Hello! This update has enough waffle, so we're just going to waltz right in and get cracking! That's right, no whimsy or distraction, pure dedication to communication. It's the dawning of a new Crispy and this time he-I'm waffling again, aren't I?
I mentioned in my last update a few weeks back that some soul-searching was in order. Whilst this is far from over some answers have presented themselves and in a not very concise form at that. So for ease of 'I don't want to read this' I'm going to split this update into three parts: Past, Present and Future. Oh, and an epilogue. And this intro. They don't count as parts though.
~PAST~
In the weeks leading up to the 8th I'd been preparing for my holiday to visit friends in the Netherlands. As has become tradition I like to crochet a little something for each of them and so in snatched hours I made a little gaggle of gifts. This bundle comprised of a Warhammer helmet, a TomatoSmile, a Crobat, a Sherma and a Theo poppet which I can only describe as having 'Do you think a depressed person could make this?' energy.
In addition to this I also made a birthday cake for m'dad, finished a pokemon-themed style roulette commission, baked a variety of brown things for friends, and generally dwelt in travel-borne anxiety. This wasn't wholly unwelcome since it largely replaced the aforementioned depression.
Thence twas travel! After something of a nightmare Eurostar journey in which both a deer and the very concept of Brussels Midi/Zuid train station scuppered onward plans, we eventually made it to friends and had a lovely time. Between Game Changer, Project Hail Mary, Wake Up Dead Man, a safari zoo, the Efteling, Monster of the Week, Triangle Agency and several thousand geese, twas a lovely time. Can recommend friends, 10/10. A small panic regarding return trains and a detour to visit Sloan's house were not enough to stop us all returning home safe and sound.
What followed was a personal week off, ostensibly to do this whole soul-searching thing and reorganise both my physical and mental space. This was somewhat successful, inasmuch as my various boxes, shelves and drawers of craft supplies are now arranged in such a fashion that I don't forget they exist again. Hopefully you'll see a bit more physical arts and crafts from my spare time rather than playing the same video game 30 times.
Besides this I spent a lot of time playing Final Fantasy V for the 30th time.
But not all time was wasted! I finally plucked up the courage to try my hand making a rudimentary flute, which I would give a B+ for effort and a D- for measurements. I tried my hand at darning by repairing a pillow case, had a crack at generative map-making (albeit 'twasn't my thing), and doodled Jay and Kay as a vampire and a ghost for reasons I can't quite recall.
This was, of course, all between streaming Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice For All (or however that punctuation works) having finally gotten out of the far end of the lamentable third case. After cleaning up our cares in Viscera, we returned to the creaking foundations of Grim Hollow on Saturday, before settling into to the warm, fuzzy bosom of group doodlage on Sunday.
And that, as they say, was that.
~PRESENT~
Right now I'm writing a Patreon update. I'm also very tempted to end this section there as a punchline, but we persevere.
This soul-searching wotsit led me to the optimistic belief that I'd spend the prior week laying out plans for the remainder of the year and have my head screwed on in project management and life direction. This, as one might suspect by the above phrasing, hasn't borne ripe fruit but a little insider cider will tide us over.
A variety of unfinished work lies on my proverbial desk courtesy of past Crispy: Two Jay & Kay comics sketched out ready to ink and colour, unfinished descriptions in my OC height chart, a couple of OC memes, an illustration or two in progress, commission advertisements to expel unto the unwitting public, highlight videos to arrange, stream assets to make and so on and so forth.
Thus my current job will be to set all remaining work to be carried out into some form of itinerary and clear it ready for a clean slate. Precisely what goes on that clean slate is for future Crispy.
~FUTURE~
Wow, look where that scroll-bar is. Buckle up, and let waffle commence:
I'm not one for concise advice. The universe is so complicated and the human mind so comparatively limited that any wisdom you can express in a single sentence must be missing enough crucial nuance to fill a pocket novella. Nevertheless I can't seem to shake two such notions with regards to work:
"There's no point in pursuing a goal you can neither enjoy nor justify"
There is, of course, no blueprint to life but I feel this stands as a handy yard-stick. If you're having a terrible time and there's no good reason behind it then things probably need to change. This is why I left academia to explore other options.
Unfortunately I've found myself in a similar situation, a rut I'm finding difficulty enjoying, justifying or climbing out of. It's not quite as acute but if we can't learn to spot symptoms early we're doomed to keep suffering the same disease.
