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hello everyone 🫡 hope you've all been doing well! i've got a quick update

so, about a month ago, i decided that im gonna take a break from art for a while. you may or may not have noticed, but i haven't created that much art over the past... couple years? and that's bc i've been artistically burnt out for a few years now :'D

i've tried various methods of working thru my burnout, but none of that has really helped, so im sucking it up and finally letting myself go on a break. i avoided taking a break for a long time since it, y'know, kinda feels like giving up, but i believe this is the best move for my art in the long run. this will also be a good opportunity to rest my hand, since i've been dealing with hand pain issues for years now. recently, i've even started seeing an occupational therapist (similar to a physical therapist) to help with my hand's recovery!

tbh, i don't know how long this break will be; it might be a few months, might be over a year. who knows! but since i've made the decision to take a break, im not gonna half-ass it and quit too early. i'll let it be however long it needs to be

so! y'all will probably see me online even less. one of my goals during this break is to barely use social media so that i don't feel guilty about not Posting Content™, but i'll probably still make the occasional update to this website. and if im not too creatively spent, i might get back to studying writing during this Art Break

apologies if this is depressing news :'D im actually feeling pretty positive about my break!
if it can help revitalize my passion for art it'll be a big win!!

hello gamers! if you missed it, i finally released my short visual novel Gutsy Flux: Episode 1! you can download it for free here!


perhaps you noticed an important piece of information: this is Episode 1. as in This Will Be A Series With More Episodes. yup! this is my first personal project since… 2020? my last project was a Pokemon fancomic (Acceptance: A Diamond Nuzlocke), so this is my first Completely Original Project in a VERY long time

this was also my very first time ever making a game! i'd fantasized about making a visual novel for years, so I finally sat down and Did The Thing. there were tons of new skills i had to learn: basic coding, GUI design, music production, editing sound effects, and streamlining art assets. and partway thru making this VN, i figured out something very important: i hate making games!!!

i am a humble person who enjoys drawing Silly Pictures and writing Silly Stories and making a game is a whole lot of Not That. the bulk of the work was tedious and boring… seeing it all come together as a functional VN was admittedly pretty cool, but for me it wasn't worth all the time coding sprite changes, animations, the GUI, etc (plus scrounging for sound effects and learning basic music production). i definitely could've cut down on the work i put in but ❤️ im a being made of hubris and i wanted to experience making one (1) whole game by myself

i'd also told myself for Years that i should learn how to make music, but my motivation for that was always "well, if i ever end up making a game, it would be nice to have completely free music for that." so the moment i realized i didn't like making games, my motivation for making music completely vaporized LMAO apologies to anyone who might've been excited at the prospect of More Lynslayer Music. im never making music again <:3

this might all feel very negative, but i promise it's not! this was all useful information for me to learn. as i said before, i wanted to try making a game for a long time, and now i know that it's simply not for me. moving forward, i can put more energy towards the types of projects i actually enjoy making!

so where does that leave Gutsy Flux? i still plan on making more episodes. they'll just be in a different format: illustrated short stories!

y'see, another thing that i learned while working on Episode 1 was that i missed doing Full Prose Writing! over the past decade, any writing i had done was mostly for comics, but i hadn't done any full blown Prose Writing since like... high school?? when i sat down to write the script for the VN i felt obscenely rusty, but a wave of excitement washed over me bc i'd forgotten how much i actually enjoy writing! over the years i've been focusing a ton on improving my art, but in the process forgot that writing is also fun

so Gutsy Flux is my laid back little project to help me scrape off the rust and get back into the swing of Making Stories! from the beginning, i've intended this series to be a quaint sandbox for me to experimentally play around in, so im just writing this thing episode by episode and seeing what happens. and if you enjoy whatever i whip up in the process, that's cool 👍

i don't have any sort of release schedule for this series; the episodes will emerge from the ether whenever they're ready. and for the time being, i want to focus on making illustrations and other art, so i'll be chipping away at Episode 2 on the side. let's see where my little writing hobby takes us…!!

(oh also, a quick update for anyone still keeping track: my PC Purgatory is finally over!
i haven't experienced any PC issues in months!! yippee!!!)

still chipping away at the visual novel in the new year 💪

but first, a quick PC Issue Update for people keeping track: i've got good news and bad news! the good news is that replacing my CPU seems to have fixed my freezing/crashing issues for real now :3 genuinely a huge relief after failing to fix the issue by replacing my motherboard!!

the bad news is that an issue i thought was a part of the freezing/crashing package Apparently Is Not. occasionally my monitors will randomly lose signal, and the only way to fix that is to shut down my PC and start it back up. so! i got another fun thing to figure out <:3

but anyways! i got some quick bits of VN Development Progress to share!


