#I do eventually plan on spriting some more stuff that came from this concept art set that was released

[stardestroyer81]

@shrimpuufriend told me that Capcom had recently released never-before seen concept art of the original Rockman (Which you can find here!), and it is the coolest thing EVER.

That said, I wanted to be the first person to make something based off of the newly surfaced concept art, so I took one featured sketch of Rockman and turned it into its own sprite piece, complete with a faux beta title screen I craftily edited into the manual! 💙✨

[vaultt-tec]

How did Fallout 1 ever get made?

PCGameN sat down with the Fallout 1 team and discussed its making.

This is in a read more because it is SUPER long. I added it all here but click the link and read it on their site, there are more pictures!

Tim Caine was at PAX when he first saw Vault Boy as a living, breathing entity - it was a cosplayer of 16 or 17 years old, hair gelled to replicate that distinctive swirl. ‘This is weird’, he thought.

Feargus Urquhart remembers walking into Target and seeing that same gelled haircut and toothy smile, not on a fan this time, but emblazoned across half a metre of cotton. ‘How is it that a game that we all worked on somehow created something iconic?’, he wondered. ‘How did it show up on a t-shirt in a department store?’

Related: the best RPGs on PC.

In the years since, Bethesda have taken Fallout into both first-person and the pop culture mainstream. Vault Boy has become as recognisable as Mickey Mouse. The series’ sardonic, faux-’50s imagery now feels indelible, as if it has always been here. But it hasn’t.

It took the nascent Black Isle Studios to nurse the Fallout universe into being, as an unlikely, half-forgotten project in the wings of Interplay, where Caine and Urquhart were both working in the ‘90s. The pair helped create one of the all-time great RPGs in the process.

“The one thing I would say about Interplay in those days, and this isn’t trying to pull the veil back or anything like that - there was just shit going on,” Urquhart tells us. “It was barely controlled chaos. I’m not saying that Brian [Fargo] didn’t have some plan, but there was just… stuff.”

One day, Fargo sent out a company-wide email to canvass opinion. He wanted Interplay to work on a licensed game, and had three tabletop properties in mind. One was Vampire: The Masquerade. Another was Earthdawn, a fantasy game set in the same universe as Shadowrun. And the third was GURPS, designed by Games Workshop’s Steve Jackson.

The team picked the latter, overwhelmingly, because that was what they played in their own sessions. But GURPS wasn’t a setting - it was a Generic Universal RolePlaying System. And so Interplay’s team had to come up with a world of their own.

“I would send out an email saying, ‘I’m in Conference Room Two with a pizza’,” Caine says. “And if people wanted to come, on their own time, they could do it. Chris [Taylor, lead designer], Leonard [Boyarksy, art director], and Jason [Anderson, lead artist] showed up.”

Interplay at the time was almost like a high school, as map layout designer Scott Evans remembers it: incredibly noisy and divided into cliques. Caine was building a clique of his own.

Traditional fantasy was the first idea to be dismissed. The team actually considered making Fallout first-person, a decade early - but decided the sprites of the period didn’t offer the level of detail they wanted. Concepts were floated for time travel, and for a generation ship story - but one after the other, they were all pushed aside and the post-apocalypse was left.

“One thing I didn’t like was games where the character you��re playing should know stuff that you, the player, don’t,” Caine says. “And I think the vault helped us capture that, because both you the player and you the character had no idea what the world was like. The doors opened and you were pushed out. And I really liked that, because it meant we didn’t have to do anything fake like, ‘Well you were hit on your head and have amnesia’.”

There was plenty about the Fallout setting that wasn’t as intuitive, however. Players would have to wrap their heads around a far-future Earth and a peculiar retro aesthetic, even before the bombs started dropping. The question of how Fallout ever survived pitching is answered with a Caine quip: “What do you mean, pitch?”

For a short while, Interplay had planned to make several games in the GURPS system. But soon afterwards they had won the D&D license, a far bigger property that would go on to spawn Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. As a consequence, Caine’s team were left largely to their own devices.

As for budget - Fallout’s was small enough to pass under the radar. Although Interplay are best remembered for the RPGs of Black Isle and oddball action games like Shiny’s Earthworm Jim, they had mainstream ambitions not so different to those of the bigger publishers today. During Fallout’s development they were primarily interested in sports, and an online game division called Engage.

“It was almost like a smokescreen,” Urquhart explains. “So much money was being pumped into these things that you could go play with your toys and no-one would know.”

