my hand has been sore from strength training so i haven't drawn much for the past two days. the good news is that i can feel my motivation for vn development returning especially since i enlisted some help for coloring the character sprites
i think my hand will be back to normal in a few hours so i'm looking forward to drawing more sprites. i have about 14 more on my current list to draw, but i'm going to add more to that list as i review the script again
i am thinking a lot about how i want to use this blog section of my website to challenge myself. i want to use it as a place to have a lot of gratitude for experiencing cool things in my life. im not sure if i can update every day, but a couple times a week feels like a nice goal.
mawaru penguindrum is really good anime. now that ive finished it im really excited to read a lot of essays and articles analyzing it. i feel like its helped me gain an even stronger understanding of utena too (thank goodness there is so much writing out there analysing and explaining utena. it helped me so much as a novice to media analysis)
a lot of times i feel like i can understand the themes and meanings and messages of a work but im completely unable to put it into words. its really frustrating! reading other peoples explanations and breakdowns helps me figure out what those words are supposed to be. its an enlightening and humbling experience. i think utena and penguindrum are able to be simplified really well by a lot of people so that i can understand it, because a lot of the things in utena and penguindrum arent supposed to be hard to understand. theyre supposed to be straightforward and understood without hitting you over the head with it a billion times and i like that quite a lot and i like what they want to say
for the past few days ive also been a little fixated on japanese studying again and that has been really rewarding but im trying not to sabotage myself by getting too excited and burnt out, so im just taking it a little at a time. it helps a lot that ive been on and off studying it for several years along with mandarin so i do have a lot of basic understanding
other than that i have been reading ancillary justice by ann leckie and ohhhhhhhhhhh its sooooooo good im maybe three quarters of the way through and im so so excited to think really hard about how to talk about it in the way i want. and also to start the next book in the series and see more of the story..
did you know that making a visual novel can be an extremely tedious process? i have been combating burnout by leaving it alone for 3 days and playing videogames, exercising, and reading novels instead. but im worried that i will lose momentum if i dont force myself to make progress. dragging myself through the script and editing it to add in all of the necessary assets (most of which i have not drawn yet) is really, really tedious and not very interesting at all to me. worse, i keep fretting over if the script is good enough for my standards. is it saying something coherent? is there an interesting message and meaning its trying to explore? is the pacing ridiculous? is it too stiff and awkward in places to the point of being distracting? is my writing style overly juvenile?? probably! so i make my small changes here and there to try and fix what i can without major overhauls. but i also try my best to accept what it is right now, and keep working on finishing it now that the story is done. its ok if its not perfect, or if its not even very good. the next time will be better because of making it in the first place. i played inscryption to give my mind a break. inscryption was cool! im not really sure how i feel about all of it, yet, but i want to think over it more once ive beaten the challenges to get the rest of the lore. i dont think i can accurately assess it without understanding the whole picture, which means to me that its a little frustrating that theres still so much left unsaid at the finale of the game. im happy with a story leaving mysteries unanswered at the end, but there was so much weight behind the specific mysteries that it just made me think "thats it?" when the credits rolled.
working on gamedev is stressing me out since i have yet to figure out a good balance between working and taking breaks. i also have really rudimentary understanding of coding, though gratefully im using a very simple engine that is easy to ask my friends for help with it's important to remember to ask for help and not try to suffer through problems by yourself. i tell that to people, but it's still hard for me to internalize! so at least this project is good practice. is it still solo gamedev if i'm getting help from others occasionally?
yes, i know it's very barebones looking. i think i kind of prefer this right now because i don't have much interest in learning how to fix some of the things i wanted to implement... this works for me and that's what matters! hahahaha ^^ this blog was made by smashing together https://strawberrystarter.neocities.org/ and https://nomnomnami.com/templates/pastille/ and then deciding it's fine like this actually
i'm working on a small 18+ yuri visual novel at the moment that i'm hoping will be done by the end of spring. it's a fanproject for my vtuber oshi, mint fantome, but i don't really want her to read it! most of my other activities are on pause until this is complete. right now i've finally finished the script after starting it last november. i haven't worked on any personal creative writing projects in many many many many years, so i was and still am pretty nervous about it. i figure that the only way to work on my insecurity regarding writing is to keep trying to work on it and show it to others. i've been very desperate to work on another creative project after finishing melt last year, but i haven't been able to do much because of circumstances out of my control. i'm really happy to get progress done on this one so that i can still release something this season!