#might do more pixel portraits this was so fun

[melonnlee]

the quality is so scuffed cuz procreate SUCKS but gem. now in the pixel variety.

[eggyolkguzzler]

mod, how do you edit your portraits? aka what program do you use :)

Hey!!! So glad you asked! I was actually talking to some friends on discord about this exact topic.

I'm gonna write the best tutorial I can for you anon. Other ask bloggers feel free to reference this!!

KEBBY'S STARDEW VALLEY PORTRAIT/SPRITE EDITING TUTORIAL!! 💪💪💪

Personally, I use Medibang Paint pro. It's a free art program that you can use to draw pretty much anything. Normally, I use it for regular, un-pixelated digital art.

(If you'd like to see some of that, my art sideblog is here!)

However, Medibang Paint also has a dedicated pixel brush! It comes in handy a lot with sprite editing.

Another suggestion is getting Aseprite. It's a program entirely dedicated to making amazing pixel art. If you want to specialize in pixel art, then you might prefer Aseprite over a more generalized art program like Medibang Paint. A lot of professionals highly praise it. The one catch is that Aseprite costs money.

Though I've been told that it's worth it, so it seems like a good investment to me!

Anyways!! Onto the sprites.

Here's every single one of Alex's sprites and portraits. I got this image from Spriter's Resource's website, where they carry high quality sprite sheets for every single character in the game. Clean and crisp 1x1 pixel ratio.

So for a lot of my custom Alex portraits, all I did was copy different facial features and paste them onto his face.

Take his happy portraits and his surprised portrait, for example.

Stealing the eyes from the surprised portrait and slapping them onto the happy portraits, we get these rather insane looking boys here.

I tend to use these edits whenever Alex is excited about something!

Though sprite editing can also get a lot more complex. There have been many instances where I've had to add something completely unique to his portrait.

Like these edits, for example!!!

What I'd usually do is choose which basic portrait I'd like to use as a base, and then start to draw over it using Medibang's pixel art brush. It's actually a lot easier than you think, as long as you study the portraits!!

Take a second to really analyze ConcernedApe's pixel art style. What do you see first? Well, the colour palette is already there! I already know what colour his skintone is, what colour his hoodie is, what colour the shadows are, etc.

I can also see that his hoodie is shaded with little specks of darker and lighter pixels. This gives his hoodie an interesting texture, so I tried to mimic it when drawing his sleeve for the facepalm edit.

I can also tell exactly where the light source is. It's off to the side! so I knew where to place the shadows and highlights when shading his hands or that egg he's holding.

I encourage you to mess around and do some practice edits until you get the hang of it! Again, it's a lot easier than you think. Most of my edits take either a few seconds or a few minutes.

Here's a collection of every single Alex sprite edit I've made so far!!!

Now, keep in mind, every Stardew Valley portrait is drawn on a 64x64 pixel canvas. That's teeeeeny tiny. If you posted your edits at that size, it would look a little silly. It would be hard for people to see!

So once I've completed a portrait edit, I'll resize it!! Luckily Medibang's got a handy resizing feature.

I go to the top of the screen, I click "Edit" , I click "Image size" , and right beside where it says "Set size to 200%" I click "Apply" , and then I click "OK!!"

Ta-daaaaah!!! Now you have a high-quality, high-resolution sprite of your goober!!! You can resize it more if you'd like it to be bigger, or you can size it back down by setting the percentage to 50%.

That's basically it!

I hope this helps somebody else in the community!! Thanks for the ask, anon. It was really fun to type this out and show off some of my work!

Wow... That's a lot of clones! Where'd they all come from!?

[smash-64]

2023 Game of the Year Countdown #6 Fire Emblem Nintendo GameBoy Advance, 2003

Never thought I’d actually be able to enjoy an old school Fire Emblem game since I only came into the franchise since the 3DS and I thought it’d be hard to go back to the more simple (or sometimes even archaic) gameplay. But I was surprised by how fun the combat was and I wasn’t distracted by a huge, convoluted story, either. It’s a fairly simple story with simple gameplay and I really enjoyed it. I’m definitely glad that the newer games allow for fallen characters to come back, but I can see why players developed the habit of always being perfect in battle, as well as why they'd prefer to stick to a tougher way to play.

Flyers are just as much fun back then as they are now, although they feel a bit more flimsy than in newer games. Marcus might have been my absolute favorite because the man is a complete mountain. Cannot defeat him. I would drop him in the middle of a huge enemy group and he’d take out every single one of them. He might be a better enemy turn unit than even Petra in Three Houses.