i finished making the game's music! it's all pretty simple, and im sure anybody who knows anything about mixing music will be appalled at whatever sonic crimes i've unwittingly committed, but i did it! i made music with my own two hands and it was only extremely hard!!

for anyone curious, i used Cakewalk for creating the music. it's a free DAW (only available for Windows) and from what i can tell it seems to be pretty decent for free software??

learning how to make music on the computer might be one of the most overwhelming things in the world LMAO there's so much you gotta learn upfront before you can even put a simple little song together


making slow but steady progress on the art! here you can see me doing height checks on Manda's sprites (i've had to fix a Few wonky heights lmao). been working on the sprites, BGs, GUI, etc etc We Getting There

aaand that's it for now! i don't have an estimate for when the VN will come out since progress has been kinda slow, but i definitely wanna finish it sooner rather that later 😤 until next time!

gamers: it's another VN Progress Update

Not Gonna Lie, i feel like some sort of trickster god has been conspiring against me the last quarter of this year. i've been dealing with Hard To Narrow Down PC Issues, where it randomly freezes/crashes multiple times a week (i've been using my old senior citizen laptop in the meantime) (currently on my second attempt at getting one of my PC parts replaced under warranty), and last week i finally succumbed to covid (i'd avoided catching it for so long 😩). so basically: VN progress continues to be slower than anticipated

but! that doesn't mean there hasn't been progress!!


look at that! breathtaking placeholder art!

a lot my progress since last blog post has been Boring Coding Stuff--mostly coding sprite changes and basic animations into the script. it's given me a nice framework to easily plop finished sprites into, but the coding itself was Tedious and Not Very Flashy To Share


i also took some time to plan out the expressions for each sprite. i've really had to reel in my Comic Artist Tendencies bc otherwise i'd be drawing fifty gajillion different expressions LMAO

i should have all the expressions streamlined and planned out at this point! now i just gotta draw all the sprites, plus the background art and some CGs and stuff

(im also gonna try my hand making the music for this game. everyone please pray for me music theory is arcane and overwhelming)


i've made a little sprite progress! i still have a lot to draw, but it's exciting seeing everything slowly coming together


woag, it's like... almost a game........

that's all i've got to divulge this time! Slowly but Surely it is becoming real

hello gamers! dropping a quick Visual Novel Project update here!

over the past month and a half i've made a tiny bit of progress! the timing on my initial VN announcement ended up being a little silly bc afterwards i Immediately dumped all my focus into redesigning this website. and then after finishing the redesign i immediately went on a short vacation LMAO

but hey! all that stuff's out of the way now so i should have more time to focus on my VN!!
so far i've mostly made progress with designing the game's textbox (and in-game menu)


woaw, look at that first real attempt at a General Layout. ultimately i didn't like how spread out everything was, and i thought it might be annoying for the reader to have to look down at the bottom left each time to see the character's name

also people who regularly do coding have my infinite respect. figuring out how to reposition Any Individual Element made me want to burst into tears but i've been sooo strong and brave


and here's where im currently at with the textbox! i still need to figure out the colors and adjust a couple minor things, but overall i think im satisfied with what i got! graphic design is not my passion but as long as the text is easily legible and the menu buttons are Hopefully intuitive then i think this design should be more than serviceable!

that's all i got to share so far! i know a Textbox Update isn't the flashiest thing in the world but golly if it ain't honest work

i finally!! have something interesting to share from my personal project!!!


visual novel!! i've been working on a short visual novel!!!
i've been mostly focusing on writing up to this point, and i just finished the final script!!

i still have all the art and stuff to make (i tossed in the Only clean PNGs i have of the main characters so there was more than just the void to look at lmao) but im so excited that i've made this much progress on this project TwT
i've been itching to share what i've been working on but. i basically only had the script up to this point LMAO showing some blurred out words isn't the most exciting update in the world

anyways look at this look at this points points points points points

hello and welcome to my "first" blog post (real OGs remember when this site had a blog for the first five seconds of its life)

im not compelled to blog really much at all, but i figured i could use this to post quick progress updates on whatever projects im currently working on. which means! you don't have to depend on my social media for those kinds of updates anymore! another win for Personal Website Independence!

i've been a bit silent online for the past few months, but that's just bc i've been slowly working on a new personal project and haven't really had anything shareable from it yet :^) but uhhh i've been writing! i got the first draft of this thing done!


this is my first time using Scrivener and now i understand why all my writer friends love this software. imagine being able to write but Also... Keep Everything Easily Organized?? wild concept

well, that's literally all i've got to share so far. rest assured that I Am Working On Something

(also, you can right click on blog images and open them in a new tab to see them at their full resolution. not the most exciting image here to test that out on but y'know the images work better now)