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hello.
i'm having another artistic identity crisis? but in a kind of unnoteworthy way. my art needs to be a bit different, but i'm not sure exactly how.
last time this happened, back in 2023, i had no idea what direction i wanted to go and i was overwhelmed with all the possibilities, which made me feel depressed and hopeless. it felt like every new piece of art i saw was pulling me in its direction. the confusion multiplied every time i looked at art, and i couldn't decide what i wanted for the life of me. i started feeling really anxious about following artists on social media. i locked myself in my room and forced myself to experiment with my style constantly. eventually, it led to me developing an identity i liked, but the path there was lonely and crushing.
this time, it's nowhere as bad, it's just a little bewildering, like "huh, i thought i already figured this out." but who could have guessed, the 20 year old did not manage to figure everything out when he was 18.
i'm not sure how to describe the kind of art i used to feel driven to make. in a few words, i'd say the vibe was "extremely depressing". the kind of art that inspires you to be content with having no hope for the future, like "maybe my life will never get any better than this, but at least i have art, right?" stories with characters who never experienced an ounce of hope in their whole lives, with endings that leave you feeling empty and sad. a lot of people seem to think those stories are more profound and real by default.
...not the healthiest mindset, is it. at some point, i realised a lot of those stories were just kind of lazy. they couldn't think of anything to say, so they settled for a message like "you were right to never aim for anything. your efforts never would have amounted to anything even if you tried."
there are boatloads of exceptions, of course, but these days, i can't tolerate that kind of bleakness anymore. i need to be selective with the kind of art i engage with because letting feelings like that fester is terrible for me.
in the past year, i've become a much more cheerful person than 18 year old me could have ever predicted, and i think i'm going to keep going in that direction for the foreseeable future. my life goal is to become the most annoying carefree optimistic idiot to exist. the stuff that used to inspire me doesn't really appeal to me much anymore because of that. a lot of the music i used to listen to, and the shows i liked, and the games i played, and the artists i followed—they were all so preoccupied with loneliness. they had so little hope. they don't line up with the kind of person i'd like to be anymore, so now my job is to figure out what kind of art will serve as their replacements.
so yeah! i'm figuring it out slowly. for the time being, i don't have as many role models for what i want my art to be like as i used to. that makes focusing on my goals more difficult, because what goals? i don't have much of a blueprint. one thing is for sure, though! i want it to be fun, not sad. anyway, talking at length about what kind of art i want to make instead of actually making it is pretty lame. this is for me to know and everyone else to find out. maybe i'll have more to say once i get something out, we'll see.
i've been in prototyping hell for like, uhhh, well, all year, i guess. i fucked around with a couple game ideas only to find they just don't work in practice. that's part of the process, so you gotta take it in stride. i've gotten pretty competent with godot! nothing will stop me now. nothing. as of writing this, i recently finished an endearingly ugly little prototype for a simple point and click adventure style game. here's what it looks like in all its beauty:
it's a game about a socially maladjusted necromancer girl torturing her roommates by harassing them into participating in her weird rituals. one of them is weirdly into it. it features a strange bear statue. that's the extent of its marketable qualities so far. you gotta start small.
art and design work is a pain in the ass. it's satisfying when it's done but the process is too slow. everything i work on is going to be ugly as shit until i survive to reach the stage where the exterior is allowed to look as nice as the interior, because writing code is much more pleasant than drafting assets. the code is sponsored by my constant dehydration headaches (of which i am suffering from right now), so you know it's good. now that the prototype is done, i'm at work throwing together a pre-alpha build of it, which will still be just as wonderful looking, with maybe five or ten new interactions and a couple new ui elements. if i survive that, i'll start a public devlog or something.
progress has been surprisingly fast and frustratingly slow at the same time. if i wasn't suffering from untreated adhd, i'd probably have been able to finish it at least 2 weeks earlier. alas. i am not medicated, so the days where i reach my desk at all deserve a round of applause and a cash prize in and of themselves. i'll put the cash prize towards saving for my assessment because it's... dearly expensive. special thank you to my country's utterly useless healthcare system <3. i bleed out for every 5 minutes of uninterrupted work i somehow manage to force out of myself, but at least the things that distract me to a debilitating degree are getting more funny by the day, like that time i was in hell every day because i physically couldn't focus on anything except rereading an obscure 2 volume romance manga dozens of times over the course of a few weeks.
that manga is burned into my skull now. they'll find it engraved in my bones when they dissect me. it was good. the frustration at not being able to work made me question everything and i kind of forgot who i was and what i was put on this earth to do. it was good.
also, as i write this, i'm operating on the absolute worst sleep schedule i've had in not long. i've been having like 2-4 naps a day, sleeping a couple hours at a time, and getting exhausted within an hour of waking up. i literally don't know if i'm sick or if it's just stress. stress blends into the background and i never notice how constant it is until i can't sleep anymore. poor me!
i made my own pomodoro timer in godot because it turns out the pomodoro technique is perfect for my brain. it was a fun coding exercise because i didn't want to bother looking for an unpaywalled timer online and my short term memory is not good enough to keep track of how many pomodoros i've gotten through by myself. the structure is a godsend, because on one hand i'm like "oh my god? i've managed to work for 3 hours in a row? in one day?" aaaaaand on the other hand i'm like "ugh. is 3 hours really my limit? fuck." HOWEVER, that's much better than my previous average of like 20 minutes or so. i'm like a kindergartener, i need set in stone break times or i have a tantrum and cry in a ball. also my timer has statistics so looking at it is just going to be more of an ego boost with each passing day. and i can jumpscare myself with random audio for the alarm. AND working on it counts as ui practice, because godot's ui framework has been kicking my ass for months but i'm determined to get good with it. it's literally all wins. for my own ego, i might keep polishing it until it's pretty and worth immortalising on the internet.
and finally, i managed to update my homepage's look for halloween well before october 31st! first time i've reached a self-imposed deadline like that. the wonders of the pomodoro technique. i'm keeping it like this forever. enjoy this little concept sketch for my mascots' costumes.
new favourite colour dropped. i love orange now unfortunately.
it's been more than a year since i published this version of the website, which is cool. it survived all this time! august 30th 2024 is when it was (re)born. the homepage is in dire need of expansion because there is quite literally no space for anything new on it right now, so back to the drawing board for me.
anyway that's it bye! it took me 4 pomodoros to write this post <3