While the story isn't as complicated as later FE games get, I still found myself really liking the dragon characters. I've never been a big fan of fantasy stories like Lord of the Rings, so knights and dragons were never my favorites. But I have been a huge fan of all the green haired FE dragon characters from the very first game I played. Not quite sure what it is about them, but I just enjoy it. So it was cool to see them in this early entry in the series as well.

Music is pretty basic, and the GBA can’t exactly pump out great sound, but the classic FE theme is easily recognizable. The little visuals and portraits are also cute and reminiscent of the SNES when it comes to pixel art.

I do miss some of the more in-depth character development and high quality music that we get in newer games like Three Houses, but it by no means ruins the experience to go back and play the older games. I’m going to seek out some of the other more classic games soon enough, specifically the ones on handheld consoles.

[sharky857]

At last, my "Proper Farmer™" got her own actual profile! 😭

Many thanks to the "Farmer Portrait" Picrew for the portrait (duh!) and the "SDV Dollmaker" mostly for the sprites (though I would appreciate if they could be saved in a bigger size 😅).

Also, many, many, many more thanks to @d-structive for the lovely commission! 💖

Here's the original pic:

I only have an extra bit to drop: Melly's recurring theme is "apples".

Hence why the farm is named "Honeycrisp", while Melly's actual name is "Melinda". in addition, her clothing colours is supposed to recall the different colours of the apple fruits while not being an eyesore. And I know: it is quite ironic for someone so apple-centered to have not a single apple listed anywhere in the "gifts".

Another fun fact about Melly is that the light green gilet is an old gift from her grandmother, who had a huge passion for knitting (and sewing). Melly's been cherishing and treating that clothing item with utmost care, also considering it as some kind of personal lucky charm.

And now, if you made it thus far, inb4 anyone may jump at my throat for what I wrote under "relationships", the fourse horsemen of "avoided like the plague" all have a specific reason each to be avoided:

Haley: Merely commented one time too much on Melly's look. The last straw was her subtle-but-not-really taunt at some sleeveless gilet "so out of style".

Alex: Asked Melly if she wears any bikini. While they didn't even know each other that much. Melly sputtered, panicked, balked and ceased any further attempt at socialising with him since then, in that precise order. 💀

Shane: At first it had been his severely unsociable demeanour to make her desist. After incidentally learning about his struggles with depression, Melly is now low-key scared shitless concerned to say or do something wrong in his presence that might potentially worsen the thing. He is not really a full "ALTP" like the former two, but she'd rather keep her distance until feeling ready enough to attempt any new approach.

Penny: This might come as a surprise, considering how she always seems so sweet and kind and polite and etc. when interacting with her. However Melly came to quite a rough halt with Penny's interactions the day they ended up talking about children. Some farmer has just never really forgotten that "if everyone thought like that, humans would die out" very quick and negative judgement that instantly drove her up a couple walls. 🙂 On the other hand, if Penny will ever reach out with the due apologies, Melly may consider forgiveness; she's too good to hold grudges even after an apology.

As for all the unmentioned NPCs, they are either in the "mutual tolerance" or "neutral" category. The latter would also include people Melly has yet to encounter (kinda hard to have an opinion on someone you've never seen before).

P.S.: The actual profile may be slightly updated in the future, depending on when and if the creator of that specific Picrew will ever include more items (the current portraits desperately needs for eyewear and I'm not that good at pixel-arting to add them myself 😔).

[anam3ii]

-1bitHeart-

Nov, 28,2023,

Hi, I'm new here. I've been wanting to create a blog for a long time now. I wasn't sure how to start a blog, what exactly should I share. I meaan...I have a lot to share but I was thinking to my self..should I just be consistent and stick to one thing or would it be ok to do a little bit of everthing?? Well I guess we'll see since I'm kinda..winging it. lol

Today I'd like to share with you what I've been up to recently. I decided to give youtube a try. I love to game and thought why not..it might be fun. I recently finished a game and posted the short series. I still have a lot to learn about editing so it's not great to be honest but the good thing is I've learned a lot for my first time.Oh yes..from the many mistakes. It was not so fun starting over a lot, I'll tell you that ,yet I hope the next series is much better and maybe I'll even have some commentary.

The game I recently completed and posted on youtube is called 1bitHeart. It is created by, not a very well known, developer Miwashiba. This Japanese dev is from Fukuoka and has illustrated and created various cute and interesting RPG games. Miwashiba is known for creating their own pixel adventure games Alicemare, LiEat series,1bitHeart and the sequel 1BeatHeart.I just found out, while doing some research, that pool of creativity has not run dry just yet. In fact,there is a game in production right now by the name of The Faceless Double. You can find all of the games on steam; all but one,1BeatHeart.The game is available and you can find it here on this link.I have yet to give the game a try but so far the big difference I see between them is the more dull or muted colors and maybe less cuteness? It doesn't seem to be going on steam anytime soon so I'm a little hesitant to give it a go.