Which is exactly what the Fallout team did, pulling out every idea they’d ever intended for a videogame.

“Being just so happy and fired up that we were making this thing basically from scratch and doing virtually whatever we wanted, we had this weird arrogance about the whole thing,” Boyarsky recalls. “‘People are gonna love it, and if they don’t love it they don’t get it.’

“Part of it was a punk rock ethos of, every time we came up with an idea and thought, ‘Wow, no-one would ever do that’, we always wanted to push it further. We chased that stuff and got all excited, like we were doing things we weren’t supposed to be doing.”

The team laugh at the idea that Fallout might have carried some kind of message (“Violence solves problems,” Caine suggests). To these kids of the ‘80s, nuclear holocaust felt like immediate and obvious thematic material. The game’s development was guided by a mantra, however.

“It was the consequence of action,” Caine puts it. “Do what you want, so long as you can accept the consequences.”

Fallout lets you shoot up all you want. But if you get addicted, that will become a problem for you, one you’ll have to cope with. The team were keen not to force their own views onto players, and decided the best way to avoid that was with an overriding moral greyness. The Brotherhood of Steel - in Fallout 3, a somewhat heroic group policing the wasteland - were here in the first game simply as preservationists or, more uncharitably, hoarders. Even The Master, the closest thing Fallout had to a villain, was driven by a well-intentioned desire to bring unity to the wasteland. His name, pre-mutation, was ‘Richard Grey’.

“Everyone needed to have flaws and positive points,” Taylor says. “That way the player could have better, stronger interactions whichever way they went.”

Although the GURPS ruleset eventually fell by the wayside, the Fallout team were determined to replicate the tabletop experience they loved - in which players don’t always do what their Game Master would like. They filled their maps with multiple quest solutions and stuffed the game with thousands of words of alternative dialogue. “The hard part was making sure there was no character that couldn’t finish the game,” Caine says.

Fallout’s dedication to its sandbox is still striking, and only lately matched by the likes of Divinity: Original Sin 2. It was a simulation that enabled unforeseen possibilities.

“I am shocked that people got Dogmeat to live till the end of the game,” Taylor says. “Dogmeat was never supposed to survive. You had to do some really strange things and go way out of your way to do so, but people did.”

During development, a QA tester came to the team with a problem: you could put dynamite on children.

“Where you see a problem…,” Urquhart says. He is joking, of course, yet the ability to plant dynamite - achieved by setting a timer on the explosive and reverse pickpocketing an NPC - became a supported part of the game and the foundation of a quest. This was a new kind of player freedom, matched only by the freedom the team felt themselves.

“We were really, really fortunate,” Boyarsky says. “No-one gets the opportunity we had to go off in a corner with a budget and a team of great, talented people and make whatever we wanted. That kind of freedom just doesn’t exist.

“We were almost 30, so we were old enough to realise what we had going on. A lot of people say, ‘I didn’t realise how good it was until it was over’. Every day when I was making Fallout I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this’. And I even knew in the back of my head that it was never going to be that great again.”

Once Fallout came out, it was no longer the strange project worked on in the shadows with little to no oversight. It was a franchise with established lore that was getting a sequel. It wasn’t long before Boyarsky, Caine, and Anderson left to form their own RPG studio, Troika.

“We knew Fallout 1 was the pinnacle,” Boyarsky says. “We felt like to continue on with it under changed circumstances would possibly leave a bad taste in our mouths. We were so happy and so proud of what we’d done that we didn’t want to go there.”

Fallout is larger than this clique now. Literally, in fact: the vault doors Boyarsky once drew in isometric intricacy are now rendered in imposing 3D in Bethesda’s sequels. And yet Boyarksy, Taylor, and Caine now work under the auspices of Obsidian, a studio that has its own, more recent, history with the Fallout series. Should the opportunity arise again, would they take it?

“I’m not sure, to be very honest,” Taylor says. “I loved working on Fallout. It was the best team of people I ever worked with. I think it’s grown so much bigger than myself that I would feel very hesitant to work on it nowadays. I would love to work on a Fallout property, like a board game, but working on another computer game might be too much.”

Boyarsky shares his reservations: that with the best intentions, these old friends could get started on something and tarnish their experience of Fallout.

“It would be very hard for us to swallow working on a Fallout game where somebody else was telling you what you could and couldn’t do,” he expands. “I would have a really hard time with someone telling me what Fallout was supposed to be. I’m sure that it would never happen because of the fact that I would have that issue.”

