abstractlantern - Tumblr blog

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HELLO THERE. Remember back at new years (5 months ago now) when I said I would try posting once to twice a month? Yeah, me too. I genuinely have no idea how that happened, the last four months have kind of been a blur. I HAVE, however, actually been working on the game! I've made a lot of progress, a LOT of mistakes, and some new assets along the way. I'm pretty close to the end of the first chapter, so that's exciting! It's still a little clunky in places and will need a good polish before it's released to the public, but hopefully I can get it out before the end of the year!

I'm reeaaally hoping to post some more in-depth views of the characters, story, and process, but as the past has shown me idk if it will happen. Life can kinda get crazy. But even when I'm not posting, I am working to make this game a reality. Thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll be posting again sooner rather than later d(^_^)b

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Traveling between Isles via phone booths

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going to be making this a sticker!!! :3

love this guy

reblogs over likes

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Tumblr is doing some stupid AI shit so go to blog settings > Visibility > Prevent third-party sharing.

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Some positivity in these turbulent AI times

*This does not minimize the crisis at hand, but is aimed at easing any anxieties.

With every social media selling our data to AI companies now, there is very little way to avoid being scraped. The sad thing is many of us still NEED social media to advertise ourselves and get seen by clients. I can't help but feeling that we as artists are not at risk of losing our livelihoods, here is why:

Just because your data is available does not mean that AI companies will/want to use it. Your work may never end up being scraped at all.

The possibility of someone who uses AI art prompts can replace you (if your work is scraped) is very unlikely. Art Directors and clients HAVE to work with people, the person using AI art cannot back up what a machine made. Their final product for a client will never be substantial since AI prompts cannot be consistent with use and edits requested will be impossible.

AI creators will NEVER be able to make a move unless us artists make a move first. They will always be behind in the industry.

AI creators lack the fundamental skills of art and therefore cannot detect when something looks off in a composition. Many professional artists like me get hired repeatedly for a reason! WE as artists know what we're doing.

The art community is close-knit and can fund itself. Look at furry commissions, Patreon, art conventions, Hollywood. Real art will always be able to make money and find an audience because it's how we communicate as a species.

AI creators lack the passion and ambition to make a career out of AI prompts. Not that they couldn't start drawing at any time, but these tend to be the people who don't enjoy creating art to begin with.

There is no story or personal experience that can be shared about AI prompts so paying customers will lose interest quickly.

Art is needed to help advance society along, history says so. To do that, companies will need to hire artists (music, architecture, photography, design, etc). The best way for us artists to keep fighting for our voice to be heard right now is staying visible. Do not hide or give in! That is what they want. Continue posting online and/or in person and sharing your art with the world. It takes a community and we need you!

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Grayscale is an RPG currently in development by Jay Grimalkind. It follows the story of Samael, a young man who awakens in a world he does not recognize several years after an apocalyptic event. The story deals with themes of existentialism, mortality, and finding a reason to continue on even when all is lost.

Official Twitter

Itch.io page

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Sapphire City Part 2

Some scenes from Sapphire City Part 2. A free top down adventure game set in a dystopian world.

'To help out your friend in need you must once again take to the streets but proceed with caution, your actions are being closely monitored and you are beginning to venture down paths where there is no hope of return'

Link to the game -

Thanks for looking!

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Devlog #9

I made a couple of short soundtracks a couple months ago! They're nothing concrete, mostly just musical concepts at this point, but they help set the mood when I'm testing stuff. I made all the music in beepbox, but I'm hoping to recreate them later in something a little better like FL Studio or something.

Most of (and by most of I mean all of) these tracks are just looping ambience, but I'm hoping to get better at music this year. If anyone has any ideas, suggestions, or criticism, I'd love to hear it!

Catch y'all later! (^_^)/

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Devlog 8

I've been working a lot behind the scenes, tying up loose ends in the plot and stuff like that. I've also made a bit of progress in game progression, and introduced a new game mechanic!

The mechanic is called "reputation points," RP for short. You can gain or lose reputation by helping or refusing to help NPCs. There isn't a lot to it yet, more to persuade the player to do good things, lol. I'll probably add a reward system to go along with RP, but that'll be something for me to figure out later.

I really like having visuals to go along with these updates, but I don't have anything interesting to look at right now (´∀｀)ゞ I'm working on a cutscene that'll help move the story along to the next area, but that's about it. I'm also making an attempt to streamline my creation process, which means NO graphics until I get the actual scenes that need them put together. Graphics just take me too long to make, unfortunately ToT

I do, however, have a bunch of prototype sprites and backgrounds I might upload later. They likely won't be in the game (at least not without a lot of changes), but it's still fun to have something to look at in the meantime.