So far, all of the games that are available on steam are also published under the same publisher, PLAYISM. They publish a variety of genres. From story-focused games to Horror to strategy etc.

Now, I'll be honest, I didn't dive too much into the dev or the publisher so sorry I have no idea if there is any juicy gossip lol. I do though, want to tell you a little bit more about the game,1bitHeart. As far as I know, the game was released on steam back in 2017. The game is set in Japan, in the near future, where technology has progressed to the point that I'd say it's somewhat similar to now in our lives; it is used pretty much everyday, everywhere. It dominates the lives of everyone.

In the game, we play a young guy by the name of Nanashi, who spends most of his time indoors. He is very intelligent but a bit socially awkward. He meets a young girl by the name of Misane. While out making friends and solving mysteries, he learns of a frightening plot to take control of people via hacking. Together they set out to stop the people behind this evil plot.

I have yet to play the other games myself but I can tell you that this game, compared to the others, it's a 2D side scroller instead of using the top down perspective the others used.This allows for larger side view portraits of the game's many characters which lets the game to emphasize Miwashiba's incredible skill at designing cute characters and more detailed during dialogue. The game doesn't have turn based battles like LiEat, according to some other reviews, and also isn't solely based on exploration like Alicemare.The game has it's own systems. The hints being one, that helped me, which you get to chose to have them on or off in the very beginning. When you come across hackers and they attempt to hack the player, you defend yourself by directional inputs; which are basic. Still, the game is fun when you have to play detective and have the subsequent confrontations. You also progress the story by solving the various cases through the chapters during which you need to gather information and evidence.

Stardew Valley is a game I have played, but not finished but I can tell you that in the same way that you are able to give gifts to the characters that hang around the town in 1bitHeart you do the same. You'll trigger scenes once you become better friends with them but you are not able to romance any of the characters like in SV. This leads to one of the most impressive parts: there are actually about 48 characters in all that are spread across the town. Each with their own story, personality and style. The end goal, depending on what end you want, is of course, for these characters to become the main character's friend. You can see the amount of love and effort that was put into the game. In a review I read that the backgrounds during character's dialogue could use a little work. They probably could but I think it was done that way so the characters and their dialogue was the main focus.

Like I mentioned earlier, you need to give gifts to the characters in order to be friends but you need money or bits to buy gifts. You get bits by playing tetris-type minigames but it'll take A LOT of grinding=time to get enough bits to befriend everyone. Fortunately, the dev was aware of this flaw, as there is a secret in the game to acquire endless bits=endless gifts.

Honestly, I enjoyed the soundtrack. It's ok. One of my favorites its the opening theme.

The biggest gripe I have with the game is that I didn't see the option for borderless windowed or something to prevent the game from minimizing. The game would minimize each and every time I clicked out of the game. It was very frustrating and annoying. Honestly, it's one of the reasons why I'm hesitant to play them to record them.

I wonder if streaming would be easier in this case?? I don't want to totally give up.Anyway..If you made it this far, THANK YOU for taking the time to read my blog today. Let me know what your thoughts are...til next time!

-A

[kafus]

ramble incoming about indie websites, neocities, and modern web design... putting below a read more because i wrote way more than i thought i would, oops.

whenever i see posts going around about how imaginative and creative old web design used to be, and how minimalist and same-y everything is now, while i do agree and wish that modern web design was more interesting and more dense with information... it's not as simple as "let's go back to how it used to be."

most old websites did not conform to modern accessibility standards, making the internet harder to use for many people, and on top of that we live in a smartphone era now where websites have to be designed in such a way that they work on both phones and computers... phones have a much smaller space to work with - kind of hard to decorate your website in pretty graphics and lay out the information in unique ways when you're designing for tiny screens in portrait resolutions!

i work pretty hard to make sure CPG displays on both mobile devices and computer monitors in at least decent fashion, and the website is absolutely less interesting looking on mobile. the sidebars are traded in for a toggle-able menu at the top of the screen (i'm considering changing it to a button that sticks to the bottom of the screen so you can open the menu without scrolling up, but i digress) and images that would float on the right or left side of articles in an aesthetically pleasing way have to be put into their own blocks between passages of text so that the text doesn't become impossible to read, squished on the sides. i'm not perfect at accessibility, nor am i perfect at optimizing the site for mobile, but i think i do an okay job with my relatively simple layout. i do this because i want my website to be viewable to people on any device, even people who aren't enthusiastic about the indie web, or desktop browsing. this would not be nearly as easy with some of the complex table layouts of the past.