Urquhart - now Obsidian’s CEO - is at pains to point out that Bethesda were nothing but supportive partners throughout the making of Fallout: New Vegas, requesting only a handful of tiny tweaks to Obsidian’s interpretation of its world. “I’ve got to be explicit in saying we are not working on a new Fallout,” he says. “But I absolutely would.”

Caine has mainly built his career by working on original games rather than sequels: Fallout, Arcanum, Wildstar, and Pillars of Eternity. But he would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about working on another Fallout.

“I’ve had a Fallout game in my head since finishing Fallout 1 that I’ve never told anyone about,” he admits. “But it’s completely designed, start to finish. I know the story, I know the setting, I know the time period, I know what kind of characters are in it. It just sits in the back of my head, and it’s sat there for 20 years. I don’t think I ever will make it, because by now anything I make would not possibly compare to what’s in my head. But it’s up there.”

[rpgmgames]

January's Featured Game: Wishbone

DEVELOPER(S): Skitty, Kwillow, Ellie, Natasha ENGINE: RPGMaker VX Ace   GENRE: Western, Drama, Farming Simulation WARNINGS:  N/A SUMMARY: Wishbone is a character drama-slash-farming sim game that takes place in a wild west-inspired setting. The player takes the role of a farmer, fresh off the wagon in a new town and tasked with building a successful ranch. Wishbone might seem sleepy and mundane at first, but there’s trouble brewing on the horizon: a fierce, prolonged standoff between the lawmen and the outlaws that will decide the fate of the town itself.

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself!  *Skitty: Hello! I'm Skitty, a scruffy weirdo whose hobbies include drawing, programming, and cooking. I also happen to be the coder, project manager, and one of the main artists. In 2014, I released my first game, Theo's Big Adventure, but actually haven't really been involved in the community... I'm a bit of a hermit.

*Katie: Hi! I’m Wishbone’s portrait artist, and I also do some other less easily categorizable stuff, like writing, spriting, concept work and research! This is the first game I’ve ever been a part of the team on, if you don’t count an unfinished choose-your-own-adventure game I made in Flash when I was 13.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Skitty: It's kind of a funny story. Several years ago, I used to be part of the Fallout: New Vegas roleplay community on tumblr. Just for fun, a few of my friends and I came up with an alternate universe where instead of living in the post-apocalyptic desert, all the characters lived in the wild west instead. We ended up having a lot of fun with the idea! My friend, Ellie (who is also working on this project as a writer), suggested the idea of an Animal Crossing-esque game based on that setting... and I, having coding knowledge and having made a game before, volunteered to make it. The struggle between the four central characters remains the same as the initial concept, but the project and the people of the town have evolved a lot since then.

How long have you been working on your project? *Skitty: I started it around April 2015, so it's a few months short of two years old. Progress has been slow because I'm also juggling a job and other obligations, but even during busy times, I typically manage to work on Wishbone every week. Every couple weeks, new features get done and updates are posted to the dev blog.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Skitty: The three biggest ones are Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and Red Dead Redemption. From Animal Crossing, we have have befriending townspeople and decorating your house. From Harvest Moon, we have the farming mechanics and romance. From Red Dead Redemption, we have hunting, foraging, and outlaw bounties. And I suppose Fallout: New Vegas deserves a shoutout for kicking the whole project off, albeit indirectly.

*Katie: I’ve liked Wild West settings for a while, but this project has made me go big on trying to absorb as much information from both the actual time period and from media as I can. Lately I’ve been trying to cram as many old Westerns into my eyeballs as I can so I get a good picture of the (romanticized) aesthetic and shorthands that have been used for this genre in the past.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them?   *Skitty: Honestly, we’ve been fighting against RPG Maker’s limitations since the beginning, since the game we’re making is quite unlike a top-down RPG.

I would say that the biggest difficulty so far has been the patch of code that manages animals aging, getting sick, eating, giving birth, etc when the day rolls over. Originally, each animal event had an autorun page that would process that information when the player entered the barn map, but that would get very messy if the player didn’t enter that map all day. It got even messier if the player sent the animals in the barn out to pasture! To solve this, I first had to learn the order in which autorun events are evaluated (tip: it’s determined by the event ID number!). But that wasn’t enough… as more features were implemented, it became obvious that that approach just didn’t work. There were too many conflicts, and every time I’d fix something, I’d have to go through 20+ animal events, each with 40 pages, and change something over, and over and over… it was incredibly inefficient, typo-prone, and hard on the wrist.

