ummmmandy - Tumblr blog

[ummmmandy]

would it be possible for you to add (to existing games or future ones) the option to have multicolored hair? like in your picrew, you can make the front and back different colours which is super useful for me since i have my bangs dyed 😭

Would be an insane amount of work to retroactively go back and try and make that functional with any of the meiker games I've already done. None of those hairs were drawn with that kind of thing in mind.

I did the "build ur own hair" thing with the picrew because it only shows half the body, since I wasn't really drawing pants or shoes and all that I went ahead and made the hair more customizable, sort of like a trade off. WHICH if I did something smaller like that again I'd do it that way again.

But tbh I have much more fun drawing whole hairstyles without having to worry about how each piece has to work with every other single hair piece I draw. Also lets me have more variety in shapes and stuff cause everything doesn't have to fit together.

SO for full body games I probably won't. Won't say "never" cause idk, but yeah.

[ummmmandy]

also…next game getting an update….

[ummmmandy]

ask answerin 👇

-Yeah go for it! 👍

-That's kind of an exciting idea, I've vaguely thought about doing something like that before actually. BUT if I think about it a little more there are things about it I wouldn't be totally sure about…..

Feel something like that would work well for hairstyles! I'd be pretty open to that if people were interested.

Tho when I think about adding commissioned clothing items, it's like, the first person I aim to please when I make these games is myself ya know??.. I want to like everything I put in there at the very least. I assume I'd be adding stuff to an already finished game, so what if I get asked to put something in I'm not crazy about or I don't feel like goes well with the style of the game or something? Gets complicated lol.

ALSO I have no idea how I would price individual items. Idk what people would want to pay for something like that (and still have it be worth the effort to draw and add in and everything).

-That is kinda what I was picturing too, doing games for people's ocs and stuff would be prrrrretty fun I think. But yea pricing would have to at least be comparable to the other games I make (I'm so slow if I charged hourly I feel like these games would cost 500,000,000 dollars lmao) for it to really be worth it….and idk how many people would be interested in that (even if they were done on a smaller scale).

Sort of an alternative to a whole dress up game commission could be those things where you draw the character once and then just draw like 3 different outfit versions or whatever. Like a lookbook thing. Which I've also thought would be fun to offer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ummmmandy]

[ummmmandy]

my drawing process-

sketch done: "think this looks pretty good! just gotta clean it up a little" start lining: "can't tell if I even like this anymore maybe I should just abandon this one" line a bit more: "hey alright, looking better now! I did it! :D " line more: "this fucking sucks actually" add a little color: "k now it's good again" colors a little more: "now this looks overworked and tortured I've ruined it"

[ummmmandy]

Would you ever consider taking commissions for dress up games?

yeah I would that sounds really fun actually…wonder how that would work....

[ummmmandy]

Me seeing this, this whole time thinking this is the year the blog finally turns a decade old

[ummmmandy]

answering a little group of asks

--Idk cause I don't love the idea of people editing the things I've drawn. The picrew is this customizable thing yeah but it's still…mine ya know? Small edits that change color or something don't bother me so much but it feels weird seeing highly edited stuff. I don't know if I have a very logical reasons why I don't like it, can't really explain it. Just don't ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ feels weird.

I do wonder a lot if it's something I should get over and let go of more, and seeing edited stuff does bug me less than it did when I first made the picrew. I mean, I kinda have to anyway because the spread of it all is way out of my hands and I absolutely have zero desire to confront people on the internet over it. SO.

Also I've always thought that if you want a more customized piece of art done in someones style that's why you pay them for it in a commission. idk. (and I know i barely open commissions but the point still stands lol)

--This ask is sorta related to the previous i guess 😅 Idk if I'm 10000% comfortable with it?????????????? Buuuuuuut I do think it'd be cool to see other's work combined with mine in that way, so I'd say you're good to go if you credit me and make clear what parts are mine and the things you've added. & I appreciate you asking about it!

--This is the kinda the only thing I've really drawn of him that's sorta accurate to how I picture him in my head.

Would love to draw more of him and seven tho (his RO is seven of course its seven).

Want to take more time to draw stuff for just myself this year in general

[ummmmandy]

[ummmmandy]

answering the rest of the asks 👇

I've mentioned before that I try to split the number of hair texture types evenly, I usually do 15 natural/textured styles and 15 straight/wavy styles. If I added more textured styles I would just be adding more hairs in general.

I'm actually wondering since I normally group multiple styles of textured hair all under that same group, if that makes it feel like there's less choices for those styles overall (I sort of feel like this even when I'm drawing everything out myself). Like if I'm working with 15 hairs for that category, it still may only have like 3 loc styles, 3 braided styles, 3 twists, ect. So it feels like less choices overall to the player?? Maybe there should be more to make it feel more filled out? If you anon or anyone else has feedback on that I'm open to it of course!

Yeah down the line I definitely would like to!

