In my defense...

...I've been really really busy with work.

Work has been going really well.

It's just that I've been way way way too swamped with the growing pains there for a blog.

I'll be blogging later in the week, doing more, but right now, just trying to work, do all the work, get in to work, and be good there.

I missed a day of blogging.

As much as I am trying to attempt to stay on top of things in my life, some things slip through.

I need to do followup doctor stuff for instance (they've slipped through) for instance even now, though today has been better than most for staying on top of things.

It's still got weaknesses, but it has also gotten a lot done, including a comic showing off my stupid sense of humor.

I didn't quite nail the execution behind this comic though. It was difficult to capture the whole concept.
My basic concept was: person comes up, reads the door.
Person knocks.
Person is told to read the sign.
Person tries to use various secret knocks.
Person leaves out of frustration.
Person returns, with the epiphany.
Person speaks 'Secret Knock', and is allowed to enter.
(Kinda sorta in the style of, "Speak Friend, and Enter" made famous by Lord of the Rings.)

Unfortunately, showing in a comic various different forms of possible secret knocks is rather difficult. After all, to display variants on knocks you kinda need sound, and all knocks written are written the same. I could maybe have attempted to show different variants on knocks, but space was also an issue in that I could only fit so much in a panel and also I could only make it be so long in a comic.

So unfortunately, I had to basically skip the "person tries to use various secret knocks" step and leave the comic's contents far more implied than explicit.

So I didn't get the comic quite as I liked it, but for a comic I made in MS paint in about an hour's worth of work while multitasking, that's still not too shabby. It could be better, obviously, and didn't get what I wanted, but I still think it works because when reading my own comic, I DO laugh at it.

If I laugh at my own comic, that means I have succeeded in the end. It was funny to ME.
And while I realize it's probably not funny to most people, I knew that from the getgo as the humor style is rathe niche and something fairly specific to me.

Still, tho, I'm ultimately satisfied with it and rather proud of what I did.

I'm slacking in other areas of my life I'm sure.

I can't stay on top of everything, after all.

But I AM trying to do as much as I can to stay on top as much of what I can.

...But as it is quite late and I am doing this after a night where I streamed (there's usually a good reason I don't blog on days that I stream--I get so tired when streaming that I usually go straight to bed after streaming), my thoughts are not as coherent as is ideal.

I feel like I should mention some of my mystical beliefs.

I've always been a believer in more of the spiritual side of stuff. I have my own beliefs, so I don't blindly believe in all of the (as the streamer I watch defines it) "woo woo" stuff, but a fair amount of the witchy things that I watch from this streamer I put a great deal of stock behind, including her tarot readings, whenever they resonate with me.

The tarot readings basically told me that I needed to apply for the jobs, which I did yesterday.

But they also gave me hints that streaming Chrono Trigger tonight was a good idea, and the universe aligned to make it so; there was nobody online that I wanted to watch, no professional game of League of Legends I considered a must-watch, I had done everything I needed to do in the day, so it all lined up and felt good to do.

Streaming is fun to me, even if the possibility of monetizing streams is a one in a million probably-impossible dream...but there's multiple reasons that I feel like doing it even if it isn't a viable career.

The first is that streaming might allow me to connect in other areas. Streaming isn't exclusive to games. It also covers art, even writing! And, yes, even talking about things! It allows me to talk about passions tonight, for instance, tonight I touched upon my first-ever story that I began writing! Even if streaming isn't the key to my future, it could serve as a tool to help me key in to my future.

A stream could end up helping me focus on a project, a story, help talk about it, get it more tangible. A stream could connect me to people. A stream could help me find people to make projects of mine I am passionate about come to reality.

The second is that streaming helps me relate to streamers I watch. Watching streamers eats up a significant portion of my life. Every waking minute, I have at least one stream, often two (sometimes even three!), in the background. And in those communities, most of the people I am close to, some who could maybe be worth calling 'friends' (not sure if they call me friends and I'm not sure if I am objectively close enough to them to be worthy of that title but I would call them friends), are also streamers.

By streaming myself, I get to better understand their own experiences with streaming. So that when they talk about it, I know what they mean from experience myself, so that I can relate to them better. It allows me to connect with them more, talk with them more, interact with them more, from a perspective that is more knowledgeable than that of someone who hasn't streamed.

​The third is that streaming is actually amazing practice at just talking. I am not the most competent at talking, but I am getting better and better at it...via streaming. Streaming is actually teaching me how to talk, a skill I had lost from a year of quarantine where talking was kept to a minimum. Streaming to help me prepare for the outside world would be reason enough to stream, but there's more!