Eventually, I got sick of it and recoded the whole animal system to use “generic” Common Events for interaction (basically I copy the animal’s specific stat variables to “generic” variables used by the function, then call it), with the aging/giving birth/eating/etc handled by a single event that was called once when the player slept. In hindsight, it seems so obvious… but my previous project didn’t use Common Events at all, so the first year of Wishbone’s development was largely dedicated to learning how to use them effectively.

*Katie: My biggest obstacle has been myself. I’m both a procrastinator and a perfectionist, which is just a horrible combo for ever getting anything done. Thankfully Skitty keeps me as on task as she can, but I still get mired in fixing-loops, and you would not believe the amount of times I’ve sent her revised images just because I moved a nostril two pixels to the left because it had been bothering me so badly.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Skitty: It actually hasn’t changed a whole lot. In the beginning, we had this core concept, basically just Animal Crossing plus Harvest Moon. But even back then we knew we wanted a big plot and minigames and sidequests and stuff… it was just a matter of figuring out if those were feasible to program.

I’d say it actually has more features now than it did in the original concept, too. I think in the beginning we had maybe five minigames, now it’s more like 8-10ish (depending on what you consider a minigame).

*Katie: It’s far larger than we had intended, that’s for sure! The art style has also shifted quite a bit, from the switch to wholly original graphics from borrowed sprites to subtle alterations in the sprite and portrait style. I think the biggest, most significant change, aside from making all-new sprites, is the inclusion of the sky in most of the game’s maps.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? *Skitty: It’s pretty much the same as it always was–me as the programmer/project manager/spriter, Katie as the portrait artist and other spriter, Ellie, Dax, Jester, and Reuben as character/plot contributors. Oh! I guess the big difference now is that we are in the process of hiring a composer?

What was the best part of developing the game? *Skitty: Seeing it all come together into something finished and cool. Sometimes I like to just lovingly look at the maps and videos and such I’m proudest of and think “wow, I did that! And it turned out almost exactly how I’d imagined!”

*Katie: Agreed! The little bits and pieces don’t seem like much, but when they’re part of a whole it’s like they’re completely transformed. I’m also happy to be working in a group - it makes me so proud to be part of this effort!

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Skitty: Man, I’d definitely be craftier about how I handled the code for the animals. I didn’t know a lot about scripting at first, MONTHS worth of headache could have been avoided if I’d known how to use script calls.

*Katie: I don’t want to say ‘I wish I could change everything!’ because that’s not true, but it’s hard to keep myself from feeling I can always improve the parts I’ve contributed to the game. I’m doing a lot of learning on the job, and when I look back on things I’ve done before - even just a couple of portraits or sprites ago - it feels like I need to do everything over and make it better!

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore game's universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Skitty: We definitely have plans to use the characters again, but when they’re revisited, it’s going to be in different contexts. You won’t see the desert of Wishbone again, but the characters will absolutely be popping up in future projects.

*Katie: Yeah, these characters are sort of like… actors, in a way. Type-cast actors. We like to put them in different scenarios and see how they adapt.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Skitty: Gosh, it would be amazing if people liked the game enough to call themselves a fan! I’m definitely looking forward to people’s reactions to discovering plot twists and easter eggs and such. I hope people like the characters, too.

*Katie: Having something like this done would feel amazing. I’ve never been part of something this big before, and it’s a lot to be proud of. After that - if even a handful of people like the game, I’d be elated!

Is there something you're afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game?  *Skitty: I hope there aren’t too many bugs in it when I release it! I mean, I’m testing it as I go, but it’s a really big and complex game… there are going to be things I don’t catch. I’d be really disappointed if I released it with a glitch that broke people’s save files.

Also, I really do hope people actually like the characters… I’d be sad if they didn’t.

*Katie: I hope the art does justice to the game… I’d hate for it to be distracting or off, it’s something I worry about frequently. And boy I hope the story and characters come off okay!

Question from last month's featured dev: What's the biggest turn off you can get on an RPG maker game? *Skitty: Hmm… honestly, using the default sprites tends to be a pretty big turnoff. As an artist, it is very important to me that the game have an “aesthetic”, a sense of atmosphere, that the characters feel like individuals… that’s what really catches my eye and makes me want to learn more. I know not everybody is an artist, but like, a simple 8-bit sort of style, or even a “shitpunk” style like Space Funeral is more eye-catching than the default tiles.