it is interesting to me that a lot of people choose to simply not make their website usable on mobile and will put a notification that the site is either best viewed on desktop or doesn't work on mobile at all on the front page... there is nothing wrong with this, mind you, i'm not making a judgement of the person or their coding abilities, some people are just chilling and doing their hobbyist thing without fretting about that, or making their content for a specific audience that would mostly view from their computers, which is fine! how other people make and run their websites is none of my business. but i do think a lot could be gained from exploring mobile design and making the indie web space more accessible to mobile users, which take up a large percentage of the population. we'd probably have more eyes on us if our spaces were more accessible for people on phones. also, personally, i actually find making my site compatible for mobile with pure vanilla html/css/js a fun challenge.

at the very least, even if a website isn't built to be mobile-friendly, making sure everything is at least visible and clickable is a good thing. my website dynamically changes the size of elements based on the device viewing it, but there is also the option of making your entire website layout a set pixel width, so that it is the same on every device, people just might have to scroll horizontally or zoom in to see/click things... which is annoying but at the very least workable. i have seen some high quality neocities sites that do exactly this and i think it's a good alternative from dynamically sizing pages.

all this being said, i'm coming from the perspective of someone who actually wants their website to be seen and be used by as many people as possible because i'm providing niche game guides/tools/resources, so again, people who are just doing their hobbyist thing probably don't care as much about how many people see their site, especially outside of indie web spaces and especially neocities. it's a bit of an insular community where everyone on there is exploring their fellow users' desktop websites. also, just because a website is not workable on mobile doesn't mean people won't see it! plenty of people still use their computers to browse the web of course, it just cuts out some parts of the population. it's complicated and i'm not an expert on the subject but i don't know, i just felt like talking about it ww

TLDR; i think the ideal would be for a less corporate, more creative internet that still is accessible for disabled people and still allows the use of smartphone browsing. maybe one day when i'm more educated on code, i can make some cooler things in this regard...

[kittycatcarla]

games i played update for pretty much the entire week

i've got a bunch of screenshots piled up that i was too tired to post wen they were fresh

might not add a description to all

[major spoilers for chicory and minor spoilers for hollow knight and hades under cut]

(i reached photo limit so ill add reblogs this post for the rest)

(also ill have more minimal image descriptions than i would typically write them due to the sheer amount of pictures)

Ok ill start with chicory i suppose

.

.

But im not joking. if you think there's the slightest chance you'll play chicory or if you're already playing chicory and havent completed the main quest already, DO IT. Dont spoil the experience for yourself. I have screenshots from some boss battles and some other main quest stuff here. Please, for your own sake, dont continue if you plan on playing chicory.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

^ Fuck I... ngl i really felt Chicory all throughout the game. the exorbitant expectations that shes putting herself to because of her master.. the astronomical amounts of self-doubt that came with it.. the massive impostor syndrome.. And now that i mentioned impostor syndrome i might aswell mention the amount of relatability i felt with the playable character (In my savefile she's named Cupcake). The enthusiasm that changes for self-doubt the moment responsibility shows up. The inner voices that keep telling her that she doesnt deserve the brush. that she got it by sheer luck. that she's a terrible artist and that everyone is just lying to her.. i felt all of that

^ These things actually.. well they got to me a lot more than i previously expected. especially the fanart one. i had completely forgotten that that was the first thing i drew there despite the fact that Clementine put it in our parent's house but.. i realyl did not expect that. It was so incredibly sweet

^ I'm so happy for you, Thyme <22222

^ there's a metaphor to be discussed there but im not up for that right now

^ i love your enthusiasm dad (yes i did use the telephone cabin a couple of times. if you have anything against that im not gonna listen to your inflated "gamer" ego. let people have fun. for some of them that means using tips or playing with assist mode or god mode)

^ Fuck this hurt. this hurt oh my

^ this is the drawing that i made to be the portrait in the wielder tower. my mistake with essentially everything i drew in this game was that i treated it as a normal drawing instead of pixel art)

^ KITTIES (i still need to save like 5 more i think)

^ this genuinely made me tear up a little

^ and completion percent (i want to eventually fill in the entire map but for now im taking a break from chicory)

.

.

.