The depression I experienced from my academic rut is gradually returning as I find myself in an illustrative one. The varied plans I had to forge a career have been scuppered by emergent technology, political upheaval, economic downturn, megalomaniacal politicians or lack of personal drive. This, unsurprisingly, causes one to feel a little miffed. What to do when all your plans have collapsed around your ears? Perhaps a second oversimplified soundbite might offer guidance:
"You cannot create well that which you don't consume."
Not long after discussing this with close friends a perfect example came to light in the form of "non-reading writers", a concept so bizarre to me it sounds like a premise to a poorly thought-through sketch.
An individual human cannot reinvent everything that came before them simply because it now exists. A modern, naked amnesiac dropped in a forest won't have developed a computer by the end of the month. We're just the next layer on a giant temporal human pyramid scrambling atop each-other's discoveries and observations, picking up from others' triumphs and learning from their defeats. We're not smarter than our ancestors, just inheritors of their discoveries, better informed.
To assume you can reinvent it all yourself, blindly, is arrogance of the highest order. The quintessence of the Dunning-Kruger effect: Those without the skills to perform a task well lack the skills to know that they cannot perform it well.
So what do I do? Let's start more specifically: What can I do well? There's no point me trying to write a novel, as I don't read them. There's no point me making a tome of sequential art, as I barely interact with the medium. I'd be no film-maker, nor dramatist, nor composer as I dabble in those fields at best.
If I need guidance for what to do I should perhaps look at what I consume, no? Well that keeps short-form comics, streams and videos on the table, they're pretty frequently on my to-eat list. But a conspicuous medium looms on the horizon, its silhouette ever-present long before I left academia. One I'm beginning to feel I should turn to face sooner rather than later.
Games.
I love programming. It was my first choice out of university. To this day little gives me as much satisfaction as busting a tricky bug or solving a strange system, to the point that I often cheer aloud upon doing so.
I love game design. Specifically the mechanics of play, the cogs of activity that make the brain fizz. We're strange creatures to find joy in the practically meaningless, and that's part of what makes it fascinating. It's like a magic trick performed to misdirect the brain from its survival, and like good magic it can take you anywhere. What wild variety there is in the arbitrary control over ultimately meaningless choices that can elicit joy or satisfaction between people or in isolation.
I love pulling games apart. To see what works and what doesn't. To see how they pulled that off. To uncover the bright idea behind that flawed execution. To see the trick behind the smoke and mirrors, the precision behind the clockwork, the art of the timing and the skill behind the misdirection.
But really, I love playing games. I've played far more games than I've watched films, read books, watched shows or seen plays combined. If I am to do my best to avoid Dunning-Kruger it would be wise to perhaps pour some more time into the field I feel the most comfortable simply existing in.
That said... what a terrible idea! Games take years to finish, and I'm dreadful at keeping my head in any kind of long-term project. Sure I have 20+ ideas for games right now, but that's because there's always a new one scampering over the horizon flashing it's signal lamp directly into my retinas.
Clearly more planning must occur to find a justifiable and executable route for this: A smarter division of labour to pepper tedious aspects between exciting ones; the building of assets alongside the building of code; rapid prototyping section-by-section to keep momentum; reinstating morning streams to work on asset creation. A number of workflows sit scattered across my table, I simply need to make some decisions.
What game might I even work on? The roguelike RPG I started at the beginning of the year? The October point'n'click detective story planned as a tester for October Noir? Perhaps one of the many titles I've tangentially alluded to over the years: Pinefall, Hotel Oberon, Moida, The Chalk Tower, Crispy's Game Almanac, To Linger, Colony of Chaos, Anomaly Inc, Causality, Tour of Avonvale, Black & Green? Well... something small, probably. That'd be a start.
In summary streams, comics and videos are all still firmly on the table, but some of the loftier floated ambitions are going to be shelved for the time being in favour of a focus on game-making. A plan will be put in motion for the coming weeks to see how confident I feel in getting something game-oriented off the ground and in a believably finishable state. Perhaps I'll even get around to actually releasing Chaos Chess.
~EPILOGUE~
Thank you for getting this far! If you skipped here then well done for knowing what's good for you. Otherwise sorry it was a waffle, but I feel like you should know where I'm coming from with this (currently small) shift in focus. It'll be a while before anything is borne of it, but as my surprisingly loyal supporters you deserve the explanation.
My heartiest thanks for your continued support. I really couldn't contemplate any of this without you and am hoping you'll be getting some teasers and demos dropped on your lap sooner than you can recite the dictionary backwards. It's a low bar, but it's a bar.
Look after yourselves,
Crispy 💜