Also, I find games made with the default tiles tend to be very easy to get lost in due to the generic nature of said tiles… if you gotta use those, at least make sure your maps are tightly-built and easy to navigate. I’ve played several RPG Maker games where the player spent a lot of time in huge, empty green fields with little or no landmarks. Add some stuff to make the area memorable… players will thank you for it!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Skitty: Try to set realistic goals for your first (or second, or third…) project. It’s so tempting to want to tell your magnum opus immediately, but that’s usually a recipe for ending up frustrated, disappointed, and quitting. My first project, Theo’s Big Adventure, was fairly short, used mostly ripped sprites from Mother 3 and ripped music from other video games, and still took a year and three months to complete.

Also, try to make working on your project a habit. I find that the hardest part is often just getting started… but once I get in the zone, I can work for hours. Set goals for yourself (whether it’s as big as “I’ll finish Chapter 5 by April” or as small as “I’m going to work on my project for at least 30 minutes today”) and reward yourself if you complete them. If you don’t complete them, don’t beat yourself up… just set the goal again (adjusting it to be more reasonable if needed) and give it another shot.

Oh, and one more thing… it’s alright for something to not be perfect. One of the biggest killers of a long-term project (aside from overambition and having it not be a habit) is perfectionism. Don’t get caught up in the cycle of continually revamping the same pieces over and over again–just let it be imperfect and move on. Nobody’s first project is perfect, but future-you needs the experience and confidence you’ll gain from finishing it to pull off the project of your dreams in a few years.

*Katie: All of the above, but from someone who’s less disciplined, to people who perhaps have similar issues: get somebody who’ll keep your nose to the grindstone and get you working and finishing things when all you want to do is either chase butterflies or toggle an eyeball back and forth to make it “perfect”. You would not believe how much it helps.

We mods would like to thank Skitty and Katie for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved! 

Remember to check out Wishbone if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum 

[eriisaam]

I feel like I bottled up so much about my summoner OCs for a long time. Just recently, I had a “final straw to break the camel’s back” feeling, and I’m just... not sure anymore if I should feel I’m being fair about my feelings and anger or not. I feel like at the very least, this will help me clear some air to maybe move on and re-focus while recovering from other things, but I’m also really sorry to the people following me to dump this out of the blue too. You’ve all been incredibly patient and amazing with me, so whenever I get to the point I need to vent, I feel somewhat guilty of it.

But I’m also incredibly hurt and angry in ways I also don’t feel like I’m fully justified or not in them, for a lot of things well beyond the scope of what is currently setting me off... Maybe it’s best I unbottle it even if only for the sake of clearing the air. 

And then after this, hopefully we can move back to regular light-hearted posts and shitpost art... I’m sorry.

For anyone whose seen me play Fire Emblem Heroes, or even played with me otherwise via friend codes, you know that I go by the handle “my butt” (as for why, Takumi is all too happy to share), and the summoner I send out is Eclair. He’s the only one of the OCs I felt was best able to be represented in-game out of the current summoners selection, so he’s been the one out of the six whose remained ever-present with his dumb little quote and eventually his dumb little gifts to go with. Nobody else in my friend group previously had a summoner named “Eclair” (not to be confused with Eclat), and it’s understandably not a very common name. 

So it came as a surprise to me when one of the FEH friends I had for a very long time, recently changed their summoner (I believe from “Kiran” originally, and with the guy with the brushed-over brown hair) into this:

Any other day, this might’ve been funny, if in poor taste. Maybe I would’ve laughed at it and moved on if I was in a better frame of mind and just ignored it.

But lately, as many of you saw in my past few notes, or even privately, I hadn’t been doing well. I had a lot of frustrations online and off. I’ve been incredibly ill to the point of collapsing a lot, I have a backlog of attempts to work on writing and art that wound up crashing to a halt because of it, in ways that left me even more upset and manic, and pretty much for a long time now, I have felt like I was in constant hell that I tried very hard not to bring up often in public, even when I’ve reached my breaking point multiple times in rapid succession under various circumstances, and I was to a point that a single pin-drop would’ve made me go nuclear.

It wasn’t funny, I didn’t take it well, and I ended up removing them after debating long and hard if I was overreacting to do it or not. And even now, I’m not sure if it was as bad as I make it seem exactly because of how they couldn’t have picked a worse time to try to have a go at me through Eclair.  

