy the snow for that much longer.

I think I might have been the favorite person she liked walking with, probably because I would kind of enable her; whenever she ran I would do my best to keep a good pace on the leash, when she was younger I ended up doing a kind of a skip that she'd drag me along with so I didn't have to run myself ragged keeping up without being dragged down. I tried leashing her to my bike a few times, but that was always scary. Perhaps in another life I would have tried using a small wagon or something. In the end I would usually let her choose where to go for a bit before turning around and heading home, I often didn't plan out a set path so I'd let her choose and she seldom would take the same path twice in a row (unless it was to specifically pester some neighborhood dogs).

Other quirks here and there was she didn't like to be groomed, and course she had to be since she shed a lot. Didn't like people who would try to go for her nails, or cut at the knots and clumps in her fur; always had to do a bit of distracting when it came to that. This of course also made giving her baths rather tricky. Sneezes for a long while would make her concerned for the person, immediately giving them attention with this 'are you okay?' look and sniffing at the air. She didn't like people blowing her face, seemed to be a pet peeve; who knows, maybe it was just because of bad breath. Loved car rides, but seems like most dogs do. Lightning scared her, either going to someone for company or hiding in the basement.

I'm happy to have had her in my life and I have many fond memories, including one of where she got 'revenge' on a skunk; as during one of my walks she went straight into a bush and got the skunk in her mouth before it was able to spray her. So she came out of that encounter mostly unskunked, the skunk did get away in the end; but she got so little of the spray on herself that the rest of the family didn't really notice unless they got really up close, unlike the previous encounter with a skunk where she was smelly for quite some time.

If for some reason you wonder why I don't mention her name, it's well people have a tendency to use pet names for various passwords or hints, and my family isn't an exception. I'm writing this all down so I have a point of reference to remember the bits and pieces of her that photos and videos will miss. That and it helps to process things when they're written down. I'll be okay, and I'll remember the good times as long as I can. R.I.P. she who was born on Valentine's Day and passed on Canada Day.

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Status: Been programming a lot

█ I'm alive!

Although I haven't posted anything in a month, the reason I haven't done so is I've spent the past 3 weeks working on a new animation project. The general idea is I wanted to make an animation base in where I could change assets in and out easily. It's been something I've been trying to do for a long time, but my programming skills weren't quite good enough for me to execute that idea in a reasonable fashion.

You can see the progress of this particular animation project at my SWF storage submission http://www.furaffinity.net/view/26414870/

There's a few things you can do via clicking and dragging, but I'll let you people find out by playing with it. Course there's some inputs as well so you can see what your character's colours might look like in it so long as you know the hex codes.

I'm also contemplating gamifying some of the elements, but that's also for things down the line. Course people are free to suggest possible things I can do and I might try to implement them.

█ Anyways, I'm going to try and do a bit of a YCH here with this animation. Currently there's 4 name slots on it, but really I can put in as many as I want. As a test though I'll do just the 4 to start. Mostly because some asset swapping for putting in things like horns/ears/hair (if applicable) isn't done yet and will take more time to put together.

Initial 4 character slots will be... let's say $50ish. It will probably become cheaper as more of the assets and coding are hammered out. After that point I imagine future slots would probably be around $20. Course if you're poor you can just input your own colors!

So if you want your character in this particular Flash thing post in my reply below with your character reference. I'll be working on creating the head of said character which can be toggled to be masked and such.

I thank you for opening the door to the universe that much more wider for the rest of us to look into, may you be another giant that others will stand upon to extend our understanding of everything.

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Status: Attempting exercise

█ Happy Sub Appreciation Day! But seriously relationships are both giving, taking, and support. If today is supposed to be love, make sure you treat yourself as if you were someone you love; it's easy to beat yourself down, and that's not something you'd to a friend or a significant other (at least I hope not). Good relationships means that they'll be happy for you when you're happy, and they'll listen to you when you're in pain; if you have these kinds of people in your life then take care of those relationships, and if people make everything about themselves then perhaps you should reconsider whatever kind of relationship you have.

It does suck to have no one, but it sucks worse to not even have yourself; so take care of yourself. If you can't love yourself, you'll only be able to obsess over others and not really love them.

█ Mood-wise I'm still pretty... sane, tired though. I probably need to alter my schedule or force myself to take a bit more time off between art sessions. I might try a different kind of stream schedule like 3 days off and 5 days on, or maybe alternating days off and on, I don't know quite yet. Course it might also be a side effect of doing journal based commissions as well, so I'll probably just keep it to in-stream stuff for the next week or so.

