delta-gambit - Tumblr blog

[delta-gambit]

Just ignore this post. I'm testing the embedding of videos because I plan to make animations and I need to know the capabilities of Tumblr to support them. I'm happy to know that Tumblr can hold 10 minutes videos, but I only need like a handful of seconds or 1 or 3 minutes tops for the animations I want to make.

I want to see if it would be better to embed them from my YouTube account or just to upload them directly to Tumblr. So far the upload has failed to get a 3 minutes video to appear on my feed. Guess I'll take the YouTube road if uploading gives more difficulties.

EDIT: It seems Tumblr has difficulties with me uploading 3 minute videos, thrice I tried and thrice it failed. I give up. To YouTube they will go then.

And yes, I also do 3D avatars. I has plans to make all Deltarune characters, starting with the most neglected NPCs, but that's a project for a different time. If anything, I'd do the characters of my AU first, given that the interest in official NPCs like Trashy or Nubert is not great.

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Well, it's a me again. I couldn't finish the pic on time yesterday so I tried my best to commit to learn how to paint glass today, and wanted to turn the practice into a concept-art of the characters of my visual-novel (even if it's just symbolical in its cute stylization). I think my glass material didn't turn out too shabby 🤔 It was worth the attempt though! 😅

If you don't know yet, is Sears (Blue Addison) and Spamton from before when they both lived together as room-mates, because Spamton back in then couldn't afford his own flat with his dwindling savings and Sears allowed him to crash in his apartment, up until the day their circle of co-workers/friends split with Spamton, prompting him to leave behind that part of the city and one of his best friends forever 😬

The rest is history.

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[[SUPPLANTATION]]

I keep practicing art, against my own best judgement, as it is 3:35 AM already as I type.

If there is something I know is that I need to keep practicing how to convey the concept of the protagonist of the AU. Spamton and Swatch work together in the same body in an uneasy truce, but all the other characters only see the head butler, which is a very convenient disguise for someone who will do everything to survive deletion.

<plops on bed>

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Well, I think my training painting glass and practicing other stuff was worth the try. This time I tried to start painting without making use of outlines but I still had difficulties leaving behind the lineart crutches 😅

For context, this scene is a representation of the common mindscape that Spamton and Swatch are sharing. During the waking hours Swatch can do very little but to peruse the memories of Spamton while his ally drones about the mansion's chores. He was curious about if Spamton had a person he regarded in high esteem as this was the thought that kept Spamton determined to survive deletion. After finding that memory, Swatch realized that he knew that person too, but never paid too much attention to the pleas of the Addison that scrambled to find the missing ruined salesman back in then. In consequence, he feels guilty for not helping them sooner. The blue Addison is called Sears by the way, and is the old room-mate with whom Spamton lived with because he couldn't pay his own flat with his waning budget. Sears allowed him to crash in their house, thus sowing the first seeds of a wholesome relationship that will save Spamton's life in the future 😁

And that's enough gabbing from me. If you are interested into more about my AU visual novel, you can ask me or join my Locals on this link and use the promo-code "FIRSTMEMBERS" to get 1 month free access to my content and to speak directly with me 👀

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My community got approved!

Well, good tidings for me at least, but now I need to test things out now that members can enter and help me ironing some crinkles.

One of my friends who lives on France said that he had trouble becoming a member because Rumble is banned on France. You can still make a Locals account by going to the Locals' homepage and clicking the "Log In" button and choosing to log with a Google account (if you have any). Apparently the landing of the community will not show the Google log-in button, I don't know why 🤔

A few things have unlocked on my admin side after the approval and I'm trying to see if I can make it so that new members can still post without the need of paying for that (which is a Locals default setting). It will take a little while on my end but I hope I can get things fixed before midnight (I also want to paint something for my art training today before going into the sac). I also might start to add some written AU content and might upload my old art there for good measure, so I apologize in advance for any reposting in there.

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FAQ about Delta-Gambit

As I mentioned before, I think this post should clarify a lot of questions behind my project. If anything is missing, be kind to tell me so and I'll edit.

🔵 What is this AU about?