The fourth is that streaming allows me to practice other good practices, too. Streaming is giving me practice at managing social media. Streaming is giving me practice at social networking. Streaming is giving me practice at basically...well, being able to manage my life and aspects of it. These skills should, if I keep practicing them (and I do so every time I stream!) translate to any future endeavors of mine.

If I ever write something.

Whenever I make art.

The practices I am practicing on streaming, translate to those things.

It could even be a key for me creating a passion project like Phyrra and Cyrus! After all...if I am actively networking and keeping folks updated, the skills I am practicing now could translate into managing updates on a passion project and keeping it going, showing it off, etc.

But fifth and finally?

Streaming's just fun to do. Even if nobody shows up, even if I am talking to the air. I wouldn't do something I didn't genuinely enjoy. I think that I could actually be good at streaming, so if I could make money from it eventually, that would be cool! But, inherently, that would just be a bonus. It would be an extra. Even if I wasn't good at streaming, even if I never make money from streaming, even if streaming never helped me out?

It wouldn't need to.

Because streaming is just fun for me. And do I really need any other reason than that to stream? It's fun. It's relaxing. It's something I genuinely enjoy. After all, I am playing games in my spare time anyway; when I've the ability to, why not stream it as well? I wouldn't stop playing Chrono Trigger if I wasn't streaming, after all, but if I am playing it I may as well stream some of it.

This has actually gotten me to talk to someone at least once! I think twice, actually. Me being me, I didn't do nearly as much talking as is ideal so the folks I talked to probably lost interest in me, but hey, it was still nice to talk to them about a game I am passionate about, and that is something that I can't do while playing the game and not streaming.

I can talk about a game I am passionate about when not playing it. Say on a forum, on a discord, in a twitch chat (not that twitch chat talks have any permanence), you get the idea. I can play a game I am passionate about when not talking about it. But the only way to do both at the same time is to stream it. (Or record it, but same basic principle.)

And talking about games I am passionate about while playing them is fun. I enjoy myself a lot.

​I think I had more non-streaming stuff to talk about but I can't remember. This should suffice for a blog tonight tho.

The stars could not be more perfectly aligning in telling me to be working on the prep stuff for coming out.

I have done all my mafia stuff for the day, so I don't need to go there.

I have finished the important tft quests, so I don't need to do that.

I have played as much League of Legends as I can bear to play in a day (am burned out there), so I don't need to do that.

I don't feel like playing Stardew Valley or working on Minecraft right now.

I've done the maximum possible amount on Chrono Trigger offline, so all that's left is advancing the plot (requiring a stream).

I've reached a point in my artwork piece that the next steps are all incredibly long and grueling things to start, so I don't feel like beginning that work.

I've done everything I can on twitter and reddit and looked at everything I can League-related that's available.

I've intense boredom so I've an intense desire to do something.

So literally.

I've nothing to do...except the work that I am supposed to do.

I wanted to have everything on my checklist 'located' before going to bed.

And yet.

Instead of working on it.

I'm.

Doing nothing, in spite of the intense boredom, and in spite of literally every activity to procrastinate not being viable.

What the hell's wrong with me.

​I am an idiot.

The bad:
I've lost the momentum I had on Monday. I did so, so, SO much prep work for the big coming out day on Monday and I've done zero since then, including not keeping my younger sister up to date on the things I did Monday.

Also, I've not done my daily rounds on the internet.

The good:
I brushed my teeth today for the first time in a while, keeping up hygiene, and I actually did art today which unlike my previous attempt which I scrapped, I have so far kept and it's on track to being something actually worth trying to make better!

I'm also at a really really good farming spot in Chrono Trigger to get me to where I was level-wise, which will also get me to where I was story-wise fairly quickly. (I'm grinding in the Fiendlord Keep in the first battle hall, fighting the six group repeatedly, because they always drop mid-ethers, and mid-ethers give 30 MP, and group heals top up my HP and take far less than that MP-wise and I'm getting level ups like crazy. I want to get Chrono to 99 MP and Nadia and Lucca to ** MR so that I can re-fight the post-40 pre-99 Spekkio and reclaim the rewards from my first file.)

Granted.

Both of these are things I may not finish before the coming out day--so they're worthless except in the best case scenarios.

But I don't want to not do them just because in the worst case scenarios I won't finish them. I needed them to release the pressure.

Mixed bag overall but a decent, acceptable day overall in my opinion. Could be better, could also be worse, I'll take whatever wins I can get.

​For the record, this is the art at where it is now.