It's kind of a weird, unfamiliar situation I find myself in, where I basically have to force myself to slow and and relax a bit; because once stop arting I still have the urge to keep on drawing to be productive. I suppose it's a consequence of switching over my want of playing video games into wanting to do art (and it's trickier than how simple it sounds). I can game for hours no problem, but arting for hours tends make me a bit stiff since I have to stay relatively still to... well draw lines and the like.

Assuming I keep this more 'normal' state of mind, there's a couple of larger projects I'll probably attempt in the near future:

- The Shadow comic that's on hold I might try to set aside a day to work on each week, try and get that ball going.
- A possible new group image that would be 'easy' for me to put together.
- A new interactive animation thing.

Nothing concrete, but putting it out there as a plan does help make things a bit more real and clarifies a goal.

I'm still doing in-stream commissions at https://picarto.tv/Endium for the time being otherwise.

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Status: It's cold, but I like the cold

█ I still should write up some journals a bit more often, but the long and short of it is that I've been able to follow my schedule of doing stream commissions from Monday to Friday for quite a few weeks now. Though I suspect most of you have noticed this considering I've been uploading stuff pretty frequently as of late!

Just a personal observation on my part, but I find the in stream stuff easier to do than to do it from an established list.

Overall I am feeling a bit better as I've had a few ideas materialize in my brain that I might want to try and put together down the road. I was completely devoid of anything resembling inspiration for the past year and it's a welcome feeling to have some of that come back recently.

Streams can be found at https://picarto.tv/Endium and I typically start sometime in the early afternoon.

█ That said, Singles Awareness Day is coming up and this year crippling depression isn't in the way of me drawing some more S.A.D. stuff this time. Examples can be found HERE.

For the sake of my sanity I'll just open up 5 slots for now (one a day), and they'll probably be around in the range of $20-30 give or take depending on if extra stuff has to be done. If you're interested leave your reference and details of how you want your S.A.D. themed thing to be presented.

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Status: Coughy and Sickly

█ Another update to my mental health as I try another type of medication (fourth one so far). The ones I've tried so far while lowering my anxiety at the same time made me either very tired or unable to sleep. Current one I'm not sure if it's doing anything too significant.

I suppose what's helped me more than anything recently is running across a philosophical lecture about cleaning your room. My life is full of "I really should do this" but ultimately don't do it for one reason or another, but 'doing things' does need practice and repetition. So why not start with the simplest thing possible? Cleaning your room. Little things that are really hard to create an excuse for not doing: Tidying up the desk, making the bed, then moving to slightly harder things like reorganizing shelves and the closet. I spend a lot of my time in my room so why not make it a good room to be in? So I ended up at the point where I was cleaning my closet where I had put away old posters and trinkets that I had taken down from a previous room work-around and didn't feel like putting them back up, but putting them back out in my room does make it... well better. Reorganized my various computer wires, in where using piping insulation makes for a pretty good wire holder, and fills the gap between my desk and the wall nicely (to help prevent things from falling through in the future as well). Eventually my room was clean, tidy, a bit better reflection of who I am and what my interests are; something presentable before it wasn't really.

That sat with me for a little while, just maintaining the state of my room and not let it go back into disarray. So then what other little things I should do that I haven't yet? Cleaned up my computer desktop which was cluttered with things I wasn't using or referencing. Went through my FA notifications which were in the thousands and cleaned that up after going through it (hence the various set of new favorites I've recently done). Doing my best to keep a normal sleep schedule is another little thing I've been doing.

Course there's this journal which is another little thing.

For someone like me these little things doesn't come too naturally. I've spent so long living and dealing with the big things that caused me suffering in my life that the smaller things never really registered as something that I needed to pay attention to. It's like worrying about having sand in your shoes when your leg is broken, but I guess it never did occur to me until recently that after dealing with said broken leg that I can dump the sand out. So managing these little things is a new habit or routine I'm trying to form.

I have tried doing this kinda stuff in the past, but I didn't really commit to it because it ended up as one of those "Things I should do but..." Writing a journal seems like one of them super duper easy things, but relative to putting the dirty dishes away it's pretty complicated. Turns out (at least for me) making sure that I can commit to doing the most stupidly simple things does help in making the slightly harder things to do easier.

