Hahaaa, that's great~

It says it also works for Mac on the itchio page, but I only see an exe file?

my bad, I thought the build made from Game maker studio was supposed to work for win/linux/OSX but it seems you cannot export a game for mac if you're not using one. I'll update the page now, thanks for telling me!

well, I tried :v

Animation on this is dope! I read your journal about pretty much hating animating for children's television, but what's like your goal in the long run?

Well, like most people in my field, one of my long term goals is to be able to make a living working on my own projects from home. Considering it's WAY easier to make money off of independant games rather than independant animation, I'm considering this as an option (If I ever become competent enough at making games).

my short term goal right now is to get into an animated feature.

and my very long term dream goal is to make an R-rated animated movie with anthro characters where Fiona Apple writes and sings a vilains song (but that might be a little bit much to ask methinks).

I think it's probably easier to release an independent game and make money off of it, especially when compared to animation, but there's so many moving parts and different fields of knowledge you have to get into. I spent a lot of years and effort on learning it all and never really felt like I scratched the surface but that was before the more recent boom of digital distribution and easier and better ways to release content. Honestly, the one thing I think I really learned from it was the value of separation of fields, letting people that are really super passionate about the programming do the programming and the people that have spent their life with art do the art and not just trying to be a one man swiss army knife. That can work, some great stuff has come from that, but on average I'd say it's a trap a lot of people fall into just cause they have trouble finding like minded, hard working folks (which is what happened with me and why I'm not doing games right now).

Your animation quality is top notch though, but I know that's not really all that goes into getting a job in entertainment. That said, I really think you'll be able to get into a feature no sweat if you're really searching. That other goal though dude, it's good to have one to shoot for in the future for sure lol.

I understand your point of view regarding indie game developpment, and as someone who worked for a couple month on an indie game (as an intern), I have seen for myself the benefits of having a small team of 4-5 people each working on what they are best at. However, I think that the success of a one-person game relies on realistic goals and ambitions and knowing your own strength and weaknesses. Obviously I will probably never be as good a programmer as someone who studied coding in half a dozen language for 5 years, or as skilled a music composer as someone who's been playing the piano since they were 6, but I don't think i HAVE to. Keep in mind I'm not saying it means I should be forgiven for creating a broken game with terrible music, but rather that I should only make sure that these 2 aspects have ambitions within my reach and that they are competently executed. One of the great things about indie games is that they can afford to do only ONE thing really well, and in my case, i would aim for very ambitious visuals and animation since it's my domain of expertise.

knowing all that doesn't mean I won't fail of course, but at least I'll try.

Also, music might be the one thing I outsource to someone else because music theory and composition is just wizardry to me...

I agree 100%, I feel really like the main thing that holds people back is just their willingness to put in the effort. It can be an arduous task to release anything at all, but you certainly don't seem like the sort of person to run from hard work. The only reason I even mention looking for people of other skillsets is that what you do (2d art and animation) would make any programmer, designer or even musician want to work with you. Amazing visual art sells a game faster and better than any other part of the package and I think most people understand that if even just on a basic level.

With that in mind though, I do think you could do something by yourself that's good. The biggest hurdle wasn't even really programming or music for me, it was design. I'm not sure people think about it much but design can get complicated as hell for even the simplest concept. In Mario 64 there's a single button that does 7 different things, all controlled by the user and and of which none of the actions are context sensitive. They don't overlap in use and I would never say I used one when trying to use another, it's all super seamless. It seems incredibly simple when looking at it from the outside in, but trying to create that from scratch seems like a massive undertaking from my standpoint. Mr.Miyamoto said that the design team he was leading took something like 3 months on the movement alone before designing any of the levels because they wanted make sure the thing you did more than anything else (running and jumping) was fun to do. Like I said, I think you can do this stuff, but if you get frustrated with it to the point of quitting you should definitely look around for some folks that can handle some of the jobs that are frustrating you before jumping ship.

Yo I don't understand why music is like a magical art. There's a very clear and precise way to understand and develop music and no amount of knowledge on the subject seems to make it less of a mystical black magic where people throw newts tails and dragonfly wings into a pot and pull an audial experience out.

Ahahaha, nice! The animation is nice in it, good work =)