I used ~5 reference photos (a google search of lady abs combined with a notable lady-abs image from Spinnerette which I binge-read the entirety of over the weekend, a naked lady photo for anatomy, a QAVimator pose, and a Rinmaru Anime face to get a more animesque proportioned head), including some trace work. (Which I am not the happiest about, I hate relying on traces for digital art.)

But it is already on-track to be much much better.

I need to keep in mind, "this is just the initial outline", too; I'll probably need to refine things like the exact outlines, the face, the exact anatomy, and even if it's correct, needing to make it not all solid black. But for a base to build off of, this is a fine start. 

For the record, this is still Elemental Ruby. It'll become more obvious when I add in better bangs, refine the waist area (her torso is a bit too wide right now, I needed it to be this way at its base to get enough room for the lady-abs while giving good proportions to be anatomically proportionate, but now that I have the base I can work on thinning the torso area), add a better nose definition, add in the eyes, and start to add things like her clothes and such.

It's a good start, but there's a LOT of work left to do.

I've actually been having a lot of dreams worthy of recording as stories recently, and last night had at least two that were incredibly coherent, filled (they were mostly with a start middle and ending where I could manually fill in the gaps), basically worthy of being a Phyrra and Cyrus tier of story that came from a dream that I could flesh out into a real world.

Unfortunately.

I've been unable to motivate myself to actually.

Be new.

Be creative to something new.

All I want.

All I want to do.

Is revisit the old.

Old, and old, over and over again.

And I bet my depression certainly doesn't help.

That said.

I AM trying my best to do my best.

I'm doing not enough and feel like doing ten things. League, tft ranked, tft hyper-roll, chrono trigger, stardew valley, minecraft. I don't have the time to do them all in a day, best I can do is like 2-4 out of the six.

And the more I am to the higher end, the more likely it is that it came at the cost of daily stuff I should be doing daily. Like emails, mafia stuff, staying on top of webcomics, even rl health stuff.

​I'm also finding myself going to bed earlier and waking up at the same time or later. Like, I'm dead tired now at 4:20 am. That's an hour or two earlier than the time I normally would be dead tired, and yes, I am writing this just before I am going to go to bed.

I am still going to sleep until like 2, or 3, or even 4 pm. In spite of going to bed 1-2 hours early, I will wake up at the same time or later.

Sleeping literally 12 hours is something which has been happening to me as of late.

It's possible my body is short on vitamins or something, but if I had to wager a guess, most of this tiredness and long sleep is due to depression.

That said.

I am doing what I can.

While I'm largely dead inside for most things, some things in my more manic moments have actually been inspired--for instance, I actually think that I might have it in me to draw Elemental Ruby.

Elemental Ruby.

I'm pretty sure I've blogged about her before.

But it was a long long time ago because I don't really talk much about Red Hood Rider in spite of having not lost my desire to make it. (My desire to make it has only grown, rather than shrunk.)

So to refresh your memory.

Elemental Ruby is Ruby Scarlett Ventrella, canonically after the end of her titular series, Red Hood Rider. She first gains access to the form ~10 years after the ending of the story, and by the time she passes the mantle of Elemental Rider of Light on to the next generation (small spoiler there, but one which canonically makes an appearance before the end of the series anyway so it's not much of a spoiler that it happens as I am not revealing the how), her vampiric powers have grown to the extent where she keeps the form permanently, albeit losing the actual light-aspects of it, with her simply mimicking the appearance of the light powers while using pure darkness ones.

Elemental Ruby is Ruby's final, and ultimate, super form, combining aspects of her previous super forms. She has footwear of the arbalest armor super mode, with her boots literally made of the crossbow (also allowing her to jump on air and accelerating her jumps). On her thighs as thigh bands she has blades that are her darkness staff's bladed section, acting as both arrows and knives/shortswords.

Her skirt is a strapless, shoulderness, backless dress which prominently shows off her stomach. (Dresses in real life might be able to do 2/4, potentially 3/4, but all four would probably be beyond the realm of possible. Fortunately for Ruby, she has magic.) It also has slits at the thighs to allow for greater range of movement.

Ruby's right arm is covered in tendrils of darkness, with a red gem sticking out of the 'glove' on the back side of the hand. Her left arm is covered in threads of light, with a gem that I believe is colored white, and these threads also form a hard-light construct of a bow.

Erupting from near the shoulderblades, she has two wings/capes that combine the properties of feathered wings and malleable, pliable, fabric-like capes in that they provide flight but are flexible, can cover her back, fold in, are fully controlled by her, and take from her Archangel form. The right wing is white, the left wing is black, and they can shoot feathers like arrows/knives, and are very very long. (I think like 20 feet long?)