So the next little thing I'm going to do past this journal is to do some short art streams, get at least one picture done a day at least five days out of the week. A Monday to Friday sorta routine and what not. Structure and schedules are certainly more important than I've been willing to give them credit for in the past. I won't be doing FA notifications of my art stream, I find that the process of posting up an announcement each time is actually a sort of barrier in my way that gets in the way of me actually streaming. I will be streaming my art at https://picarto.tv/Endium when I do though, and it has a notification thing or whatever, but I do apologize for the inconvenience of me not doing FA announcements in regards to it. I have no idea as to what time I'll even be streaming either, that'll probably be something that shakes itself out in the coming days and weeks.

As to what kinda art streams it'll be, maybe stream based commission stuff. My money funds is getting a bit on the low end so either way I do need to get some income back in. Just need to start with the small stuff again and work myself back up to... well something I guess. In the end, just trying to build myself up to be slightly better than who I was yesterday.

Thanks for your support and patience over the years,

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Status: Tireds

█ My apologies for the lack of updates for awhile now. Main reason for my lack of activity is I'm still working out my medication. The first set I tried while did lower my anxiety did leave me rather tired most of the day. On a new one, but not quite as effective on the anxiety front but also makes sleeping a bit harder to do (which of course also leaves me tired due to the trouble sleeping). Feeling 'normal' enough to write a brief journal, and again sorry for keeping you folks in the dark; not my intention, but most days I just don't have enough focus to put my brain into it.

I do certainly want to get back to art, maybe get in a few Halloween related art done before tackling the larger comic thing when the tiredness thing is dealt with. Maybe I'll get used to my current medication, but if not I'll probably be trying something else in the near future.

What energy I do have I've been putting more towards my physical health, managing to lose a few more pounds after leveling off for a long while.

Thanks for your support, I'll try to keep you more informed; just one of them brain hurdles/blockages I need to deal with.

█ In less personal dealing with stuff news I've been finding myself enjoying The Orville a lot. It's been awhile that a sci-fi show made me smile, it was like meeting an old friend after a long time. If you're a TNG fan, but stayed away from it due to Seth Macfarlane being attached to the show, or heard that it's a comedy/parody, I recommend giving it a watch. Personally I feel that the tone of the show is about 75% TNG and 25% humour. Satire of course is completely subjective, so that 25% may land or may just make you cringe. The other 75% however is kind of that hope-filled Star Trek you'd find in TNG, which is pretty refreshing considering how grim-dark all shows are these days. Though my personal recommendation if you've not seen the show at all is to watch Episode 3 first, I think that one is the one that bests informs you if you'll like the series or not.

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Status: It's still too warm

█ So it's been a week and the number of people interested is a bit over a hundred. (Which is 4x more people than I fitted in the last one) Certainly a lot to manage, as I am in essence DMing for that many people! Been spending the week brainstorming how to parse out the story arc, and I've more or less figured out what I'll be doing. From the start I knew I'd be doing this in multiple parts, and essentially this will be 5 'games' strung together by a story thread. Course part of the brainstorming required is how to follow a general story path while simultaneously allowing for different outcomes based on how characters act in the given situations, and how to pull the diverging paths back into a conclusion that can be varied in its outcome.

So before you get all excited and post in this journal take the time to read what the sections are and what part of the story you want to show up in. I also have to create separate replies to this journal so I can organize you all into the appropriate sections so I don't have to do post journal information collection. This method also allows for late comers to enter in the final section which in theory is going to be 'bigish' regardless of how the characters do, though the type of event can vary.

Part 1: (Plants) Shadow sneaks up upon Endium's plant recovery team. Will any one of them actually escape? Will the plants get some members before Shadow even has a chance to? I'm not going to check, but if you were in the plant comic you probably shouldn't sign up for this part for the sake of 'continuity' but as I said I won't check XD)

Part 2: (Tech)Facility Raid. Shadow needs some additional tech, but where she goes depends on what happens in part 1.

Part 3: (City?)Recruitment. Something of interest is happening, depending on part 2; and Shadow needs some additional 'volunteers.' How they're obtained depends on what was discovered, and how many people know about it.

Part 4: (Tech/Plants/Ants/Ruins/Couldbeanythingreally)The race. Gotta get the McGuffin, or maybe the McGuffin needs to escape! Who knows, At this point in the story it could be anything!