Okay onto Hollow Knight now

have in mind that those are screenshots taken in different days. several times i took screenshots in the inventory to show progress at the time

also have in mind that this was me getting all my progression back to and eventually further than the 102% that i had before i lost my saves

^ Maybe Sly wasnt corrupted by the Radiance, but capitalism still mostly got him

^ progress on january 7th

^ there i think i wanted to show that i managed to get here without wings (for those who dont know/remember, that means 2 or 3 enemy pogos)

^ this is my favourite sofftware bug in the entire game (now that i think about it im not sure whether it's still in the game or patched and reintroduced by the QoL mod)

^ ok it doesnt really matter but i love how broken cdash crystal generation is whenever youre not on a stable flat floor/wall

^ you fucking what you greedy bitch. also yeah i beat the shit out of her and then made her come with me to listen to Marissa

[areyougonnabe]

Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions

The two-day deadline he’d set for himself was nearly up, and Aziraphale hadn’t called again.

It wasn’t like he’d been obsessively checking the time or anything, cross referencing it to the exact hour that Aziraphale had dialed him what seemed like years ago. He was just— staying aware. Keeping his phone on him at all times. In the atrium, misting the plants; in the office, rearranging his  precious keepsakes; sprawled out in front of the television, clicking through channels and retaining absolutely nothing.

He knew what it was about. In a time of crisis, nothing comforted Aziraphale more than learning the rules and abiding strictly by them. If he tried to force his way in, tempt and cajole and convince, it would all collapse like one of the angel’s awful magic tricks, complete with all the full-body embarrassment that implied.

No, there would be no slithering over. Aziraphale was having fun by himself. An unbelievable amount of fun, by the sound of it. This was paradise for introverts like the angel; what right did Crowley have to saunter in and bring it all crashing down? 

He had a tendency to do that with paradises, historically speaking.

Fuck, two days. Why the hell had he given himself two whole days? He shouldn’t have even bothered. It was hopeless, clearly.

Three hours to go, now. The angel might well be dithering and pacing and fretting a mile away in his cozy, closed, bookshop, but Crowley knew it wouldn’t make a difference in the end. Crowley might as well go to sleep now, get it over with, fast-forward to August when the whole thing was over— when Aziraphale said he’d see him again. He had said that, right? It hadn’t just been Crowley’s brain, proffering up a hopeful hallucination in a time of great need.

With a snap of his fingers, Crowley was clothed in a slinky black silk dressing gown with red piping, open in a deep V at the chest and trailing elegantly on the floor.

His bed was calling. He could practically feel the deep luxury of his enormously expensive mattress and just-cheap-enough sheets* already sending goosebumps of tactile pleasure up his limbs. Did the bookshop have these accommodations? No. Definitely no. Decidedly no. Positively no. So it was a good thing, then, that Aziraphale hadn’t called. Absolutely a good thing.

As he walked to the bed, Crowley caught a glimpse of himself in his gilt-framed full-length mirror. Damn, he looked good. He’d been growing his hair out for a few months now, and it fell to just above his shoulders now in perfect red waves. Combined with the black silk, the effect was pure glamour.

Pity the angel wasn’t around to see it. “Your loss,” Crowley muttered, as he pulled his phone out of his dressing gown pocket, and began to snap a series of truly daring mirror selfies. Leg out, leg in. Hips this way, hips that way. Angle, angle, different angle— yeah, that’s the stuff—

And then his phone lit up.

“What—?!”

It was Aziraphale calling. Except, no, he wasn’t calling— it said— how could it say—

He pressed the answer button so hard he nearly cracked the phone screen. “Aziraphale, are you FaceTiming me?”

“Oh, Crowley! I can see you!”

“Yes, that’s the blessed point.”

“But it’s wonderful! And you look— oh, good lord.”

Crowley was, against his better judgement, holding his phone far enough out so that Aziraphale could get a better view. He could see, in every HD pixel, the flush building on the angel’s cheeks as he took it all in. This was dangerous territory. 

“No, hold on,” he said, “you don’t even own an iPhone. Or a cell phone at all. Or a webcam, so how are you doing this?”

“I don’t know about any of that,” said Aziraphale. “I’ve just seen people on the street, you know, video chatting away, so I sat down at my computer and told it to get you on the line, and that I wanted to see your face, and, here we are!”  

Crowley couldn’t rein in his grin at the thought of Aziraphale’s ancient, groaning desktop, being angelically commanded to sprout a webcam and an internet connection and an iOS operating system, purely in service of getting in touch with a demon over a one-mile distance. 

“You really went to all that trouble?” 