That's about it for now... see y'all later d^_^b

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Happy New Year!

happy new year, everybody!

I know I've been a bit quiet on here lately, mostly due to getting absolutely slammed by the holidays. But, I figured I'd let my 2024 bucket list be known:

I want to finish the first chapter of my game (yes, it's going to be split into chapters, ho ho ho!)

I'm going to try posting more frequently, hopefully twice a month at least. I'll try and do better than that, but the year is still young!

Im going to try and post some more concepts/details of my game, along with devlogs.

Im gonna try and figure out music 0v0;;

Thanks so much to everyone who has followed me so far. Here's to a new year of possibilities!

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Here's something a little different this week. We've always proudly claimed that Eulogy of an Insect is hand-drawn. When it was started in 2014, we felt confident that other games wouldn't look anything like it, and even nearly a decade later that largely remains true.

We keep all the drawings in increasingly large binders that very quickly become unwieldy. After all, we have over 230 maps currently in the game.

Of course, maps get scanned in and adjusted digitally, but these pastels and fine tip sharpie pens are the tools of the trade- only rarely using other mediums like paint and such.

Discord

Bluesky

Twitter/X

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hello off community

im gonna post art can i get an interest check so i dont get sad if my silly little queen art gets bad engagement heres a teaser

just a wee tap of a like to show ur interest and a follow if ur interested to see the full!!

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Reblog if you’d attend!!

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Life Update

SO!

I recently moved into my own place (with roommates) and started my job! I've been getting into the groove of my new schedule, so I haven't really found the time to work on the game :,|

But hopefully, in the next week (?) or so, I'll be comfortable enough with my time management to work on it! My biggest problem right now is that I need to make an entirely new tileset for a new area, and tilesets are extremely time consuming. Maybe I'll find the time to work on it over the weekend. Or better yet, I'll enlist my (better at art) sister to work on it with me!

Until next time d(^o^)b

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"aD bLoCk IsNt AlLoWeD oN yOuTuBe"

do i look like i care? just let me listen to minecraft music in peace T^T

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i think the scariest part about making a game is that it's very easy to get caught up in the gears. it's extremely easy for any and all devs to end up losing sight of the bigger picture, to end up in the muck of implied-but-not-notated content in planning notes, to end up losing the vision. a lot of my time, even with years of experience watching projects die to this very thing, i end up having to search in discord channels for impromptu notes i took, having to infer things i don't have notes for anymore, having to step off the main path to chase something i don't need now but i'll need later.

if i had to give one piece of experience to developers, it'd be to be thorough in your notes, and overexplain if you see fit. future you that doesn't remember all the fine details will thank you.

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Massive devlog update 2!

Alright, I finally got around to making this! This is a continuation of my last update, which you can find here . Without further ado, let's start where we last stopped.

Here are separate areas of the building. They're a little plain for now, but I plan on fleshing them out a little bit in the future.

You can save your game at the well! This is what's behind the main building. Once again, I think it looks nice *for now*, but I plan on changing it later.

A cute little secret area! That's it for this part of the game, though, so let's move forward.

Just realized I forgot to add a way back into the compound area /)_-

But that doesn't matter because now we have a battle tutorial!

The tutorial goes on, and it's probably way longer than necessary tbh (>w<) The basic battle mechanics are explained, it isn't too hard to grasp considering it's just the basic RPGM 2003 system. I'm not smart enough to come up with a unique battle style lol.

I did take a little bit of inspiration from OFF and added an ability that lets you get a better look at your opponents.

The tutorial goes on to explain what the sigil next to his name means. Basically, every enemy that appears in game will have a special sigil next to their name notifying what their "aspect" is. Aspects are just bootlegged pokemon types, lmao. The current aspects are Glass, Blood, Light, and Sight. That info doesn't make a lot of sense on its own, but it's aaaaall gonna be incorporated into the lore.

We are now out here in the desert! Fun fact about the desert, when I played through the game to get these screenshots, I got lost. I then realized 500x500 was maybe a bit big for a map. I've since made it a lot smaller, and it's way less easy to get lost now.

The desert is very big. And there are lots of different things you can find. Like these fun, perfectly uniform human skulls!

But that's enough messing around. To get out of the desert, you just need to find statues like these and then follow the path down.

Now they can have a cute little campfire.

Woo, we made it to the end of the desert! And to the end of the Tumblr picture limit. There's still a good amount of stuff after this point, but it might be a little while before I make another update. I'm gonna start my new job in a couple of days, so I'm gonna spend most of my time preparing for that and getting used to my new routine. I'll still be working on the game when I can, though.

See y'all later ^w^!