Her hair is alternating strands of black and golden hair, and is ankle-length, going all the way down. Her mask when she chooses to wear it...well, that I don't remember off the top of my head because I didn't want to draw the masked version of her, I wanted to draw the unmasked version of her.

Basically, it's an incredibly detailed, nuanced, elegant, gorgeous, animated form--one I previously said that I could draw maybe one piece of it at a time but that was it. That I'd never be able to draw the whole thing at once.

Well, sans the mask (which I don't perfectly remember and don't actually have the inspiration/vision to draw as it was specifically her unmasked self I thought about), I actually think that I could draw her that way now.

Yes, really.

I think I could pull it off.

I'd just need to actually start drawing.

Something I've not done recently because there's so much to do in a day.

So much to do, so little time, and I waste most of it on games.

Whooooops!
Legit thought I was blogging, aside from the one day that my computer needed an emergency "go into sleep for the whole night". That one I knew I missed, unavoidably so. But I thought I was blogging other days.

Ah well.
It happens.

Anyway, today's been incredibly productive.
It may not seem so productive to have done a lot of work in minecraft (tho I did so!), but the real productivity has been in my art.

In that I am actually doing it.

For the last two days, yesterday Sunday and today Monday, I have been working on an art drawing. It's fully digital, and given the nature of the drawing, I did cheat a little. It's meant to be a self-portrait...but modified to include some clothing that I am considering buying/wearing once I get a chance to go out into the world. (Ideally, I get vaccinated first. And because clothes often cost 20-60 dollars each and I need 2-3 each ideally, I also have a job first. I currently am neither.)

The items: knee-high athletic socks (technically I already own a pair but I want more than one and for it to be normal wear rather than wear specific to specific shoes like it is right now), an aesthetic knee brace, and a thigh band.

Considering potentially adding in earrings, too, not sure on that.

The drawing is coming along relatively well, including me having a breakthrough (actually multiple breakthroughs in rapid succession) in drawing my hazel eyes. My eyes are notoriously hard to draw because how do you capture the color of an eye that is a different color in different lighting and can be blue, green, yellow, brown, gray, and more? Well I managed to figure it out!

​So it's pretty good.

Granted, art like this isn't the most productive for long-term goals. I'm no closer to making Phyrra and Cyrus from it, for instance.

But it feels nice to make given the personal nature of it and it is very much not a waste of time. It's not a personal video game; it's art, and art is always worth it.

My main regret: instead of streaming these breakthroughs and my art process, I was doing this art while watching streams. (Well, listening. Hard to watch while also drawing.) You might wonder why I mention streaming.

Because that's a thing that I have done now.

It was only one hour.
It was messy, spontaneous.
But it felt so good to do, and dipping my toes in has gotten me a thirst for more.
I won't be doing it immediately, but soon, very soon, I will be streaming more because I did it once and I know I can do it now.

That depends on what I manage to do tonight. So tomorrow, I may move it back one day, two days, or no days, depending both on tomorrow and today. Basically: I might not be doing Phyrra and Cyrus tonight (tho it's not off the table altogether), but I did have an idea which I want to investigate. (Basically, I was thinking of making a tiktok and releasing daily videos with a particular gimmick.)

​But today, in a blog that will last until at some point the site inevitably removes the content, fails, or something of that sort. As in, a blog that will presumably last a fair amount of time rather than remain invisible. A public blog that may not last forever because no website does and websites can pull stunts like deleting content on them. (And weebly isn't a site I have much trust in.)

I wanted to, in a broader platform, put on here what amounts to a slight copy-paste of blog-worthy material I've been placing elsewhere. (Heck, it was those answers which actually got me back to blogging here.)

Someone asked me what I think is my most useful talent/skill. I told them that it's my bottomless barrel of creativity and ideas.

I literally come up with a bunch of ideas every day. Some are for things to do in games. E.g. builds in League, ideas for things to do in minecraft, comps to test out in tft, customizing modded versions of Civ 3 in the Civ 3 editor.

Some are for things in real life, which I would do if I had the resources to do.

Most are for various different forms of entertainment, though:
Video games that I come up with that I'd love to create, if not for lacking the skills.
Webcomics that I come up with that I'd love to create, tho sadly most are too ambitious given my level of skill.
Stories, usually novels (but occasionally shorter ones), that I (mostly--some are rather ambitious) have the capacity to create, if I focused on them and dedicated myself to making them.
Songs that I lack the skills to create.
Music that I mentally compose but have no way of bringing to reality.
Animated stories that I would love to create but which with what little research I have done would cost in the range of one million dollars to actually fund (due to animators being expensive and voice actors being expensive--keep in mind, one million dollars is the amount I estimated with animators/voice actors working at just below market rate, and that it's closer to 1.5 million if they charge market rate or higher).
(Heck, I've also come up with ideas for becoming a streamer, doing tiktok videos, maybe dabbling in youtube creation!)

