setbacks and getting back on your feet

I'm terrified that potential and past employers will read me saying I 'can't draw' and then will never consider me to storyboard or anything ever again. If that's the case, I should do better and shut the hell up everywhere. I'm afraid, because the most consistent I employers I have had, essentially the golden ticket of working in animation, never reached back out to me after my dad told them I was 'unwell' in 2020. Maybe they're just respecting that statement. That yeah, being 'unwell', or in the loonie bin more like it, means you just plain and simply can't produce the goods. Oh, I'd give anything to feel competent in my art again. Some days it shines through, people still seem to react to things I do. I'm not talking shit about any employer, they have all been awesome and give me opportunities to work my hardest and make cool stuff. More than an employer reading this, I am even more afraid that I'll never be able to do the high caliber work I used to. As despite attempting to sketch and paint and animate every damn day since my accident, I have yet to fully heal over this 'art brain' which causes me immeasurable anguish. In the meantime, I have tried to 'expand my horizons' as everyone keeps telling me. That's all coming from people that've never found such ecstasy from a pursuit, as I have with drawing.

I don't want to be at poopy Adelaide Uni any long. I have never wanted degree and am always sickened by people that assume degrees prove some worth. I don't need a degree from them, but am working towards one anyways. What hurts most is, I have been forced down this path since semester one 2021. As when you're like me and psychosis means you can't excel at your one lifetime passion, you are forced to painfully branch out and try new things. 

But art has always been breathing. So take that away that breath, and you're suffocating, miserable and close to death. I didn't realize how much this breath had spurred me on throughout the years, until I entered the Google Drive album from art from 2016. I don't feel like posting heaps, but I'll leave you with this Berserk comic. People used to message me asking for it after I made my Tumblr private.

Humorous, lighthearted doodles tended to blossom from my fingertips like spring flowers around this time. That's what you get when you're so enamored with series as powerful as both Berserk and Jojo. I realize the power of even this simple art, something that can make a fan smile, or anyone smile really, but mostly, they're doodly things that made me smile. It is indulgent in the end, maybe? I have felt so miserable about my artwork since my repeated psychosis, as it's been three psychoses. Woah, that's a fuck ton! It takes other people years to recover from one but, like a shonen protagonist after taking a brutal pummeling, I've bitterly stood back up on my feet. Again and again, bruised and smiling like Naruto.

I used to use a textured pen to draw these doodles most of the time, yet when I try that Photoshop tool again in the present day, it feels icky. These days I am too attached to generic 'hard round' which doesn't have any texture--- but what am I talking about? What tool you use in Photoshop doesn't freakin' matter, it's a banal conversation reserved for hobby artists, who always get into discussing layer modes and 'clean' lineart, ignorant to the fact that true art is all about something higher. Below is a weird drawing based on Enigma's Oxygen Red album which was released that year. I remember being back home with family because I had recently been laid off from a failure of a game company (it was another Adelaide flop, not my fault). I remember drawing this, immersed in the music because I goddamn love Enigma. The amount of gradient layer modes and clipping masks is proof of the big crutches I leant on with digital art.

Art will always be a 'higher' thing for me. Even if I'm just doodling Berserk, it's all about the storytelling behind every line. It's about my attachment to these characters, which is a emotional and human thing. Setbacks like I have experienced harm your inner pride more than anything, because just what am I without an ability to just be my best? A nothing. A broken person who can maybe eat, sleep, poop and... what else?

:( 

It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

I just want to be my (artistic) best. 

This 2016 art above was my best at that age, at that time. Below is a painting I didn't exactly hate, because I was trying to express something more than just painting a crappy fanart of a character that has zero emotional resonance with me. This is a painting featuring two of me, past and psychotic. I realize the PTSD of everything I've been through is still crippling me. So when people joke about PTSD they wouldn't know how disrespectful that is, it slices neatly through flesh and bone. It makes me stand up and walk away from the conversation, that's how bad it is. Luckily, I hate people in general and can get through many weeks with limited 'socializing', so it's all probably its for the better. As I said a few posts down, bozos everywhere are keen to 'critique' my art or assess why I'd be living with my dad but no, it's not 'still' living with him, as I thrived on my own for many years, buttheads. Soooo maybe I'm not ready for more goddamn 'socializing', which aka. means to be confronted and judged by absolute morons with no empathy for how many setbacks one little redheaded girl can have. 