This AU branches out after a half-baked Pacifist Route in which the plea of Spamton has been ignored by Kris for too long. Everything else is as a normal Pacifist Route, but with a tasteful twist. The story revolves around Spamton mostly, but he isn't the sole protagonist of this story, as other characters come to prominence later on and get tangled in a deep conspiracy that puts all of their lives at stake. It's roughly a story about the lives of the Darkners in a Dark World more than character centric drama, but I get to weave a ton of narrative devices that so far is being loved by all my proof-readers.

🔵 Is this AU related to any other AU?

Nope. This AU was created without any knowledge about anybody else's AU in the past. In fact, I didn't know other people made theirs until I read about it and that's when I came to the realization that what I did was called as "AU" 👀 I started writing the prologue draft at the end of January 2024, but I did not make any contact with the fandom up until the end of March 2024.

🔵 Why you make so many experimental art not related to the visual novel?

Because that's my way of training art, and I'd rather pick my characters as theme and focus of my training than practicing with something else to be honest. I also need to practice drawing my characters more often so that I can stay consistent with the designs when I start to build up the visual novel in Unreal Engine 5.

🔵 Do you have any samples of the visual novel?

Currently nope, as I'm still in training, learning through an Udemy course a friend of mine gifted me to learn how to make visual novels in Unreal Engine 5. Until I get the script of the first season done, I'll not work on the visual novel, because it would be dumb to work on it and not have any complete chapters done to start sharing them.

🔵 Will the visual novel be free to play or?

The visual novel will be free to download, but of course, you can always give a tip of kromer if you think my work is worthy of it 😁

It will be published on Locals, Itch.io and on Steam (this last one further down the line because of how it must be setup and the $100 that costs to get a game slot on Steam).

I'd also upload gameplay of it on my YouTube and Rumble channels if you are more of watching others playing it than playing the game yourself.

🔵 You mentioned a "season". Is your visual novel split in seasons?

I thought about calling them "arcs" but then I settled with the word "seasons". I've enough material for 1 season (of roughly 12~15 chapters, depending if I need to split chapters more because of their length) and I have ideas for a Season 2 that can survive on its own up until Chapter 3, 4 and 5 of the original Deltarune comes. Then after we get more official Deltarune story, I'll be able to produce a third season.

🔵 Why Spamton though?

My Spamton should be called DG!Spamton, to distinguish it from the original (or other Spamton in the fandom). Though both are similar (if not identical) mine has something that made a few Spamton haters to start to like Spamton. I don't know how to explain it… It just works ._.

🔵 How do you pronounce "Spwatchton"?

S-pwatch-ton

🔵 Why you haven't posted in a month? Did you abandon the project?

No, I'll never abandon this project because I'm passionate about it. The problem is that I'm drown to the ears in debts that were not mine to have but was forced to inherit due to life mismanagement of my progenitors, and eking out a living is top priority if I want to keep up with my rent, the bills, medicines I need and to put food on my table and keep up my internet. I'm scrounging hard for kromer to get some more free time to focus on my animation training and UE5 training, but as long as RL issues keeps squeezing the noose, I'll not be able to update with content as often as I would like. Apologies if this trickling of content may disappoint anyone, but life is hard where I live, which doesn't mean I'll abandon my career as artist, nor my love for the fandom of Deltarune/Undertale.

🔵 Are you a Spaniard?

Born and raised, and it shows in my odd way of writing. Hope you don't mind some typos here and there but I try my utmost to quash them when I see them 😅

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About creating a community...

Someone motivated me to create a Locals page where to publish and tidy up all the stuff about my AU visual novel. The community is still waiting for approval though...

So far is a good way of keep things tidy and see who really is interested in this AU, and to engage with them in a more personal manner. I don't like Patreon because of how sketchy they have been in the past with people I know, and I don't want to go through the same ordeals as them. That's why my friend suggested me to use Locals now that it supports international communities.

The link to the community is this one but will not be active until Locals deems my community worthy of being published 😅 Is my last card at trying to engage with like-minded Spamton enjoyers that would also like to see my visual novel lifting from the ground.

It also has some sort of FAQ that members can check to get theirs questions about the AU and its development sorted out. I've a mind of posting the FAQ here so that anyone who wonders about my AU after stumbling with my Tumblr can get some things straight without asking me directly.