I can pitch to people my ideas and they will always go, "That sounds so COOL!", pointing out how awesome, amazing, and unique the idea is, how incredible it sounds, how they wish it was made (so do I! My greatest regret is that all of the beautiful things inside my mind that will never be created because in spite of how rich their worlds/characters/etc. are I cannot make them all), and how they wish me luck in my creative endeavors.

But then I can't actually make them.

Yet they appear on a daily basis.

Literally almost every day, I am creating a new idea.

But even if I could commit to an idea, each idea would take, what? A year? Two years? At minimum to pull off. (Some ideas I've calculated could take ten years to pull off!) A year or two, for one idea; new ideas, every single day.

I make new ideas faster than I could ever create them.

And few, if any, of them are bad. Most are wonderful, vivid, unique, breathtaking, highly creative, and just...overall. Something that should be made, which had every right to be made.

They just...aren't.

And then there's always the chance.

That I go my entire life without bringing any of them to a fully, wholly, entirely realized life. Where they are, in completed form, distributed across the world for all to have access to. There's a chance literally nothing I ever dream up ends up being made. After all. I've been actively trying since I was 13 (I've been making things my whole life, but 13 was the first time I had the idea of marketing these ideas to others outside of my brain), and that was 14 years ago--

In 14 years of trying, I've yet to succeed. In 14 years of trying, I've not once managed to pull it off. I've always fallen short, I've always failed, eventually, at some point.

That doesn't mean succeeding on my own is impossible, or that I've given up entirely. I haven't. I just need to be realistic in accepting that, yes, I've got a very high hill to climb.


Not gonna lie tho--
Something I really really wish I had was a sort of 'life manager', or at least, 'idea manager'. Where I could have someone who could keep me on-track, keep me on the road to success, remove the distractions from my life or at least strictly budget them, force me to work on things even when I don't want to, find ways to work with me to focus my creative energies, brainstorm my ideas with me, and with their push, get me to make them real.

But, I don't think that's something I can get. Not for free, anyway, and I certainly don't have the money to pay someone to do that. It's also something which I imagine would be more effective to be done in-person, both because I am liable to forget things online, procrastinate, etc., and it's harder to get things on-track online compared to in-person. I can definitely say there's a huge difference between my dear friend reminding me to do something and my mom or older sister (both of which I live with) reminding me to do something.

The former, I may do, but not always, and often with delay. The latter, I may do with delay but almost always WILL do, often immediately.

I know that if I had someone who could do that sort of thing for me, I would, guaranteed, succeed--but waiting for a person like that to show up and accepting defeat before then is something that will mean I never will succeed.

So I try to make do without, to try on my own. With a very very low success rate, but trying > not trying, waiting, and hoping that in the future some mystical force will come to my rescue/aid.

I was also asked what ideas I would make if I had the time/focus.

​The big one would be Phyrra and Cyrus, an anime-style 2D animated (ideally posted onto the web) series. Separated into four seasons, each approximately 12 episodes (tho I believe the last season would do better with 2-4 extra, for 50-52 total instead).

The basic premise; the world (the working universe title was INFINIverse/INFIverse, but I found out both of those names for a universe were taken so I settled on colliniverse, the origin of that being the collision between INFINITY and Nothingness) is a High Fantasy world. The protagonists, Phyrra (a swordswoman) and Cyrus (a tactician/strategist) Thaumason (Thaumason is pronounced almost identically to 'Thompson', just instead of a soft 'puh', it's a soft 'muh', and is about as common a surname in Lilim as Thompson is on earth), are twin (fairly mature-for-their-age) 11-year-old adventurers, with aspirations to become the greatest adventurers of all time--even in the world of Lilim (the name of the planet), this is an unusual oddity, since most adventurers start at least at 16, if not 18, with the average adventuring age being 16-36.

They didn't want to wait that long, but they realize their young age will be held against them. Their goal is to seek out the legendary artifact, the Book of Infinity (which, in actuality, is a remnant of INFINITY itself, but to explain that I'd need to give an explanation for what INFINITY was), which rumor states is able to grant the user(s) any power they imagine, including ability to magically age oneself.