Part 5: (City under siege/Panic!/Fleeeeee!) The McGuffin needs to be activated to save the day! Or doom everyone? You already know who needs to see it, but will it get there?

█ Yes it's all pretty vague, but there's a lot of ways the story can pan out. I only have an outline in my brain, and the gaps are basically going to be filled in as the plot advances. There's half a dozen possible end-game scenarios in my head, and possibly more that could develop based on how things go at any particular stage of the comic.

I'll be capping parts 1 to 4 at 25 people for the sake of my own sanity. Part 5 won't have a cap unless it gets ridiculous (insert possible regret here!)

█ Again participation in the game will be $30. I won't ask for the money until your character is 'caught'. Signing up also means your character is gonna be subjected to... well you should know what my gallery entails, so pretty much all that is potentially on the table; but yes adult stuffs.

█ That said you'll need to construct your character. Use this link to figure out the values you need to post in a reply http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9756218/ or just tell me to randomly generate the stats for you. The stats are 0 through 6, depending on your level of competency/ability. If you leave it blank, they'll be something average.

You'll also need to include a reference sheet.

Additional information I'll need is your character's particular weakness/kink which Shadow may end up exploiting depending if you get caught by her directly, as well if you want her to let you go afterwards (as there are some plot elements that may require her to release individuals that might slow her down via resistance).

█ There will be a freebie section you can post in if you don't have the funds to participate. You'll basically show up once as a background character as necessary. There will be two posts for it, one clean (So just standing or running) and the other adult (in the process of being caught or fully caught). You don't need stats for this, just something to use as a reference for your character.

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Status: I'm STILL melting! MELTING!

█ You might be thinking, what am I going to regret? Well first off the next thing I'm going to be doing is another comic game. For those of you who are newer to my antics, I've done this before with my ants and some plants. The rules of which I put together awhile ago which you can find here. This by default of course puts me into I'm going to regret it territory in terms of organizational and work load. What will put it slightly over the top is that this time around it's going to feature a certain A.I.

Though for me to finalize the various details of how I'm going to execute this I need to gauge general interest levels for this (this is going to be the big part of the regret thing!). Currently I'm thinking $30 to participate (how much your character ends up being displayed and drawn will be dependent on RNG against Shadow or those under her control.) With possibly a second tier to have some extra interaction after being caught. At the same time people might rather just be on Shadow's side from the get go as pre-caught individuals.

Course I'm not done with the crazy, as I'll probably try to work in some freebies for characters in the background or one-shots of people as kind of a part of the million viewer thing.

█ That all said post if you're interested in having a character of yours participate in this project of mine. I need to get a feel for how many people want to play into this to figure out the scale of how the story will play out. My initial concept is a bit more small scale, but I highly suspect I'll need to come up with something a bit more... big.

I don't know why I do this to myself XD

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Status: I'm melting! MELTING!

█ Well that snuck up on me! And me without a plan or anything for one of them number milestones... Ah the perils of not paying attention to numbers in general. Though yeah, that's a thing, maybe I'll think up of something later. A big thanks to you folks who have been with me throughout the years and who've recently stumbled across my stuff, and who feed me via commissions (which I'll probably be doing more of in the near future, who knows maybe I'll figure out some kinda thing to do for the million view milestone thing... might bring back my game format... if I feel *that* insane... which I might be).

█ As a follow-up to the previous journal entry, the dosage of my meds is up a bit and as a result my anxiety is also further reduced. That's a plus, though my energy levels still remain about the same. I kinda hope that once I get back to arting and such it'll be a bit harder to derail me with less anxiety-related worries. I might be also be able to focus on my physical health a bit more as well. Also had relatives over for an extended stay who have recently returned home so I kinda hope to get back into a more 'normal' and boring routine again.

█ Also it's way too warm for my liking. It's been hovering at 30C or around 85f for the past week and looks to stay that way for the foreseeable future. I envy those of you who have AC for this kind of weather!

█ So once again thanks for the attention and such, I hope to be doing a bunch more art moving forward!

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Status: Still a bundle of nerves

█ First off sorry for worrying some of you out there with my absence, I know I haven't posted anything in months but at times it's hard to sit down and write an update post. Depression does have a way of making things that should matter feel like they don't at all.