“Well, you were bored. You said so. And— oh, I really wouldn’t like to set a bad example by breaking the rules, but— if you slept for that long, I’d... I’d miss you.” 

“Nnh.” Crowley did not dare try to verbalize a response to that.

“And we are rather experts at these sorts of things, aren’t we? Loopholes, arrangements? I thought it would be such a pity if I didn’t even give it a try— for your sake. Is— is that all right?” Aziraphale said. His eyes were now wide with the beginnings of alarm, and it killed Crowley that he couldn’t physically reach out to soothe it all away. 

“It is. It really is. But hold on, gimme a mo, I’ll make it better—” Crowley left his bedroom and went out the living room, where he AirPlayed his phone to the television, blowing Aziraphale’s face up to majestic proportions, like a Chuck Close portrait or a Moai head. 

He propped his phone up below it, keeping the entire living room in frame, and retreated to the sofa, where he recreated the type of graceful limb-drape he so often engaged in at the bookshop. “Howzat, then?” 

“My goodness. It’s like you’re right here in the shop with me!” 

“It’s not,” said Crowley, “but it’ll do, angel. It’ll do just fine.” Very slowly, he lengthened his sprawl, letting a hand casually come up and slide the fabric of his dressing gown away, revealing one tanned thigh, the barest hint of a scallop-edged undergarment beneath.

“For now,” Aziraphale agreed. His eyes were so big on the screen, and getting bigger. He was looking, looking very intently indeed, at the movement of Crowley’s hand, and was that— oh, he most certainly just licked his lips. “Yes, for now— I think it will, my dear.” 

*Because sometimes things that are expensive are worse.

[dreamygeorgenap-archive]

phew okay. It's been a bit of a Day so this might be a tad incoherent but oh well.

I'm a graphic designer, and I have some experience in image forensics (= determining whether a picture was edited, when it was edited, when it was taken, etc), so this is right up my alley, and I figured I'd share my knowledge and information here.

I've ran a couple pixel and clone detection tests, an ELA (error level analysis), a PCA (principal component analysis), and a noise analysis, and I think the image is not fake.

None of my software can detect any spikes in noise or luminescence level that would indicate an edit, nor any missing or extra pixels that seem suspicious (and yes, I checked around the cat and Sapnap's head, to be safe, since I'd seen a couple people talking about how they might've just photoshopped Sap's head onto someone else's body). The encoded quantization tables seem to be in order as well (= there is no weird spike in quality anywhere) and I even scrolled through the picture with a magnifier to check for weird pixels myself.

Now I do realize some of these terms might not mean much to the average person (and I can send you a more in-depth explanation of the functions as well as a couple sources, if you'd like) but trust me when I say that editing an image without leaving any of these traces would be very hard and I doubt Dream or Sapnap (who I assume to be amateurs and not experienced hackers) could do it - they'd need to hire a professional, for sure.

Conclusion: I am almost certain the image was not edited, I think this this is just a case of portrait mode's auto focus and blur, and Patches' smooth fur in combination with the lighting. (If the cat is Patches, that is. My analysis cannot confirm that, lol.)

With love, 🖇️ (unless it's taken, in which case I'll choose a different one oops)

(Bonus fun fact: A simple string extraction reveals this picture was taken with an apple device.)

Hi, I’m not doubting your technology or knowledge but my trust issues are not believing anything until we get a video with picture of Sapnap and Patches or something along those lines. But thank you for this, pretty interesting. 

[itsmeizumine]

COMMS ARE OPEN!

[ID: a 6 panels presentation explaining how OP’s commissions are going to pan out. First panel has scripts divided in two columns. The first column says “Hello, fellows! It’s me, Izumine, and right now I’m taking digital art commissions! I really need to buy new PC and I would be extremely glad if you spread word of this commissions for me. Thank you so much!”. The second column says that payment is to happen via Nubank Pix system and OP’s other social medias’ handle; “itsmeizumine” on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube. From the second panel onward, OP’s gonna showcase the types of commission they are willing to take.]

[ID: Second panel is titled “Silly Doodles”. There are three drawings on the panel, all of them very simple and cartoonish. The first drawing is of a kid reenacting “Will Smith Showing Off His Wife” meme, with a speech bubble that says “Bitch, I love and appreciate you” stylized to add comedic effect. The second is of someone grimacing, with “OUCH...” written behind them. The third drawing is of a surprised person, with a speech bubble that says “*GASP* what- NO WAY!!”. There’s a script at the bottom right that says “Silly doodles are fun to draw and use, specially as stickers! They are the quickest to make, and cost 5 USD*.”. The asteristiks are going to be addressed on the 6th panel.]