This little redheaded girl has seen hell. It maybe hasn't all been without value and heavenly apparitions, but in the end, nobody wants to understand. I have been told to 'not expect to be understood' because that is naïve and narcissistic. Well fine, then these are my stories that I can barely can convey with the contemporary dance I do in the twilight at the back of the house, avoiding dads unused drum kit with every leap and bound. I don't want to focus in on art I did over 7 years ago, because it's sad to think I've had so much taken from me. I'm still myself. No matter what grief and psychosis life chucks at me, it can't steal this core. Doesn't matter if you have had setbacks that mean you can't work, you are still worthy and deserve to feel proud and happy. I guess I'll try drawing 'like me' right now. It may not be a textured brush-funny-Berserk-joke, because that isn't me as she exists in this present moment. Hope people aren't still reading this just out of curiosity of my gender-postings, I'm a woman. Leave me alone. Goodbye.

Kangaroo Island farming game by a self taught dev

As I mentioned in previous recent posts I'm making a farming game. So I had my game working great for awhile but then made some tweaks in hopes of improving and BLAM. Something broke. Now I can barely water the plants and complete the growing crop cycle because somehow I altered one line that messed up another. I'm giving it a break for a few hours because I need to be fresh when I attempt programming, otherwise it all ends in a Vela tantrum.

I understand I sound really angry at the world in many of my recent posts and well, it's because life has been pretty damn hard and I can't find a semblance of normalcy due to all the weirdness I've experienced. Of course, I'm still animating, but it sure is hard. It's more the emotional hurdle of booting up my desktop computer and facing that Cintiq display. It reminds me of better days and to sit there often causes me great anguish. That is why I prefer my Surface Pro for game dev and even the Surface Pro pen comes in handy for pixel art.

I have never formally learnt how to code, so I tend to be a bit like a bull in a China shop in my approach to it. I've gotten better, I think. These last few days I really made a lot of progress, I think? Here's a screenie gif of the tediously watered plants in their second sprout stage. something is up with the watering not working, bah. I'm gonna fix it, I will just take my time and ask dad for help, lol. It looks a bit nicer as a screenie. The clumps of tall grass look a bit like the weeds on our property on Kangaroo Island, which is a landscape that I'm inspiring the game off of.

I started the game out with tiny 32x32 pixel character art, but since the recent Slam Jam 3, I realised larger pixel art is much easier for me and probably, something that gives my game more artistic charm. For that reason, I'm working on making 128x128 sized character sprites which will take heaps of effort but will probably make my game pop out from the hordes of pixel games. Nothing wrong with them, I personally adore tiny pixel art, but I think bigger is better for my style personally. I tried to observe well-sprited tilesets because you can't just larn pixel art in a void. My mouth fell agape in wonder at the detail in this one below. It's not like I can get that much skillful nuance into my own tileset but hey, you know what they say, shoot for the moon! 

Kangaroo Island is the predominant inspiration for this game, because we have vistas of the ocean and wide sprawling grasslands (of unwanted weeds) taking over native vegetation. In this game the player grows muntries, a native Australian berry.  On this property we get feral sheep which squeeze under the gaps in the fence between the neighbours farm. They are are pests and to be shoo-ed away. Native animals aka. kangaroos are of course somewhat welcome, but will still eat your crops! Same with possums, actually, especially possums. The wizened casuarina trees grow windswept to one side, their frail roots clinging to deal life in the sandy soil. It is a brutally tough landscape, but a poetic one that inspires me in countless ways, and we're headed over there tomorrow! I have attempted farming games miserably in the past, but this is the culmination of two other (broken) GameMaker Studio games that I never understood the core loop well enough. Here is a screenie of the predecessor, I admit, I put in the most effort with the relaxing hot tub feature rather than the crop growing. I will bring it back, but only if the player earns enough dough for it!

Well, I got my head around for loops, if statements, structs, arrays, arrays of structs, switches and assigning variables and whatnot. Finally, at long last, it appears all the programming has begun to sink in! I don't think it's that pretentious to say that a few years of dabbling in GameMaker could finally pay off.

Speaking of paying off, I just bought the newly announced one-time purchase Professional license, which I personally got discounted for $29 dollars because I had been paying $7 every month for so around a year. This means I can put my games up on my website and Itch.io as HTML and do ever more than before. Wow! Pretty pleased they have decided to create a one time purchase option that rewards creators who have been using GML for awhile. I think I'll be definitely stick to using GameMaker from now on, I mean, why not? It's so good. Thanks GameMaker, you're helping this lil' artist learn programming and game design!