Something I've been somewhat aware of for the past many years is that the low point of my mood cycle tends to last around three months (give or take a couple of months), and this time around it's no different (It hit full-force at some point mid-February this time around, and well it's mid-May). As such I haven't really touched anything art-wise or really had the energy or motivation to compile any journal posts.

I'm not sure how I feel on the art front yet, and ultimately there's a reason why I'm writing up a journal post now:

█ I'm going to be going on some anti-depressants and see if that does anything for me. This was something I was probably going to do a year earlier, but I've noted in an earlier journal that a visit to the doctor basically revealed some physical problems I had to deal with in regards to per-diabetic conditions, weight, and cholesterol stuff; which of course ended up taking up priority. Still need to work on the cholesterol, weight is stable but still need to push it down a bit further certainly.

At any rate considering the emotional slump I've been in the past few months I figured at this point why not and see if medication can help. I'm not sure I feel anything in particular in regards to this decision, I'm generally wracked with anxiety as a rule of thumb anyways, so that's not exactly much of a change in that particular state of mind. I'm not much of an optimist either, so I'm not going to be expecting anything to change; I suppose it would be nice to be wrong about it, but I don't even know what being wrong means in this case. The majority of my life at this point has been on long feeling of meh with the occasional sprinkle of happiness here and there, and pits of despair or emptiness.

I'm almost content with just existing, but there's still a part of me that wants to create things, but that part of my is constantly hindered by a fog of apathy a lot of self-doubt; and in the end that's probably the biggest reason why I'm giving it a shot.

If things pan out, then I guess this in a way would be the last post I make as the person who I am today. If not then I guess I'll be prescribed something else in about a months time and see if something else works. Granted it's all a bit melodramatic, we're all a different person the next day; as we add a little bit more to the thing we call ourselves.

█ I guess to wrap this journal up I'll talk about Breath of the Wild which has been one of the few games I've played recently that I've 'finished'. I'm not much of an avid gamer in the sense I only play a few games as opposed to playing everything out there that I can. I ended up playing BotW basically by accident, as it's technically my sister's copy but she ended up moving out the and the copy arrived and I figured I might as well play it, especially considering the reviews it was getting. Though I did hold off from actually playing it for a month.

First off I completely understand all the criticisms of the game, the biggest one being that it's not really a Zelda game. There's been a formula to the series that's been followed for years, so much so that some joked that if you played one you've essentially played them all, and Breath of the Wild threw almost all of it out the window. Yet in doing so I think it's probably the best open world game out there. It doesn't do anything ground breaking, but it does what a lot of other open world games do but seamlessly. More importantly it's a game that promotes curiosity and exploration.

A lot of other games these days basically pad the game experience with quests, usually fetch or kill quests for NPCs. An objective flashes on your map and then you head straight towards that objective, and along the way you'll probably find even more quests, and doing those quests you'll find even more quests; eventually you'll forget what you were originally questing for, or where you had to go or what you needed to get. The only reason why you went anywhere was because you were told to go there, and sometimes you couldn't be bothered to talk to NPCs anymore because you already have a dozen different 'errands' to run. So it was quite a nice surprise that BotW basically tossed that out the window, that instead it used visible landmarks or small chains of distractions that would pull you off the beaten path, and you would find things. That no matter where you went, if you looked around you'd find something; be it monster camps, some buried treasures, a mini-dungeon. At first glance things would seam barren, but if you looked closely you would find something sticking out that would draw your attention and you'd investigate. No one needed to tell you, your eyes told you to investigate.

While I have finished the game, I doubt I've explored even a quarter of it. There's certainly a lot of different things for me to discover, and it's not a game that gives you that feeling of "I need to read a guide" because a large part of the fun is finding out things on your own. There's nothing that 'must' be seen, 'must' be defeated, or 'must' be collected, so at no point will you ever get stuck. The only time you get stuck is if you yourself refuse to move on, and in regards to that particular comment I realized I needed to turn off the shrine-sensor function rather early in the game. Since it would ping every time you got close to one your focus would immediately become "MUST FIND IT NOW!" but after turning it off my gaming experience improved a lot, because instead of expecting a shrine and spending minutes looking for it; often times I would just run into one, and that sense of me finding it was much better than hearing the game pinging me about it. Which is to say I've probably ran past some shrines, but that doesn't matter; because the pinging was distracting me from enjoying the experience.