[ID: Third panel is titled “My Style” and has a column of script right under it that says “I don’t face much trouble with either headshots or full body, but I don’t dig rendering a lot, so my price table is this: a) SKETCH: 10 USD. b) FLAT COLORS: 15 USD**. c) RENDERED: 20 USD**.”. By the side of this column, there are three versions of the portrait of a boy, showing the different finalizations the price table announced going from the simplest (option a) to the most difficult (option c), left-right. At the bottom left of the panel, there’s a script in parentheses that says “This is good to make portraits of loved ones!”.]

[ID: Forth panel is titled “Mimicking”. Under the title, a column of script says “I can imitate your favorite show’ style on a drawing of your OC! I’m particularly good at: BNHA, SvtFoE, The Loud House and Adventure Time. But I can give a shot to any other ones!”. There are four drawings of original characters to the left of the column, each into the styles of the shows OP mentioned. A serious girl using Yuuei’s uniform and sneakers; a boy dressed as a prince from other dimension dancing with a girl in a poncho blouse and pleated skirt, both seemingly in love with each other; a kid wearing a vest, a long-sleeved blouse, pants and boots, expectantly looking to the forth wall; and a fire monk in their casual garb, content; respectfully. In the midst of the drawings there’s a box that says the price is 15 USD**.]

[ID: Fifth panel is titled “Landscapes”. There are two big drawings. The one at the left shows a empty main avenue prepared to start a community fair. The day is sunny and there are little flags and lace tinsels hanging from building to building as there are flower garlands and wreaths decorating the shopfronts. The floor is made up from packed dirt and cobblestone and there has a kiss booth and a roasted chicken stand at the edge of the street. The drawing on the right is the WIP of a staffroom from a mechanic workshop. There are two different levels at the same room. In the lowest there’s a small kitchenette with lights hanging from a support beam made out of steel and a sofa with a remote control atop of it. In the highest, the ground has the same metal texture of a bus’ floor; there’s a ladder, four tires piled together with plants around them and a shelving unit attached to the entryway. There’s a box that says the price for the art pieces is 25 USD**.]

[ID: Sixth panel is titled "Yes, can do/ No, can't do". The text that follows right after is divided in two columns, each column under one segment of the title. The column under the first segment lists Lettering, NSFW art (though, OP says it's debatable) and Mecha/Armor as things they can also do. The column under the last segment lists Gore (OP clarifying that they can work with blood, but nothing more explicit than that), Hate Material and Animals (and by extension, Furries) as things they can't do. Under these columns there's a box that explains the asterisks. It says "Single asterisk: In case USD is not your currency, we'll follow the procedure of converting the values using it as reference. Double asterisks: This is a minimum price. Might be upped depending on the complexity of your commission, but don't worry! We'll discuss it before settling on anything. And! We'll only start negotiations if you read and agree with my Terms of Service, so that's that as well.". This is all there is to the last panel, and with that the presentation ends.]

(TERMS OF SERVICE BELOW, READ IT ATTENTIVELY)

if DM me about any commission you're interested to do i'll assume you've read everything and are 100% okay with it, so don't even try if you're aren't. this is not up to debate.

.

there's stuff worthy of taking notice before asking a commission from me:

.

i need my commissioner to be somewhat available for communication. i'm gonna share my process with you and i need your feedback during it to go on. any sort of adjustment gotta happen there, as i'm not returning to the finished piece to retouch it on any way or form nor do i allow anyone to make any changes to my artwork.

.

i'm not delivering the finished piece until you fully pay me. no debate on that. and i reserve the right to cancel and refund any commissions at any time for any reason.

.

unless you oppose to it during the process, there's a chance that i might use the commissioned artwork on my social medias as a way to promote me and my services. if that bothers you or makes you uncomfortable, you gotta tell me.

.

you retain all rights over the intellectual property of the commissioned piece and i assure you i won't make any claims over it, but the artwork is mine nonetheless. it's for personal use ONLY until stated otherwise, and you CANNOT profit from it or use it commercially unless we discuss it beforehand.

.

i won't make you NSFW art if you're under age, for obvious reasons. any minors asking for commissions of any other kind need have permission from their legal guardian, unless they have their own bank account.

.

if you want to eventually print the artwork, please state this before we get started on the commission. my default set-up is made for small files that are going to pixelate once you size them up to make, say, a poster. it's going to reflect badly on the end result of my work and i can make it right from the start if only you warn me first.