And the more I think about it, the more I feel bad that this had been the final straw to a lot of old feelings I’ve had stewing and trying and failing to clear in private, a lot of which were things I didn’t bring up that’s been upsetting me about my summoners for a long time, because I didn’t think ranting about it every single time in the moment was fair, and I feel guilty every time it’s come toit. But seeing this, having all those feelings drum up again, now I wonder if I bottled it up too long, to the point of it being on the opposite extreme and being incredibly unhealthy for me, too.

For a long time, I used the summoner OCs I made for various reasons. Some of them tested waters for like-ideas I wanted to try in some capacity on other works, but wasn’t sure about. (For those who read my other longfics, some of it are a little more obvious than others of the overlap.) Other times, and was one of the biggest pressing things about them, is that I use a lot of them as coping mechanisms. Some of them explored traumas I really did endure, albeit of course theirs might be more extreme, or the same in spirit, or represented or experienced things I myself am still processing. They’re also why I tend to work on them heavily in lulls when I couldn’t properly focus on stuff I otherwise wanted or needed to work on more, or as practice when I needed to figure out how to grasp things in plots or art otherwise, which is why they’re so prevalent on my works so often. 

It’s also why I kept apologizing in realizing that they take over so much, but at the same time, working on them helped better frame things or prepare me for how to continue on other projects I was previously stuck on. They were important to me, and maybe, I got a bit too attached, but without them, I think my productivity and quality in it would be significantly worse if the summoner OCs hadn’t picked me up and carried me through how to figure things out better.

They’ve also, unfortunately, had been the subject of a lot of negativity I’ve sat through and stomached for a good part of the entire pandemic year, and even to this day in this year. I’ve made lore docs for them that got vandalized and littered with comments telling me to “try again” or how wrong I did or how wrong about my ships or shipkids are to come about as they had, to the point that I now deleted them because looking at even my private copy of it drums up the same negative memories and sends me into a panic of whether or not I’ll open it up and see it mass crossed out and littered with even more comments of how terrible and wrong it all is again. It was also partially why I lost heart working on old sketched concepts I initially planned to fully realize, only to drop what I have and post them to share, but would rather redo them (sketch and all) instead of work on them: They are littered with a lot of memories too painful to work on them directly.

I’ve had needlessly hostile messages, telling me off for certain ship combinations, or my OCs being misconstrued into horrible ways and based on their assumptions of what they think my OCs are like, assume the worse of them and me and harass me across multiple messages in my inbox over it. This had even boiled down to harassing me over my design choices of certain OCs, maybe not coincidentally my two female ones, or ones who are short and petite in build compared to their far more larger counterparts, despite every summoner and support all being adults. I’ve had people decide for me they knew the ages of my “minor” OCs better than I do. Despite me being the one who created them.

I’ve had people make not-as-vague-as-they-think-they’re-being comments, shitting on my ideas on the core concept, simply because they’re rooted to either a fandom that’s very subtle and low-key now, a game that seems popular-to-the-point-of-being-a-meme to shit on simply to shit on it and everyone who likes it, and had constantly been made to feel like various ideas other people are ok doing are bad when I do it, solely because I’m doing them. 

They have been through a lot. I’ve been through a lot with them. They still exist because certain people I was very close with, among which Saam had been my rock and pillar through and through, refused to let me give in to the many, many times I found myself in such a dark place and in a really shitty mindset, that I would’ve stopped creating in totality, whether or not it’s related to kiransonas. 

And even now, even when I’ve been trying to pick up the pieces and move past that, there’s still little hints here and there of the damage that’s done that I still haven’t fully gotten over yet to try again. Or I’ve been trying in baby steps, and not in the best ways I wish I could yet.

I don’t draw Erin, Ephrel and Sparrow quite as often anymore, despite wanting to try them again. Ephrel’s and Sparrow’s circle in particular, I felt insecure trying to work on anything to do with them as often, especially if it’s related to Chrom that’s not just with him and Robin. I hesitated to do anything with Sparrow’s and Ephrel’s Robin either, despite having many ideas of what more to share of him. I stopped doing plushies, or being open about plushies anymore, due to still overcoming the feelings fostered from what I’ve been made to feel was bad about them and how I did them. Plush designs and sprite designs I wanted to do as open source were put on hold because I felt more closed off and hesitant to be too open in fandom spaces as much anymore. The Scars of Time, I’ve also hesitated to continue most of all out of my current longfics, because even when it’s been the fic that had the most progress in its latest chapter over the course of the pandemic shoving a wedge across all my longfics, the core elements to it were elements deeply rooted to a lot of the above ill feelings whether directly or by extension of what kiransonas already bore through themselves that hit similar beats. Were it not for incredibly kind commenters who still encouraged me and clearly hoped for other longfics to continue, there have been many, many times I was debating on deleting everything and giving up in totality, but held on because of all of them, and all of you, and people like Saam. 

