#blogofkylelab

it's literally true

I'm not going to make a habit of writing in-depth about the games I work on among teams of other people…but I did have at least one piece I wanted to write about Rhythm Doctor.

[sees a grizzly bear on TV] "Ohhh...the grizzlerrrr....."

[sees an enemy jumping around in a video game] "Ahh, the jumpler!"

I'm getting closer to being able to show off screenshots from my little RPG project.

In the meantime, here's a look at the playable party members.

Easiest way to get an alert when it's out is to follow my itch.

It's diverged quite a bit from the initial "Tower of Modula" prototype so it's going to be uploaded as a separate game with a new name.

Like, that my "body of work" would stay consistent, build upon itself in visible ways, and that I would constantly be making things and curating a perfectly appealing social media persona to market it.

I'm glad that I have, by now, fully shaken off the pressure I was giving myself to do that. For now, my posts are mostly just for me and my artwork is mostly just for me too. They're strange and sporadic and mundane and do not really come together into some sort of consistent, successful online creator persona.

Now............of course, I've partially given up on that because I "just couldn't hack it" and if I had 10x as many followers as I do maybe I'd still be obsessed with growth and my social media persona. I'm cutting myself more slack partially because of "failing my goals" to be a popular artist on Tumblr. But either way, I'm somewhat grateful it shook out this way. I used to get constant notes on this tumblr account in a way that fueled me to be productive, and now my account feels slightly more like a ghost town where friends and mutuals and familiar usernames lurk about. It's better this way lol.

Thanks for the kind words! I ended up putting more love into the Haymakers demo assets than the other thing that was competing for my attention at the time: assignments at art school. Haha.

Being an artist/writer/gamedev is fun! And the best part is that anyone can do it. As long as it's interesting or fulfilling to you in any way, it's worth dabbling in any creative hobby. It's easy to want to compare our writing, drawings, and games to professional products, but we wouldn't do the same thing with a knitted sweater or wooden footstool made by our grandparents. So we shouldn't do the same for creative work either!

Most challenging about...

Writing: Probably getting past the initial writer's block that prevents me from getting into the flow. Harder with fiction than with blogging, but maybe that's because I blog a lot. Another hard part is getting stuck in my own head and my own habits, either re-using certain phrases too often or writing myself into a hole where it only makes sense in my head.

Art: Anatomy, perspective, and inking. I don't have enough of a passion for those things, which makes it harder on myself. Though it's not like color is super easy either. The older I've gotten the more I've noticed how many fumbles I've had with my sense of color.

Gamedev: My reflex answer is "programming/developing" because I have no programming background and no interest in learning any coding language. However...the tools I've used (Twine and RPG Maker) are actually pretty good at keeping things simple. I've been able to adjust my thinking so that I only really think of ideas that would be feasible to do with my skillset. So my second answer would be "combat playtesting" for RPG Maker, I don't know if I have an obsessive-enough personality about combat to fine-tune it without playtesters' feedback.

But the most honest and most important answer for all three is: the skill of finishing a project and publishing it to the public. Too many scrapped drafts on my hard drive.

Most fun about...

Writing: How fast and free it can be! I will never take for granted how fast it is to tap fingers onto a keyboard, compared to the basic actions required for a lot of other crafts. When I'm in the zone, it's really fun.

Art: The ability to evoke feelings and vibes that would otherwise be impossible to convey with words or with logic, and have it resonate with a stranger.

Gamedev: The pride in seeing something work functionally! I would imagine this probably fuels the passion of a lot of programmers and devs. Plus then seeing that set of functionality be interpreted differently by each player.