In the first episode, they succeed--they find the book in the same chamber containing the four major elemental books (Book of Fire, Book of Water, Book of Air, Book of Earth), and they manage to actually activate the book of infinity...which triggers the curse/trap of the book. Designed to kill any individual who touched the book, when both of them grabbed the book at the same time, it instead switched their souls, placing Phyrra in Cyrus's body and Cyrus in Phyrra's body. However, it also gave them access to magic (magic, in this world, can be learned by anyone...but it takes approximately 30 years to master, and even 'spellbladers', who use specialized specific lesser magic oriented on one specific trait, are typically in their 20s), as well as the ability to access and master the four elemental books.

To escape, they activate the book of air, summoning its guardian, Gora the Rock Golem (all elemental books are protected by their opposite element), who helps teach them the spell necessary to leave. And from there, their adventure continues. The cast of the Thaukama (Thaumason + Nakama portmantu) expands to include Ace Samson, a teenaged adventurer skilled in tracking, ranged weaponry, and medicine (think the DND class of 'Ranger'); Cedrick (don't have his last name memorized, oof), their initial rival adventurer, a spellblader whose magic is specific to telekinetic control of platinum spheres; Kaze, the Wind Shade (guardian of the book of earth); Myra, the Siren/Mermaid/Sea Serpent (guardian of the book of fire); Bard Tune Song, a teenaged street rat (think an even more hypercompetent Aladdin) whose father was a powerful Demon that resembles a werewolf; Clara (also don't have her full name memorized, oof), an apprentice Paladin (Paladins being a specific spellblader school specializing in light magic); Hera, the Dragon Phoenix (guardian of the book of water); William Grant Clemency, an Adept (basically, can see the true nature of things) who is nobility in Lilim's New World (largely uncivilized new continent, think America circa 1700s); Lilian Rose Wolfe, a tailor; and Alena (also don't have her full name memorized, oof), a young Botanist/Alchemist.

Throughout their adventures, they fight monsters, villains, evil overlords, and make their name known, all while seeking a way to undo their switched souls...because as long as they are in each other's bodies...they won't age so much as a day, and are stuck eternally 11 until such a time as they figure out how to undo the curse permanently.



I can explain more, like the way the four worlds (afterlife, demon realm, spirit realm, mortal realm) work, the way spirits work, the way demons work, various magitek items involved in the setting (they have stuff which basically is on the level of a smartphone), etc. but I think the idea is clear enough.

I originally thought that there would be much much heavier themes involved regarding the body swap, that it'd touch more heavily on issues like effectively being trans--but over time, I realized that in spite of the body swap, it's actually only a minor thing. Something that, yes, comes up, and yes, is essential to the plot, but which is only a minor thing. It's a story of adventurers first, a coming of age story second, and has the issues of the body swap only third.

I have names for almost every episode; I have mentally worked out almost every episode; I basically know what happens, when, down to the episode, with entire plot arcs mapped out.


But, 1: I have no experience writing for an animated project, I have no clue what I'm doing, and,
2: Animation is ludicrously expensive. Initial google search I did right now says one second of animation is $150 at the cheapest--times that by 60 for one minute, times that by ~25 for the length of the episode, times that by 48-52, and you get: $225,000 * 48-52. (I did a google search two years ago and I think that one said $30/second, which is cheaper, but still hugely expensive.)
Just for the animation.
And then you've gotta hire voice actors.
Not to mention, composers to compose the music for the series.
Not to mention, video editors for sound effects.

It might be possible to get a kickstarter going for the project. But to get a kickstarter, I need to be in a position better than what I am in now. Plan is to write the initial script for all the episodes, try and map it out loosely scene by scene, roughly estimate the amount of time it takes, finish the lyrics for the openers/closers of each season, maybe make some loose storyboards of panels screencapping loose ideas of what I want to make, and hope the fuck that by the time I get all of this done, it's gotten me enough competency to know what I am doing to the point where I am able to justify a kickstarter to fundraise it.



All of this is ludicrously ambitious, I know, but Phyrra and Cyrus is the project I have most wanted to complete for over two years now.


If I give up on an ambitious project that I am very much out of my depth for? If I decide that I need better connections before jumping off the deep end, if I decide that I need to be established in an industry already before branching out?

Well, the main area I'd do that is in writing. Right now, mostly superhero stories. Well, one's a superhero story, but most of them are supervillain stories; I've thought up at least four different ones. Most have some inspiration from Worm, but each is distinctly their own universe, with their own rules, their own premise, their own characters, etc. Writing them is comparatively easy, and they're largely fleshed out enough where I could make any of them reality; I just haven't done them yet.

When it comes to talents I would like to have but do not possess, the obvious answer would be the ability to animate things myself. (That, or the ability to do everything necessary in editing videos. Either skill would save me a ton.)

