Honestly just doing my best

Pre social media, I used to just post things here and write 5 words. Now we are brimming to the britches with likes and follows and societal brainwashing.

I just want the viewer to smile on the inside, like I did, when I created the drawing.

I regret losing years of my life to Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Stolen, but I let it happen. Not simply because they thought their platforms deserved my content but because I scrolled. As I did, I lost my soul. Only now I am trying to regain an innocence, something that is rekindled with Blogger for me.

Blah blah, I never used to write more than 10 words at a time on this blog in the past, where did the wordy garbage come from? I'm doing my best. 

Whos Afraid of Storyboard Pro?

I started an animatic to another Monstercat song in 2019. Yeah, way back before all this chaos blossomed. I have wanted to get back into doing animation projects lately, but simply animating hasn't scratched the itch for me. I crave storytelling, I crave depicting an emotional journey as a whole. Sometimes illustrating meaningful things does this, but I also love the adrenaline of crafting moving drawings.

So I thought, well, there is that animatic I started ages ago that is in a solid place, but needs refined drawings and 'inbetweens', yes, because modern day storyboarding is basically animating in my experience. I have 5+ years of experience but worry that my past employers have eyed me like eagles this entire time I've been struggling, and come to conclusion that I am not worth hiring. Probably because of my autism and bipolar, which are fairly problematic when they aren't controlled, as I've learnt the hard way. T__T I'm just living for the day when I feel at peace and without this dread in my head. I feel this way because I've had my art abilities dampened significantly and have felt like I've lost a part of myself, permanently I have thought. No. Doctors all say it'll come back. It is quite a feat to draw for solid hours, as I find it very draining. It's painful since I used to live at my Cintiq, now it's like an alien monolith I'm slowly decrypting. 

It would be nice to put all my 'skills' together and make splendid background illustrations for my animations. I want hope more than anything. With every stroke of the pen, I pray. I want to feel like I have a future, I haven't been gifted such a luxury. Others don't know this agony in my heart, but I have gradually been learning to love myself and with every month spent out of a ward, I can feel my brain start to heal. 

On a side note, I love my glowing rainbow keyboard I cleaned with compressed air recently. I am also grateful for the Rooibos tea poured for me by my dad's partner this afternoon. I'm filled with an appreciation for the glittering brilliant little joys in this life. Little things like happiness gleamed from new favorite songs, from doing any drawing that turns out ok and telling myself  'that's a good one!'. There is also doing a little dancing around the craft room in the twilight hours. Also grateful for getting into Osu!, although I notice the website happens to be down right now.

I hope I can better approach life with optimism that things can and will get better, I have indulged in pessimism and misery too long, I'm done with it. Someday soon I'll be able to live independently again, have a job, make new friends and confidently face life with a smile, to conquer this darkness that has been plaguing me. The memories of the ward and time on the streets haunt me, but my mind is my temple, and I can control how I feel. It is hard, but I can see a way through it all. Don't really know what else to ramble about for today. Dad says it's no wonder I'm a writer, I'm so damn melodramatic.  Below is some arts, over and out~

Below is in progress but it's taking forever and I doubt it'll ever be there but hey, I'm arting.

Ocean awareness game in progress

I'm adapting the spacey-snakey-lizard brick-breaker game I did for ADG Slam Jam 2 to make a game with local Adelaide start-up and not-for-profit. I wont say the their name quite yet. It will have themes of ocean awareness in it once I get the basic mechanics working. Sigh, that will be a bit of a feat given my amateurish at best programming skills.

The adorable mascots are from left to right; Bree, Ying, Toba and Sam. Below is some gameplay. You use the (magical) sea slug to break the rubbish out of the clump and collect it into your (also seemingly magical) sack. The way in which the 3 other characters will be used is still in progress, such is the path of the game dev. I hope this game can inspire children to think more about our impact on the ocean, because the games I grew up with inspired me to care more about things. Take ZuPaPa or New Zealand Story for example, they got me interested deeply in art and crafting cartoon worlds. So who knows what this game could inspire in children and adults alike.

Below is the ball pushing animation but it's taking some time to implement the animations working nicely. I am the sole programmer and game dev on the project now.

Tacky art for the instructions screen (still in progress). All this stuff takes time and with the code, it takes a lot of brainpower to do it on your own!

I feel great dread over my art. Because I know that it's not at the level I used to be at. I have a knee-jerk insecure reaction when I see certain people, like the fancy-pants animator types from Australia I used to know, looking at my stories on Instagram. It was a story where I was trying to be a creative and a wholesome hooman bean, I think, so why feel bad? Point is, I don't have to. I'm doing my best with what I have. All drawing is draining for me. I can't say much more, because I sound like an big bummer once I start typing. 

Yet nobody is here for walls of text huh. You can tell I've changed since Calfarts years. Still, this art is ok. Here are some recent finished and WIPs of sorts. I blog when I have the impulse to every few days. I don't get much traffic here anyways.Better get back to work on art or code, over and out!

Drew 21 faces at the Willunga Artisan x Quarry market!

I busked at the Artisan x Quarry market Easter event from 8:30 to 12:15 and drew 21 faces! Wow! Mostly kids, only three adults out of all of them. Compared to last market where   As we had surprise social obligations x2 immediately after I was done with market, I was very exhausted.  

Before I get into the art, I need to say, life drawing is life. Caricatures are life. Sketching from life is life. Copying existing art will get you some draftsmanship, but you could always just be doing the ultimate copying, which is life drawing, like real classical artists always have done. The reason I say this is because a lot of people don't see value in life drawing. They can draw sparkly elf and orc concept art all they want, nothing beats giving a drawing to a little smiling girl who is over the moon with being cartoonified. Despite everything I've been through, I have always had a hankering for life drawing, and being capable of doing even the smallest sketches, whether its on the train into uni, or sketching a portrait for a cute little girl, means the world to me.

First game jam in GameMaker AND all by myself!!!!!

The game is up here on my itch.io! It's a zip file but I promise it's not a virus! What do I have to say about this short project in which I only used thirds of the 9 day jam?

 

The post mortem from this project is, don't expect to do stellar with your school work AND do a fun jam, one will have to suffer. It could be maddening, watching the 'ball' hit around and spear itself onto spikes while you can only watch. Still, that's what the original game 'brick breaker' is about, enjoying the bricks breaking...It's only fair when the spikes can be avoided due to SKILL (moving left and right) soshite, it's a bit cruel. 

I struggled with the level progression, it's very clunky. I struggled with the 'resetting' of the rooms when dead and yadda yadda, all the linear stuff drove me batshit. I wonder why.

I enjoyed making the animated bricks and designing the strange levels. I admit for time reasons (and sanity) I didn't play all 5 stages through without dying (those ceiling spikes are brutal...) before submitting to jam. I removed ceiling spikes before submitting and hope that makes it more fair a game.

I wanted to focus on the delight of hitting the different bricks, so focused a lot on getting the corresponding color coming out of the exploding animation, wayyy too much time spent on that but hey, it's worth it. 

The local Adelaide game dev scene (AGD) has often made me self conscious, a bit of imposters syndrome involved there because of my trauma, but I'm really pleased with the vibe I felt on their discord and although it was a jam of only 14 games, that pretty great turnout for Adelaide. It makes me proud to be a part of something local.

Anyways, my hands are aching from all the coding and writing I've done today, that is a good sign. It's a familiar ache that says, you've worked pretty damn hard. Invertebreaker(s) may not look like much, but I hope someone enjoys it! Cheers!