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It's been another while since I uploaded something. The animation is going slow as I'm also multitasking with commissions, and I just wanted to burn steam doing something else that sprung in my mind. Just an overly-stylized Spwatchton with a weird background experiment, nothing too fancy. I'm still brainstorming about how to represent the Creation powers he shares with Swatch 🤔

((edited because I forgot a few tags -- you know what? let's add something more in-line with the visual novel conceptualization -- Spamton after the data hijacking still can't forget certain things from his past (like the Angel) and that still haunts him and produces monsters inside his dreams and sometimes by accident during their waking hours. Good thing that the head butler is there to pull the leash on Spamton in order to avoid him to fall to the amounting ruin of his past self, least they both fall together into the abyss, and Swatch the last thing he wants is to lose the only thing that keeps the monster inside himself at bay 👀))

(([[SACRÉ CUNGADERO]] today I can't type apparently -- corrected typos))

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Not much to say today. I'm making a small ad for my commission panel because I need the money very badly, and this is a WIP of the Spamton that appears on it. It's the Spamton from my AU (I don't know how could he be called... ΔSpamton? GambitSpamton? DG!Spamton? 🤔), with particular details like the missing finger on his right hand (because of the "commemorative ring") and the particular coat that is his "Lucky Jacket", a gift from his old roommate (certain Blue Addison that goes by the name of Sears S. O’Reilly in my visual novel). Spamton might be half the Addison he was before but will still push forward to change his lot in life and recover all that was lost, including himself, before it's too late... I still can't believe into what he will become because of his Determination to keep on living. Well, I believe he deserves such <evil grin>

In a sense we both are alike, desperate for kromer all days every month all year, and we passed by similar circumstances (including being born the runt of the family, being unlucky, betrayal by people we thought we knew well, eviction, phone-ring anxiety and crippling disease). Guess that's another reason why I pity and respect Spamton so much because I see a lot of myself on him, and neither of us deserved the fate we were wrapped in... I don't like to reflect myself on characters but I dunno, Spamton has turned into some sort of "animal spirit" for me, an inspiration to keep pushing forward against all odds in life 😅 At least it's a positive projection, me thinks 🤔

Anyways, enough of that. It's late and I need to head to sleep 😴 Hope I can finish the ad this Monday if bureaucrazy doesn't have something to say about it, as Mondays are very scary days with the damn ring of the phone always with bad news behind... To heck with it, sleep is important and I shouldn't worry about the wound before I get it on me first. Have fun and good night!

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It's been a while since I posted something. I'm still beset by bureaucratic procedures that make me go like a boomerang and waste my stamina so much I just have strength to eat and go to sleep.

So that there is something of an update, here is a teaser of the prototype designs for 2 of the BLUE Swatchlings when they were young, Glace and Ciel.

Glace is your typical cold blooded stoic character that has 0 empathy (the polar opposite to his ORANGE brother Tartufo) and takes everything literally, so you need to give him a ton of details when ordering him around. His name literally means "glacial" as if devoid of feelings.

Ciel is the sworn rival of his RED brother Marama, who was appointed as leader of the Swatchlings by their father, thus he's in charge of managing the flock when Swatch and Tasque Manager are not available. Ciel and Marama had a quarrel when they were hatchlings as Ciel thought he was more fit to be the leader of the siblings. Marama was forced to blind one of the eyes of Ciel to make him stop fighting and Ciel will never forgive him for that. Ciel loves action movies and war games, and his skillset spins around handling explosives and bombarding the foes. Because he would never cooperate if Marama is around, Ciel is usually sent outside the palace for different tasks, pairing him with his closest "rebel" siblings who follow him more than Marama, the Swatchlings Fenouil, Chou and Pulcinella. Ciel is the only one that finds Glace easy to move around, so Glace is often seen following his orders, and trains with Ciel to polish Glace's skills with firearms in secret. Ciel hopes to turn Glace into a "sniper" of sorts, to complete his personal "brigade". Ciel was also one of the first Swatchlings to suggest bringing war to the doorstep of Castle Town to prevent any more unwanted invaders to target their Dark Fountain.