There’s a lot of things I still had to work through, and it shows.

So I see this dig at Eclair, and I’m torn anymore.

Maybe it was meant to be a harmless joke, and I still have second-guesses that I overreacted and jumped the gun to kick them out of my friend lists over something like this.

But as with how long and scattered my thoughts are in a post like this... It’s been a long time. It’s been a lot of really harsh, unfortunate, hurtful things leading up to this. I see this, and it’s like everything that I listed all came full circle all at once, and it painted all of this in a far worse light than it probably was, but unsurfaced a lot of things that, on top of being sick constantly and stressed out with other major fears, I think I finally cracked.

I don’t know what point I was trying to make of this, and I’m sorry too for all of you having to post this. 

I’m just... tired and confused anymore of if this is fair or when I’m overstepping and overreacting anymore. Or where to go from here.

[kungfubreakfast]

Days of Future Past

Hello again friends!  I have been a busy bee the past few weeks so guess what.  Lots of new sets!  Up first is a few little adventure set with the returning Kim Herrera Cruz.  Kim and I met up to check out Vhils new show in the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles so this set is heavy on the art with some fun Kim shots mixed in.  I also happened to photograph an unrelated bus on the side of the way on my way home that said, "Kool Bus" so decided to include that and even named the set after it!

Up next is another return with a brand new set featuring Sofia Weinberg.  Sofia was a real champ as we braved the waning cold days out at Vasquez Rocks.  Nothing too crazy from this shoot other than I was a little paranoid about shooting anything risque here after a woman on Instagram who claimed to work for the park said she would call the cops and report me from my Satan's Children shoot where the girls were nude.  I knew Sofia and I wouldn't be shooting any nudity but it was a lot of booty shorts and body suits.  I also probably wouldn't have cared but as we were climbing a rock we saw a cop pull in the park.  We avoided anyone and everyone and had a fun shoot followed by Korean BBQ which led to a few shots at the end of the set with some nearby graffiti.

Speaking of cold, every year I try to get out to the snow in the mountains for the limited time we have it but I always sort of just let it pass by.  Well not this year!  My most prolific muse Grey Garbo made the adventure out with me in to the depths of Angeles National Forest to seek out snow.  We had to go pretty deep to find it but it was totally worth it.  It probably looks freezing but it honestly wasn't nearly as cold as the Vasquez shoot with Sofia.  We had an excellent shoot through the mountains including climbing on top of a tunnel with an amazing view.  I made the mistake of forgetting to get gas before we headed in to the woods so instead of double back we had to go all the way through the mountain pass to the nearest town.  We were both really glad we did as we found the cutest little mountain town where we got dinner.  This place was so anti-LA.  It wound up being busy there so our food took a while, which in LA would be very typical, however at this place the waitress was so ashamed that she gave us each a free slice of pie!

And surprise surprise it's a double dose of Grey Garbo!  A few days later Grey hit me up to do an impromptu shoot in DTLA.  Anytime Grey does a gig that involves her getting painted or done up in any way she always hits me up and this time was basically transformed in to a swamp monster.  We met up at the new Arqade 2.0 on St. Vincent's Court in Downtown Los Angeles and got in to some shenanigans around there.

A few days later I met up with a brand new muse named Virah Payam who was visiting from The Pacific Northwest. Virah is originally from LA and comes in to town every now and then. The last time she was in town she wanted to shoot but we couldn't link up our schedules, so this time we made it happen. I didn't tell Virah where we'd be going because I wasn't fully sure until she told me she wanted to do some fire stuff. I decided to take her to Angel's Gate Bunkers. What I didn't know until we headed out was that Virah was actually familiar with the area and had always wanted to go to this spot!. It was kismet. We had a great time and did some fun work with a lot of great conversation.

The following Monday I made plans to go out to Ventura to shoot with The Spritely One.  I didn't reallllly want to make the trek alone so I hit up my friend Liza to see what she was up to.  She just happened to be friend and took me to an abandoned place I had never been: The Scary Dairy in Camarillo (on the way to Ventura).  I never visited the Scairy Dairy before because the pictures I had seen previously didn't make it seem that interesting, however I was wrong and we got some killer shots.  From there I took Liza to the abandoned school in Ventura that she had never been to but I previously shot at with Sprite.