But in skills not applicable to my ambitions...life skills. Washing/drying laundry (my mom showed me how to do it once or twice, did not stick as a skill, need to learn the ins and outs of it), washing dishes or at least how to properly handle a dishwasher (how to organize it, what to put where, what I need to do to run it, and when run, what to put where), cooking food, and also: doing makeup.

Laundry and dishes I think I can maybe figure out how to fumble through on my own, cooking is something that I haven't really done but which I may have the ability to fumble through on my own, so of these I'd say the skill I'd most want due to it being the one I least think I can fumble through on my own, would be learning how to apply makeup to myself.

I've seen makeup be applied to people before, and even have them talk through the process as they were having it applied. But in order to get good at applying makeup, I'd need to have all the supplies in front of me, and be able to freeze-frame, frame by frame, analyze with clearly visible what's-what things, step by step, work through it, and figure out what makeup is right for me.

Tho that said.

There's one skill that's both project-related, AND, real-life related: voice manipulation, as a skill/talent. Changing your voice takes lots and lots of practice and is something I lack right now, so I REALLY loathe my voice right now. And if I put in the work to have a more feminine voice, then in the process, I might pick up the skills to be able to voice some characters, or if not, at least give a better model for what I envision their voices to be. Or if not, at least hopefully allow me to sing better. Basically, lots of stuff with my voice would be useful for projects, but it's something that also would help for transitioning, too.

(Basically, overall: for a project? Animation. For real life? Makeup. For a combination of both: voice.)

​I was also asked what in 2020 I'm thankful for. In that, I instantly found my answer: ​increased presence on twitch and one community in particular there where I joined their discord and even am involved on their minecraft server.

I realize I don't have the setup for streaming, in spite of what I would want, and I realize that being involved in those communities isn't letting me spend time creating things on my own that have a tangible permanence to them (by which I mean, being involved can make me contribute to jokes, uplift spirits, etc., and my contributions there aren't meaningless since the community wouldn't be quite as good without them, but because I am one of dozens upon dozens there, while every drop I add into the pond matters, none of my additions there are something people will remember as being from me years from now; they helped, they were important, they meant something, but while you might remember the general vibe I contributed, you wouldn't remember my specific contribution to the vibe, because it's not my community, it's a community I am a part of).

Which is to say: doing stuff there isn't, for instance: making a game, writing a story, making art, making an animation. So spending time there isn't helping me succeed in any of my life's ambitions/dreams.

But I am, explicitly, okay with this, because I value that community in my life that much. They're worth it. I've asked myself if I would rather succeed in my goals or spend more time in the communities I love and remain a nobody, a person who hasn't succeeded at anything with tangible permanence to it, whose only successes are contributions to communities I am a part of but explicitly not the head of. I've asked if I'd rather strike out and succeed on my own while giving up on the communities I'm a member of, or if I'd rather remain intimately a part of those communities at the cost of increasing my odds of never succeeding in my grander goals.

The two are not actually mutually exclusive, of course. Spending less time in a community doesn't mean a total severing of ties with them; being intimately a part of a community does not mean I am guaranteed to fail at my grander ambitions.

But if it ever did come push to shove a choice between the two. I think I'd take the community I feel at home at, over the shot at success.
Ideally, I get the best of both worlds, obviously. I'm intimately involved in the community, but still trying to strike out on my own. But I value the community I'm spending time in more than I value a shot at success.

I want to succeed, but if I didn't succeed and spent a life in mediocrity, obscurity, in nothingness, but remained a part of communities I'd cherish, I would be content with that. Not happy, because I want to succeed. But content. I even developed a theory that was, more or less: almost every human has dreams and ambitions of doing great things in their lives, but most give up on these dreams and ambitions and fade into obscurity without being memorable on the grander scale of things; my theory is more or less that the conclusion I reached was the conclusion they reached, too; that it's alright, that it's okay, to not become famous, to not have tangible permanence in a legacy lasting after you are gone, if you are happy with the community you've built in life. The two are not mutually exclusive, but if forced to choose between one or the other, community > fame 9 times out of 10.

It's important to not accept defeat, to not give up, but it's also important to see how strong you value things. I value the community I've become a part of more than I value success in tangible permanence. And I know getting both isn't impossible. (Heck, basically all of the mods in that community have done exactly what I aim to do. They're becoming successful writers, artists, etc., and are successful streamers, who're building communities of their own! Yet they're still a part of the community. But their own communities, while overlapping with the community I know them from, are explicitly THEIRS, not just a carbon copy clone of the original community. I want to build a community of my own, that is truly mine, unique to me, and still be a part of that community. I know it's possible because I've literally almost a dozen examples from that community demonstrating their successes. It's just something I'm struggling with.)