Course there's the other big thing about BotW: It's weapon system. People have noted that it's 'not fun' to have their weapons shatter after a set amount of use, and are sad that they'll inevitably lose powerful weapons they've collected; there is an extremely good reason why it's there: It removes the requirement of gating off sections of the map for the sake of progression. The way BotW is setup, after you leave the tutorial area you can head straight for Hyrule Castle and if you're skilled enough loot some of the most powerful weapons in the game. In any other open world game this would completely break the game. You would have the most powerful weapons in the game within the first few hours, rendering the rest of the game completely and totally obsolete. This is why other open world games gate off sections of the map to be only opened up after you've completed certain objectives. If the weapons break, then that means all parts of the map are relevant at all times, otherwise BotW would be closer to your typical open-world game: Run around in area 1 get a thing then beat the boss, area 2 opens up with a stronger thing with a stronger boss, then area 3: So on and so forth.

BotW is essentially one big sequence break, it's sequence is whatever you make of it. My personal experience is that I stumbled into the colosseum after leaving the tutorial area, and within it a Lynel (arguably the toughest monster in the game, harder than the world bosses and the various incarnations of Ganon). I died a lot fighting it, figuring out quickly that I didn't have the weapons necessary to defeat it as they would all shatter before taking off even a quarter of it's life; however, there were weaker monsters all around the ring of the colosseum. So I did what I felt was natural in that situation: I used my weak weapons to beat these monsters up and took their weapons, killing all of them just so I'd have enough quality weapons to take on the Lynel and kill it (which I did). But of course the powerful weapons it dropped eventually broke, but if that wasn't the case then I would have been using those weapons for basically the rest of the game. I think the game could have gone with a slightly different system for managing the weapons though: Like the ability to stack your weapons in an order, so that once the one you're using breaks it auto equips the next one in the order. Would improve the flow of the battle which does get interrupted (even with the quick select) to grab your next weapon.

My hope is that Nintendo will build on top of what they built on BotW, and add in more elaborate dungeon designs and more enemies to combat; either as expansions or a new game completely, one that's more 'alive.'

█ And that's it for the rambling tonight. I'll see you all on the other side, whatever it ends up being.

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Status: My sleep cycle is a bit haywire

█ Since it's the season for giving, freebies! OMG free art panic!

I decided upon an idea that's rather simplistic so that I can hammer out a 'picture' extremely quickly, which is simply this: Having people trapped in shiny Xmas ball ornaments with only their head exposed. Super levels of cheating since I'll only end up drawing a head!

So yeah this costs nothing and I'll be basically putting everyone who's interested into one giant tree group picture.

If you are interested leave a reply with the following info:

- reference sheet (or tell me to use your icon as a reference)
- color you want the ball to be (two colours if you want it striped)
- what parts you want your head showing (all of it, eyes only, muzzled, hair showing, ect)

Limit it to one character, if you absolutely want to have two I can have the two characters sharing the same ornament (and if that's the case tell me if they're to be facing each other or not).

I'll see how many of these I can do leading up into Xmas day (so I'll be taking entries today and tomorrow), and then go back to working on the December commission list (again if my mood holds).

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Status: Still fighting the blahs

█ I think I've gathered up enough willpower to do some more commission work for the holiday season. You can request anything that comes to mind, but I will be leaning towards things more in line with the season. I'll probably be fine with doing some short sequences if you want them, but you have to provide at the very least a rough script/layout of what you want shown for me to consider it (otherwise I'll just skip over it).

As like with previous times, I cobble together art at about $10-15 an hour and it takes about 2-3 hours to do.

If you're interested leave a comment below containing the following:

- A reference link to your character
- Type of situation/theme/ect
- What parts of your character you want showing, otherwise will end up fully covered depending on the situation

This will be more or less first come first serve (If I want to do what you request) and I'll see how many I can do before my brain putters out (in the event I don't get to them all). I'm still very much at the mercy of my fluctuating mood sadly.

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Status: Chugging along

█ I'm going to be spending some time on programming a platforming game from the ground up which I'll probably be posting in the near future and keeping it updated as I work on it. Now I haven't really played to many games these days, and certainly not very many platform games recently; let alone ones on PC.

So the question I'm asking is what keybindings do you prefer for movement and actions? There will be 2-3 current action buttons and the typical left-right and jump.

Don't expect anything too elaborate from me on this particular venture, I'm still very much a novice at programming; so I'm trying to keep things relatively simple for the time being.