After the Scary Dairy and abandoned school Liza and I met up with The Spritely One for a short but sweet shoot at this park Sprite picked out.  We got some really beautiful photos in the twilight of the evening.  We had planned to continue in to some night shooting but it was just too cold so we went back to Sprite's place and played Cthulhu Fixx.  

Fast forward to last Monday where painter Stephanie Monty and I ventured to one of my favorite places in LA: Murphy Ranch.  Murphy Ranch of course is the abandoned former Nazi Sympathized camp turned artist colony turned abandoned hike.  It was a lot of fun and I even got to see a building there that I hadn't seen before where Stephanie did some painting.  This was more of a hang out day/hike but we got some really fun photos so a set was definitely in order.

Hiking adventures continued the next day with the return of Nova.  Nova and I headed to her hometown of Lake Hughes, CA to investigate and abandoned camp that she had visited 10 years earlier.  This adventure required a little exploration but we eventually found the location.  It was mostly burned down from the multiple fires they've experienced out there but well worth the journey for what was left over.  I'm very thankful for Nova who has been experiencing some health issues as of late but pushed through to make some beautiful art.  On our way home we shot at a couple pull offs and found this weird boat clock pictured below.  I told Nova she should take it home, but she didn't, later regretting it.  At least we have the photos!

The next two sets are a little out of chronological order but I wanted to give a little love and attention to this new solo set with Chelsea Hanes.  Chelsea and I had a little bit of a break from one another after after having a bit of a personal issue that arose from getting involved with one another during our first go around.  We reconciled earlier this year, but this was my first time seeing her since then as she made a trip to LA from Portland.  We visited this spot under a bridge in Chinatown that I love so dearly and things got naughty in one of my more risque shoots from the site.  It was great to see her, catch up, make some art and she even gave me a friendship bracelet so I'm happy we are reconnected.

Before our solo set in Chinatown I actually did a muse group set with Chelsea and The Spritely One.  As you can see Sprite and I have been collabing a lot and so when she hit me up asking what I was up to that day I told her to come play with me and Chelsea.  I took the two of them to Switzer Falls where I had my very first shoot with Sprite.  I thought the location was such an interesting place to return though because I had never taken Chelsea there even though I had intended to many times, I had shot Sprite there previously, BUT I never had photographed two muses there together.  I mostly chose the spot out of convenience for the short window of time we had, and I'm glad we did because of the beautiful photos, but it did wind up being a pain in the ass when the realization hit that it was packed there due to the ongoing spring break.  Either way we made some beautiful images with two of my most powerful muses.

Jay-Stephanie mess arounds continued that same evening when Stephanie Monty invited me to a kink event at El Cid in Silver Lake where Stephanie would be live painting.  Much like our Murphy Ranch set this was mostly us messing around but between Stephanie's live paint, fun little portrait spots in El Cid, and running in to a surprise muse well we got a killed set out of the journey..

For this set I wish I had had the time to get it edited and up last week but fuck it.  I made some plans with KFB regular Alondra Excene Shields.  Alondra always has great concepts and wanted to do some Easter looks including a weird giant bunny head.  We got really weird with everything and shot inside her apartment.  The set came out way better than I thought it would and we had a bunch of it done in time for social media but here I present to you our full Easter set (along with some other goodies).

Late last week I got a group message from my friend and muse Phoenix Askani introducing me to comedian/porn star Sovereign Syre.  The message informed both of us that we lived on the same small street in Highland Park and that we should be friends and shoot together.  We made quick plans to meet up this past Monday where I walked over to her house (five buildings away from me) and we shot in our neighborhood while she walked her dog and then did some stuff in her apartment.  It was all super low-key and rad.  We got some really fun shots so look for more Sovereign Syre in the future.

And finally to catch us up with this epicness was a rad shoot with my friend Kooki Munsta.  Kooki had been hitting me up wanting to shoot some new photos so I took her to the forest.  Kooki and I have never shot daytime nature shots so I was really excited to see what kind of vibe she would bring and was not disappointed.  Everything was really on point, the light was beautiful, we killed it.  Not much else to say about it.  I will try not to wait so long the next time for a post but I hope you take the time to check out all of these sets and enjoy!