And that's a small glimpse about 2 of the 28 Swatchling siblings. Their chosen accessories and general design carries over onto their adult forms, and while Ciel's looks like a grizzled war-veteran of sorts (too many action movies in his noggin'), Glace's reminds me more to the calm and collected hitman that obeys orders to the T. It's funny because Ciel would also be called by his brother Ericino (the Swatchling in charge of the Amusement Rooms) to play FPS games with the guests by request of them, and he literally takes no prisoners while playing those games 😅

I hope to one day finish these. There's a ton of stuff to be done but RL is relentless with me for 2 months now, and May feels like it will be more of the same because bureaucracy is slow as molasses when dealing with civil affairs. Here hoping for better days. I need to practice animation too and I had an idea for the EXCEPTION form of Swatch before he was put on a leash by Queen. I hope to one day do just that if I get a couple of days free in a row.

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I drew this like this past month. A friendly gift given to a good friend of mine I fatefully met in the Undernet fandom group, featuring them as Kris next to my MC, with a motivational message and a generous cupcake of Oreo (because we both love Oreo). Was practicing a new style of painting that I wanted to use for my visual novel, at least for the illustrations and background parts. It took me a while to figure out how to make it to look eye candy enough but guess I managed to pull it out despite being the first time not using my original style, which is more "painterly" I thinks 🤔

Anyhow, I need to keep practicing drawing more or I'll never get the hang of drawing Spwatchton nor anybody else. I also notice that this depiction of him is not accurate to his real height I brainstormed this past weekend (which should be 278 cm ~ roughly 109.44 inches). It's a bit "funny" because Swatch was taller originally, but after the forced hijacking of his data, the final amalgamation got him "compressed" and thus the height and bulk is now less. That reminds me I still need to draw the character sheet of Swatch and the rest of the characters. So much pending work OTL

I apologize if I don't have anything new to show. With my current schedule I barely have time to even stop in front of my tablet to create something new or that would advance the progress of the visual-novel. I hope things get lenient with me before the end of this month, but these RL deadlines are destroying my Darkner soul... and just this past Friday things got awful as I got hit by a sunstroke so badly that it made one of my neighbours to pick me up with her car to leave me at home or I'd just have collapsed in the middle of the street right there. That left my brain fried and in pain up until today, when I feel much better to resume work and check the socials for DMs and whatever else on my mail.

Well, enough of the unpleasantries. During my sun fever thing, I took notes to fleshen out a little more all of the Swatchlings, the 28 of them. With that I only need to draw them all to settle on stone their designs. At least that was some modicum of progress forward...

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This was another concept art of how Swatch looked without the mask. He still retains some of his former feral traits, but are more tame compared to his original EXCEPTION form, monsters that were queued for deletion as they were driven mad by pure undiluted Chaos when the Dark Fountain turned their original forms into Darkners.

This time it just shows how the mask (created by Tasque Manager to curb the feral nature of Swatch) actually hides a more fearsome countenance. His body is Darkness (as all Darkners are) sequestering all the colours of the light inside his body. With the mask on, all that storm of light gets balanced and his thoughts gets clearer, returning him to a more polite and suave demeanour (or as Tasque Manager would say, to a more "ORDERly manner"). Tasque Manager is charged to keep an eye out for him all the time, and to perform maintenance on the mask now and then to make sure the virus inside Swatch didn't manage to damage it.

I also learnt a little how to make the rainbow in him to look more hand-made and less procedural. At first I was using gradients, but it didn't look right to me so I made the stripes by hand. It was a nice experience to have 😊

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This is one of the first concept arts I made for the Swatch in my AU. When I get an idea I usually tend to draw it and while I draw I fleshen out the story behind the idea in my head before actually writing about it.

For context, in my visual novel, many Darkners has creative in-depth backstories, and Swatch and the Swatchlings are not an exception. In this case here he is seen at the beginning of his career before becoming the head butler of Queen. All the Swatchlings were "born" from him (by means explained in the plot). He took good care of them and made sure to turn them into well trained butlers before they became the strapping servants other people grew to love to have around. They are like 28 Swatchlings, all with their own personalities, their own names, boons and flaws. Though they still change colour depending of the mood and other external factors, they all have fixed colours for their personalities. Their names are:

🟥 RED (Marama, Merlot, Carignan, Tempranillo) 🟧 ORANGE (Tartufo, Profiterole, *Tiramisu, *Zuccoto) 🟨 YELLOW (Ricotta, Caciocavallo, Ericino, Gorgonzola) 🟩 GREEN (Renet, Poirot, Chou, *Fenouil) ☄️ CYAN (Pierrot, Arlecchino) 🟦 BLUE (Frisco, Glace, *Ciel, *Brise) 🟪 VIOLET (Adonis, Patroklos, *Tartaglia, *Antipatros) 🌸 PINK (Pulcinella, Colombina)

((* the ones not shown on the picture because of being an early concept picture and I was still wondering about each of them))

The rainbow marks on Swatch's body are the scars left by the wires of Queen from the time she managed to "tame" him... The masks were created by Tasque Manager to curb their feral natures, as per orders of Queen.

