notomys-mordax-blog - Tumblr blog

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Here's my gift for @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul for the @handers-time gift exchange!

I went with the prompt "battle-couple" and tried to capture the apostate badassery that would be Hawke and Anders in battle. Some unlucky templar is about to meet their end! I hope you like it

Close ups, crops and lineart under the cut

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I keep looking at this and grinning like crazy! It's beautiful! I love everything you did here, but your colors and textures so sumptuous and expressive. The body language between the two is also on point, I especially love Anders expression (I bet the hosts will be finding little white feathers for years afterwards). Thank you so much for this!

. . .

My gift for @notomys-mordax-blog for the 2024 Handers Exchange (hosted by @handers-time - whom I thank for organising the event) 🌙

The "fancy evening but they are awkward" prompt captivated me - they are here just to shed feathers all over the place, really.

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Fire Emblem Three Sagas

I've been playing through Banner Saga and wanted to do a study of the art style, so I drew Dimitri using the base of the spear-wielding characters from Banner Saga (I didn't realize until I was studying them that Ludin and Tryggvi. used ... the same base). It was a fun exercise, although I'm not 100% on the colors I picked for the lines! The background is just a screenshot I yoinked + blurred.

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Finish anything Jam - DevLog #4

April has been a busy month, but I have still managed to make some good progress on what I'm currently calling "Woe to the Lord of Eternal Night"

Art:

- I redid Ari sprite, I decided that I wanted to do a full body. I added expressions and coded it into the game.

- Redesigned Wresz's outfit. I also put in his expressions, I'm prone to going ham with expressions, so in order to challenge myself I'm trying to keep my palette limited.

- Began adding some textures to backgrounds. I did an experiment with drawing a background, and did not like the effect.

- Sketched 4 additional cgs, made a list of the CGs I want to include in the game.

- Completed the sprite for Roth, one of Ari's companions (and a possible love interest in one of the endings).

Coding:

- Got all seven chapters into the code, I still have to code the endings and add effects, but a lot of the game is coded with placeholder assets.

- Tweaked choices to prevent bugs.

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Key Art #1

I need to figure out a title for this project.

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I was just talking about this in reference to The Magicians (TV series and book series both, tbh). There is a lot of real compelling stuff in there, there are way too many problems for me to consider it good -- despite that I've found myself thinking about the franchise far more than I have other, objectively better ones.

It's the literary version of "I can fix him"

I did this to help illustrate a point I'm making in a different post, but I feel it's relevant above and beyond that specific context.

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Finish Anything Jam - DevLog#3

I don't know if this is a good sign or a bad sign that I've focused on a different project for every bit of my Finish Something Jam. This month my attention has been focused on the smallest of all of my projects -- something I'm tentatively called something along the lines of "Woe to the Lord of Eternal Night" or "Dark Lord Must Die" -- idk. naming is hard.

The premise is that a group of adventurers are preparing to confront the Dread Dark Lord of Eternal Darkness -- in addition to being a powerful master of the arcane arts, he's also the MC's ex.

Art:

Created (very rough) base sprites for everyone, and more refined sprites for Aridell and Wresz -- our MC and LI.

Began to refine the general art style for the game.

Finished CG1.

Sketched CG2.

Sketched some core art bits that will probably get reworked into the title page.

Writing:

Completed outline.

Did a pass of editing on the first draft -- it clocks in a little under 10k words for the whole game.

Coding:

Began to build out a placeholder UI using old assets I commissioned years ago for a project that never got off the ground.

Created some basic transforms for placing the sprites and simple animations.

Got 6/7 chapters scripted into the game (with basic character animations)

Here are the really rough initial sketches of all of the characters. Fey (middle one with the wings, causes some problems 'cause she's so much broader than everyone else)

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Fanart Time

Crow Armbrust x Rean Schwarzer from the Kiseki series might be one of my OTPs. Invoking the aesthetics of the in-game CGs.

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I continue to be on a water-color style kick.

This is Aridell: he's the MC of a short jam-style game I've been kicking around for a bit. The working title of that project is "Destiny, A Broken Thread" but that's pretentious as hell and kinda goofy.

The premise of the story is band of legendary heroes gather around the fire as they prepare for their final confrontation against the Dread Lord of the Night Eternal. Before the villain of the story became the Man Who Stole the Sun, he was the groups trusted companion and treasured friend -- and for poor Ari here, he was something *~more~*

It's a ~10k lovers-to-enemies story with heavy Solavellan vibes.