I apologize for the haphazard lazy throwtogether of content I put elsewhere copy-pasted to here, but I figured it'd be good to get up on here, too.

Not that anyone reads my blogs, butstill. At least in theory, my blog is more accessible than the original location.

But at least I haven't dropped another day, been doing work every day.
The two main things I've been working on; trying to get details done on Phyrra, and also trying multiple times to get the aesthetic of Kaze down--I thought that Kaze would be literally the easiest character in the cast to draw. He's a shade. Living shadow that lashes out strikes of air, slicing, dicing, piercing, thrashing, ripping, pulling, twisting, throwing, just, air itself in the form of a shadow.

The aesthetic I drew from could be summed up as from two sources; Kazeshini from the filler arc of Bleach, combined with a Darkness Elemental from Dragonfable.
A male, but incredibly effeminate form--very thin, pretty short, but still recognizably masculine, and yet a being who is mostly formless. White eyes and an occasional slasher smile, but no nose, no ears, no form beyond shadows that flicker like black flames. Recognizable arms and legs, with a recognizable chest, but for this to be bathed in shadows that make it not look like human skin. Anthropomorphic enough to still appear to be arms, legs, a torso, a head, but with enough obscurity to not give clearly defined edges. Where you can't tell where 'skin' begins because there is none to speak of. Where the shadows bleeding off of Kaze don't give a center of mass, because there is no center of mass.

I've tried multiple times to nail the aesthetic, but every time came up with frustrating failures. So I ended up biting the bullet and actually googled for the reference images from the two main sources of inspiration for Kaze.

And there you have it. (Yes, I did have to refer to an image of kazeshini not from the show itself, because none of the images from the show gave me the references I was looking for.)

The Darkness Elemental on the left, from Dragonfable, was one of the main aesthetics I was going for with the look. See the face, the shoulders, the chest? and the look on the arms (albeit, the arms on the darkness elemental are much much too big when it gets to the firsts)? That somewhat-transparent, wreathed in black darkness that oozes the aura of a blaze?

Now just give it the more anthropomorphic shape of kazeshini on the right, and you've got Kaze. This image shows perfectly the proportions of what I want Kaze to be--the thin, but still masculine, chest, with the approximately right proportioned arms and head, with the slasher smile and the killer eyes. (Bonus; this image has hair which looks a bit like the black flame-like aesthetic I am aiming for, at the forehead.)

It should be so easy to draw. Pencils provide the perfect medium to do it--you can nail the aesthetic of a living shadow, of flame-like wind sheathed in darkness, just by using pencil mark after pencil mark after pencil mark.

But it's still so darn hard to nail.

Still, tho.

​I'm trying!

Slow and steady, but it's something. Every day doing work, no matter how little, means every day work is being done. Small steps, little things, maybe not the best of things, maybe not as much as I could do, but better than nothing and that's something I'll take.

In this case, decided to follow through on what I said yesterday. I tried to draw Phyrra's secondary weapons yesterday without references.

Phyrra's primary weapon is a longsword--well, a longsword that is proportional to her size. That is to say, if she were to grow to an adult size, and the longsword were to scale identically to her, it would be a longsword. As in, it is proportional to her as a longsword. It is a longsword for her. For an adult, not quite sure what that'd be. I used a google reference image of a broadsword, but heck if I know what a good sword type would be for something that by is wielder would have the aesthetic of a longsword.

Her secondary weapons are a series of multiple (about 2-4) shortswords, each with no guard (which I always think of as being the hilt, in spite of the hit being what you grab the sword by), which past the first episode, she can control with a combination of telekinetic magic and wind magic. Which for an adult, would probably be long daggers. (Think like Sting and similar being Hobbit-sized swords; for the people those weapons were designed to be used by, those were daggers, not swords.)

Turns out that you can actually find some very good references in like 30 seconds of searching, 'hiltless sword' (in spite of, as I mentioning, it not being no hilt I was looking for; I was looking for blades with no guard). Apparently, the aesthetic I was looking for is common in older Viking swords? (When you think of Viking swords, you probably don't think of them as having no guard. You think of them as having the Riders of Rohan sword, like this look, more or less. Or maybe you think of them as having a longsword. But the images I found had almost zero guard, which is what I was searching for.)

So I got some good tracework images to have as a reference. Mine are probably too long proportionately, and need to thus be shortened a bit, but I got the aesthetic right, and with the aesthetic right, easier to make!