Hello! It's a brand new world! A paradigm shift has taken the planet by storm and the flowers bloom in applause! And I'm not just talking about the fact that Autumn's here. Seriously, September just grabbed August's work and tore it right up.
So I'll start this by mentioning that I have (yet another) new organisational system for my myriad activities! Things seem to be going well and, either as a consequence of this or as a consequence of the same drive that brought this change about, I'm making lots of through-roads all over my wibbly, never-ending map of projects.
For a start, August!
Love a big, supportive friend whose there to kick my body and head into shape. Sorry, I missed a word there: Would love a big[...]
So now that August is retiring guess whose here to take their place! That's right! February! *Ruffles notes* ...sorry, September! Their portrait's not complete yet but many a silly doodle has been doodled with them, October and their pet tortoise Cat. Long story. Well, short but silly story.
Given September's fancy hair stylings, I've saved my future-self a bit of bother (why, I don't know, that lucky bugger gets to keep living, unlike my past self who *devolves into existential babble*) by making a couple of braid brushes! I've attached them for anyone with Clip Studio who also doesn't wish for a lot of repetetive twist-on-twist drawing action!
Oh, also, there's a little in-progress scribbly comic involving Tori, but that's in-progress, so... whoops.
What of RandOCtober I hear you cry? Well bad news, I'm afraid. It's been culled. That's right, RandOCtober with its cumbersome, unsightly branding, has been axed in favour of NOctober! The monthly challenge in which you don't do a monthly challenge!
Whilst I'll happily continue to draw mine and my friends' characters in the random styles I generated, it'll no longer take the form of a month-long event nor scripted video series. They'll just get done when they get done and I can focus the efforts behind the deadlining, video-craft and branding onto something that people outside of my social circle might also appreciate. 😅
One benefit is that I've already shown off two drawings! Those being the 0th mascot doodle of October being helpfully analogous to the project's intent, and last night's reveal of Theo and Miles' foray into Disney's Robin Hood (as owner-prescribed Honey Badger and Capybara forms, respectively).
Since the last update I have also finished a couple more, as well has the sketch for the time-insensitive follow-up. Now, however, I'm no longer working with the Sword of Hallow's Eve dangling above my head, which is nice.
Before I jump head-first into my pile of brand-whipping-new shinies, let's see how streaming's getting on!
Having wrapped up Titanic: Adventure out of Time (boy, what a wrap-up it was too) we flew on up into the Starship Titanic and... well, that certainly happened*. Precisely what follows these on Tuesdays and Wednesdays has yet to be decided, but the inexorable approach of spooky season dictates nothing substantial.
Saturdays still see us plundering the dungeons and hell portals of Tamriel in search of infernal cheese and frog-horns in The Elder Scrolls: Online. And Sunday, naturally, are our chill wind-down doodle sessions, with the occasional rant about stories in games. Delightful. 🥰
Mornings are now steadfastly September-bound, as we're forging on with their portrait and subsequent comic, silly dancing very much included.
So now we can leap into the ever-growing Miscellania section of the update, this time roughly dividing up into the two sections 'Progress on Things I Should've Finished By Now' and 'Where On Earth Did That Come From?'
For the former, a whole host of features and bugs are being added and subtracted respectively from the long-maligned Chaos Chess! My to-do list may be longer than when last mentioned, but that's just the portion of the to-do list that I know about. There's a whole host of invisible entries to discover and contend with. Either way, good stuff. Not done, but getting there.
Speaking of getting there, with the retirement of RandOCtober I've stepped back into timestamping mode for the long-awaited Dead Island highlights! Only last night I finished the 5th VOD of the original 8, with Riptide probably getting its own separate follow-up highlights "shortly" after.
So what about the latter category? Well, let's bullet-point that one, shall we?
I messed around in Godot implementing all the wibbly visual features of Earthbound's battle backgrounds inspired by this hand-dandy explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjQik7uwLIQ
I've started piecing together ideas for a comedy/farce/thriller starring my dubious, robotic maître d' Opiter and their perfectly well-run hotel;
*I've been plotting replacement story and devising replacement puzzles for the wonderfully set-up and disastrously implemented Starship Titanic, to perhaps be manifest as a silly little text adventure;
And, of course, I've been torturing my OCs by writing a series of comics and doodles starring the Calendar family during each of their 'birthdays' (i.e. when they were found dumped in a graveyard).
I'll leave out the other ideas that are a little too embryonic to include, but trust me, they're there. 🥴
And that just about sums up the mess that's been my brain for the last two weeks. Very much a burst of creativity this time, which I can only hope to somehow capture and release in moderation to keep me going through the periods of drought. Some sort of inspiration reservoir perhaps. 🤔
Regardless, thank you all for your fabulous support of late. It is as ever highly, gratefully and heartily appreciated every step of the way. This is one of those updates where I feel I'm actually making some good use of it. Here's hoping I can live up to this momentum.
Until next time, look after yourselves,
Crispy 💜