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Refreshed sprite for Shay -- the MCs new roommate who is definitely not a space pirate in hiding.

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Finish Anything Jam - DevLog#2

As I mentioned, at the end of 2024 I am going to be releasing ... something. One of my big challenges is that I have a few different WIPs and enjoy ... rotating between them.

While I was fairly focused in December on a project called "Eyes of the Pines" that focus shifted a bit during January.

Here are the projects I currently have cooking.

Eyes of the Pines: Southern gothic horror-light focused on an amnesiac young man who uncovers the secrets behind his past.

51ur8-90: A queer space opera featuring a mechanic in a backwater space colony who inadvertently ends up playing a bigger role in the conflict unfurling around them.

(no logo yet)

Broken Thread: The world of Azaria has been fractured by the Dread Lord of the Night Eternal. A small band of heroes prepare for their final confrontation with the dark wizard. For them, the conflict is personal. Before he became the Man who Stole the Sun, the wizard had been their trusted companion and treasured friend and for their leader, he was something more. 

This is what I got done this month:

51ur8-90

This is an old project that I'm picking up again. The script is complete, but one of the challenges with the script is that it's not very well formatted and there are a ton of different permutations (most of the LIs scenes can be played at several points in the story, with slight variations depending on when the scene is ready) -- I took the script and began untangling this and mapping it into twine.  So far I've gotten this done for chapter 1.

Decided I'd give creating updated sprites a try. As I mentioned earlier, while I have a beautiful full set of sprites there are two problems that I'm grappling with: one is matching the CG art with the sprite art, and the other is that I've developed a taste for including more animation (blinks, flip flaps, etc) in my VN art. 

Made a new base sprite for femmeMC. Resisted the urge to give them the option of masculine and feminine costume outfits. For now. One of the design choices of this game is that you can pick the gender presentation of all fo the characters, I'll probably stick with one version to start, and then finish.

Made a new base sprite for femme Shay.

Sat down and really considered some design principles. Decided to stop being a coward and actually uncomment out the 18+ scenes. While it might impact how I have to think about some of the more explicit scenes (to allow for a diversity of bits without completely blowing up the art budget) ... I think this is important to one of the design goals of the game. 

Same with the polyam aspect of the game. You can date the rebellion ace pilot. You can date the space pirate. You can be both at the same time. 

In terms of scripting, I am going to follow the approach where I go through one "path" at a time. The ending routes essentially consist of a combination of Bo's primary political affiliation plus which relationships they've developed with the other characters (like any good melodramatic space opera, it's possible to romance Rebellion Ace while choosing to enlist in the Federation). 

For what it's worth, the bad endings occur when Bo chooses not to trust the bonds they've made with people on 51ur8 -- so in the above-mentioned scenario, it's possible to end up with a happy ending to your romance, as long as you trust in Kai. 

Whichever character other than the route character Bo is closest to. I'm going to knock out the route where Bo joins the , while being close to Kai. 

Eyes of the Pines

Art:

Added some more expressions to Elian.

Created a logo, I don't love it, but it's fine as a placeholder 

Create a main menu art.

Thought about how I want to structure my sprites. 

sat down and played with a mirror and faces, really studied the expressions and did some sketches for my characters to play with what their expressions look like

Thought about lines - since this is a year long, I do what I want jam. Get excited about cross hatching.

Built out the file structure for an Jonah.

Redesign Jonah to better reflect his character 

Tweaked Saul's pose so he's facing the camera.

Sketched a headshot. 

Started Vivian's portrait 

Realized I was getting way too ambitious with the numbers of animations/etc. 

Misc:

Start up the dev log

Think about social media presence, decide that's a later problem.

Got a bluesky. Now I need to figure out how to use it. 

Started a game design documentation. 

Vndev confl

Coding:

Began coding a second scene (this one is ... Much more complicated than the first). Coding is definitely going to be a long pole, although I might get faster as I get more comfortable with ATL and have more built ins.

I added a choice menu that will let me jump to a certain scene for debugging. 

Writing

2.1 - 2.9

I'm essentially writing one "leg" of the story at a time, this will let me get the overall flow of the scenes as they come together. 

I'm doing Saul's route first (to his 'special' ending). I'm not sure what I'll do second, but I'm leaning towards Saul's "default" ending, then I'll tackle Jonah's routes (which will complete the "tower" path) 

I'll put this in writing, but I put together a playlist, this helps me focus on on the vibes that I'm aiming for.