For everything else, at least it was a first step into turning my AU ideas into a more visible form. It motivates me to go forward, and to practice more digital art. I still have one more concept art of Swatch to share. Will post it later.

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A bitter-sweet alliance, born from betrayal and desperation. Everything has a raison d'être. This here are just close-ups of the two sides of the banner experimentation I did a while ago, trying to fleshen out the conceptualization of Spwatchton for the visual-novel. Spamton and Swatch shares the same body, thus their personalities remain the same, but now dealing with the inconvenient tug'o'war of their different morals and modus operandi that each of them has. Spamton was shap'd and scarred for life by the hardships of living in the streets of the suburbs of Cyber City and the Trash Zone, whereas Swatch had an easier life born into the highest echelons of Cyber City's society. It's a peculiar clash of ideals and motivations, Chaos and Order sharing the same body, but they must get well with each other, otherwise the amalgamation of both of their essences gets unbalanced and starts to melt and twist them into an unsightly beast of sorts...

Anyways, I still need to practice drawing him more, to keep myself more consistent between iterations.

This is how the banner looks, though it isn't animated here sadly. If you want to see the animated version, just go to my DeviantArt entry here. More and more practice.

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The Spamverse and other thoughts

Not an update about my visual-novel but maybe I can share a little about what crosses my head while I work to eke out a living. I joined the Spamverse group some little while ago, but I was still confused about what it was really about (not counting I'm aware about that animation project that I wish I could subscribe to...). Then after a while I understood that it was like a "compendium" of all the Spamton EX OCs, which I believe are just Mettaton EX but with the name and the likes of Spamton slapped onto them. I was wondering trying to make my own Spamton EX to fit in there, but my brain was drawing a huge blank yesterday, when I was wondering about the design for the cover art for one of the routes of my visual novel (the one codenamed as "Defiance Route" or "Swatchgrave") and while I was collecting some references of Spamton NEO and Mettaton EX and NEO to have some visual cue guide to create the NEO GESTALT boss for the final fight of that route.

Then this past night I had a dream in which I was walking downtown Cyber City with Spwatchton and I was looking worried because I had no Spamton EX design to join the activities of that Spamverse group, and he was trying to cheer me up (and by the way, Spwatchton is a HUGE Darkner, like I barely am taller than above the level of his crotch damn it lol he's like 278 cm tall of Darkner amalgamate).

He said that they were going to help me design it, and thus we went into a backstreet tucked in between a bar and a movie theatre of sorts, and he started to draw with his powers on a wall several design candidates for me. I made a pick from one of the samples and I barely made it to give it a name and a good gander at the design so that I could memorize it to draw it later, but just after I gave it a name, I woke up...

Problem is, I remember the name I gave to that Spamton EX, but I barely reckon the design. I think maybe if I start to draw him, some of the stuff I saw in the dream will come through my mind's eye, but I'm not very positive about that... Whatever the case, I'll keep lurking in that Spamverse group, being the scrub member without a SpamEx to my name, and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to fight this crippling social anxiety and shyness and might interact with anyone of the group. I feel like overwhelmed by the talent of these artists, and I feel like not worthy to even mingle with them or being noticed by them OTL

Maybe if I get my Spamton EX that thing will change by giving me more confidence on my artistic abilities, but until then, lurking from behind the corner, watching the cool kids playing, will be my only consolation...

Nothing else to say, but that I'm still a SpamEX-less scrub OTL

Ah, the caveats of being a weak Lightner...

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And here an animated Spamton to make for my previous animation not having a preview.

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I'm testing if I can upload animations. If this fails, it's bound to be deleted. Only allows for PNG and JPEG... How I am to share my animations in GIF format?

Apparently it works if you click on the link. Oh well. It's just one of my first animation practices I did for my visual novel, trying to make a banner of sorts with my bipolar MC.