I've got all the hairs, facial features, and shirts done, pants/skirts sketched out. Hairs are the biggest category to update so nothing else should take as long as that one. Don't have an exact date for this sorry ;o; Here's a preview tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

fyi this isn't how you ask people for things 👍

Oh yeah it's great!! Think I found choiceofgames in like 2015 or something? So it's been really cool to see it spread out on tumblr over the years, I feel very spoiled now lol

[ummmmandy]

Thank you so much for recommending those IFs because I have been brain rotting for the past five days. Are there any others that you like? The only one I’ve read aside from your recs is CTOS and I’ve finished them all, so I’m hungry for more

under the cut i guess cause this might be annoyingly long

this question is so dangerous actually, if I wrote all the ones I've read that I liked down it'd be a list a million years long

first, just the @interact-if tumblr is great if you don't already know about that, there's a lotta lists and resources for like..everything there, so you can go dig through that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm just gonna throw a few things out there I can think of I guess cause idk where to even begin

--handful of completed games that are good -

Night Market

Fallen Hero Rebirth & Retribution

The Passenger

Blood Moon

The Fernweh Saga

The Golden Rose

(there are more of course…..)

--WIPS that are good (that I could recall off the top of my head or remembered to actually follow the project somewhere so I wouldn't forget about it, there are manymanymanyyyy more than these too)

Greenwarden

The Northern Passage

The Bastard of Camelot (love games that give me the option to burst into tears at every opportunity)

Mind Blind

Body Count

Checkmate In Three Moves

Project Hadea

Attollo

Adoriel's Tears

Sentience

The Gray Ascendancy

Uroboros

REMEMBER, YOU WILL DIE (looking at this, it's gonna have a new demo link soon it seems??)

Idk if there's a way to play the demo atm, but Larkin is also very good. (Vampire Western. Need I say more.)

& I don't know if this one will ever get updated but I still think about it sometimes and I think it's the only IF that ever made me cry forreal, like if The Velveteen Rabbit gets you this will get you, honorable mention for that reason,

The Cain Foundation

[ummmmandy]

:ooo what interactive fictions have you been reading recently?

I am basically Interactive Fictions Georg, and read over 10,000 WIPS a day, so I have trouble actually recalling every one I like off the top of my head. There are..many..ok..Anything I'm into at the moment is probably just something that's been updated more recently.

If ur talking like, in the last month or so, uhuhhhuhuhuhhhh The Exile, Merry Crisis, and Infamous, my beloved <3, are 3 I can think of right away (If I fully answered this question the list would be substantial, i don't know how thorough of an answer you're actually looking for so I'm keeping it simple)

[ummmmandy]

[ummmmandy]

Not to be rude, but has this blog fully transitioned to commissions/dolldivines or are you still making fanart?

The main things I drew fanart for are games that came out nearly 10 yrs ago, so yeah, I don't have dragon age or fallout on the brain as much these days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (still love them tho, don't get me wrong)

I've thought about doing some baldur's gate 3 things whenever I actually finish that game

BUT if people have requests for fanart drawing stuff I am totally open to that, feel free to send me them! I've actually been thinking about it lately cause I haven't done fanart in a long time

[ummmmandy]

[ummmmandy]

jus ask answering 👍

-This is the one you're talking about right?

I still have the folder of refs and inspo stuff I used for that game and I coulda SWORN there was an image in there I based that on but I did not find one ;o; BUT I did some googling cause it started driving me crazy too. Feel like I got similar-ish items by searching 'southwestern ruana' or 'southwestern poncho', I think if you just wore a belt over them they'd look like the jacket ref you're talking about? Or that can at least point you in a direction maybe?

-Yeah as long as you've linked and credited me that's cool! Thanks for asking :D

-Thank you! And idk really! I just like a lotta different stuff lol, fashion is always exciting and inspiring, I keep big folders full of images for inspo. A lot of times I pick things that give a silhouette I think is fun (sorry this answer is boring my brain is mush rn o-o)

-Um pink is my favorite color. This ask is so innocent sounding I've become suspicious of it lol

[ummmmandy]

I've been doing about 30 hairs (plus 1 or 2 hijab options) for the last 3 games. I try and split it evenly, 15 straight or wavy styles, and 15 curly/coily textured styles (which includes braids, locs, and twists). 15 isn't a huge number, so I focus on trying to add variety in styles while hitting a decent mix of short and long choices.

For this last game for example, each hair style has 14 color swatches, which is 14 layers in the photoshop document. 14 swatches x 32 hairs is 448 layers in photoshop. My hair category is duplicated for layering reasons, so that's 896 layers in photoshop for just the hair category. (am I doing this math right that seems crazy). Since this category gets so big I try and stick to a number of hair styles that I feel tries to get enough variety but still gives me a limit, since every hair option adds 28 layers.

All this just to explain where I'm coming from on how I choose which styles to include. Not to say I couldn't add more styles!! If people feel like something is lacking there, then yes I want to know so I can address stuff like that in future games. I don't want people to feel frustrated or let down by that sort of thing, especially if they feel all hair textures aren't being represented equally.

Also, I don't upload/tag the game myself on any site that isn't meiker.io, so that tag wasn't put in by me. But I think the afro hair tag is meant to describe the texture of the hair and not necessarily afro as a hairstyle (& if that's not what you meant but that then I apologize for misunderstanding that point).