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I was hunting around some of my old (10+ years) backups looking for some other things, and found some old digital art that is actually ... kinda good? This was back when I was transitioning from physical to digital, and couldn't really make smooth lines, so I tried to mimic traditional techniques as much as possible.

I kinda want to explore with this technique again. Lesson learned, never throw away or delete your old art. You might actually look back and really like it.

... But definitely organize your files in a way that will make sense to you later. I did not find what I was originally looking for 😅

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Release Anything 2025 Jam Update: Dusting Off Old Projects

Like many creative types, I have a shameful backlog of WIP projects, but one that has been an especial bugbear is a project called 51ur8-90. It's a queer space opera about a mechanic on a backwater space colony who ends up playing a pivotal role in a conflict that stretches beyond their remote home.

In 2020 I released a demo that consisted of ~10k words (there is about 60k in the finished script) ... and then ... didn't do anything with the project. It sat for years on my hard-drive for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to scope creep, 2020 being one hell of a year ... and as I failed to make the milestones I wanted to meet a deep sense of shame about failing to meet people's expectations.

I occasionally enjoyed drawing the characters from it (the fellow in my current banner is one of the love interests) -- but for the most part, it sat in my pile of WIP projects that I may or may not ever tackle.

This weekend I dusted off the script and to my surprise found that I still really liked it. I read the whole thing from start to finish, and instead of filling me with the typical sort of dread dusting off any old writing usually invokes, it instead filled me with inspiration.

While I have a set of sprites I've commissioned by a very talented artist, one of the blocks that I had with the project was that as lovely as the sprites were ... I struggled a lot to make the CGs match stylistically. I might still use the OG sprites in the final project (because again, the goal of this year is to release ... something) but I felt inspired to whip up a new full body sprite for the MC using my current art style.

The one on the left is my new WIP -- the one on the right is the character's original design sketch. It's super gratifying to see how I'm more able to actually make the characters look like I want them to look in my head. I've come a far way in terms of posing characters more naturally and dynamically.

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Enlightened One Guyleth

Typically I imagine F!Byleth, but I thought I'd mix it up. the composition was a challenge since there are so many layers to this outfit.

I've been doing a lot of cell-shading lately while working on my personal projects, so I thought I'd take a break and play with cross-shading. My goal was to do minimal shading outside of the linework.

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Eye of the Pines - Devlog #1

Of course, I cheated and started in December. I want to get into the habit of doing monthly dev logs. Anyway, here's wonderwall my monthly dev log.

Art

Completed initial character designs (raw and sketchy) of all of the characters that will appear in the story.

I completed several more detailed headshots for two of the love interests (Elian and Jonah) and the protagonist. 

I completed a placeholder sprite for one of the love interests with a handful of expressions and outfit variations. 

Threw together a character reference sheet for Elian. 

Misc:

Settled on a working title. 

Wrote a completed outline (~7k words)

Got said outline into a spreadsheet: the story currently has 187 scenes, 4 different routes and 8 different endings. 

Played around with some branding and sketches for the UI design. 

Writing: 

Completed a rough draft for 10/187 scenes, it clocks in at ~10k words: I've basically finished the first chapters of one of the main 'branches' of the story, as well as the unique scenes for one of the love interests. 

My plan for tackling the writing is to complete one "route" (beginning to end in a linear fashion) at a time. 

Coding:

Set up the initial game using shawna-p's renpy template and did some low levels of customization

Got Elian's placeholder sprites into the game and re-familiarized myself for how to use renpy LiveComposite to set images working. 

Got a simple lip-flap and blink animation set up. 

Scripted the first scene (one down, 187 left to go): the animations and transitions are still a little rough, but practice makes first.

Links

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2025: The Year of Finishing Something, Anything

Totally sane and normal protagonist of a project that I've had kicking around for about a year -- my plans for him in the upcoming year are under the cut.

I've been working on a project which is part of an effort that I'm calling "finish something, seriously, anything" -- I am the kind of person who always has several projects spinning at once. As thrilling as the idea of turning 80 and releasing several of my magnum opuses at the same time might be, I would like to try to gain more experience cultivating an audience, promoting my personal projects (something that I am notoriously, not very inclined to do) and in general exposing the creative projects I've been working on to the wider world. 

The project that I am currently targeting is a visual novel with the working title of "Eye of the Pines" . It's a Gothic Horror BL story about an amnesiac young man who finds himself in a small town haunted by mysterious murders and disappearances. My goal is to get as far as I can with this project, and on January 1, 2025 release ... something! Anything! However much I have!

Cheers!

Noto