.

and i won't lower the price of any commissions below where they are now. the prices are as accessible as they can be. i'll work hard on each and every piece ever commissioned and and i need money like any other person too, respect me and my work.

.

i’d like thank anyone commissioning, reblogging or sharing the link of this post with possible future commissioners right now. hopefully i’ll be able to buy a new computer and make even better art to share with you guys soon!!

[eivor-basim]

ezio (in all seriousness now. mind your step 🥰🥰🔪🔪)

hey you can put your pixel knives away, i love ezio. and i'm not gonna steal your video game boyfriend i promise <3

first impression

i first played ac2 when i was 13 or so. at the Very First Glance he annoyed me a bit because he reminded me of boys my age who thought they were all that. a pre-fuckboy, if you will. but then he was so soft with his family. i really felt the pain of losing them with him. and he was adorably awkward flirting with cristina and being baffled by leonardo. so i quickly realized that ezio actually deserves so much love. and also a hug... pls allow this man some damn comfort ubi. plus of course, the fancy renaissance assassin robes and being so overpowered in fights just made it so FUN to play as ezio. i appreciated his badassery

impression now

now, playing an ezio game feels like coming home.

no matter what life throws at him, ezio finds a way to move forward and make something of it. always with a joke and a spring in his step. i love that resilience. and i've come to love the charm that annoyed me at first. because it's not putting on a show, that's just How He Is. he's warm and charismatic and funny. and manages to maintain that in spite of everything.

also, his humor isn't a façade veiling a lack of character or wisdom as can sometimes be the case with the fun-loving roguish archetype. over the course of the games, he really grows to be a man of principle and gains truly insightful perspective. these quotes he just drops:

"When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it. And I had love, but I did not feel it. Many decades would pass before I understood the meaning of all three. And now, the twilight of my life, this understanding has passed into contentment. Love, liberty, and time: once so disposable, are the fuels that drive me forward."

"I have lived my life as best I could, not knowing its purpose, but drawn forward like a moth to a distant moon. And here, at last, I discover a strange truth. That I am only a conduit for a message that eludes my understanding. Who are we, who have been so blessed to share our stories like this? To speak across centuries?"

"To say that nothing is true is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile and that we must be the shepherds of our civilization. To say that everything is permitted is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious of tragic."

"My story is one of many thousands, and the world will not suffer if it ends too soon."

i cried looking those up and reading them again btw!!

this man goes through so much pain. he builds the brotherhood up from nothing, only to lose it. and then builds it again. he does ALL THAT only to realize his whole life has served to convey a message he will never understand to a person he will never meet. yet even so he still finds contentment. he finds love and happiness. and he does it all with the signature ezio auditore da firenze flair. and looks hot doing it

(i really do need to note, this pixel man is FINE. i have to say his brotherhood look is my favorite but he is consistently hot)

i love him i love him i love him

favorite moment

there are so many??? and tbh i just started my ezio trilogy replay so the details are a little fuzzy, especially on brotherhood and revelations

one moment that always rips my heart out is when he assassinates his first target and yells "the auditore are not dead! i'm still here! me! ezio! ezio auditore!" and you can just hear his voice breaking a little

i love the little conversations between him and leonardo. leo really becomes one of the few constants in ezio's life, which forms such a distinct and powerful bond between them. and leo is just a walking ray of sunshine

ooh i really love the entire venice carnival sequence. also both ezio and claudia's assassin induction ceremonies. when ezio yeets cesare off the roof. and all of the moments with the quotes above

like i said, impossible to choose. and i still feel like this list is incomplete since i'm about to replay and will likely rediscover a bunch of old faves

idea for a story

hmm i don't know. i really feel like ezio's story is well executed and comes full circle in canon tbh. in the past i've enjoyed fics that actually do give ezio a chance to talk to desmond and explore the bleeding effect creating overlap between their lives. if i wrote a story, i might focus on ezio and claudia, because i feel like her character is very underutilized in-game.

unpopular opinion

i suppose a lot of my interpretation of ezio would be unpopular among those who see him as a womanizer and put him on a pedestal for that. other than that, hard to say tbh. i know many people don't like ezio with sofia, and i think they're very cute together. i guess also, i don't think ezio ever fully recognized claudia's ability. i think his perception of her was clouded by the gender roles of the time. in my view, he improved over time but never managed to shake off that bias

favorite relationship

romantically, this is difficult because ezio has great chemistry with lots of people and almost every ship makes me think oh yeah that'd be cute. i don't really have an otp with ezio, you know? i do really like him with leonardo and sofia tho

platonically, claudia. the murder siblings dynamic is everything. also, yusuf. their interactions were always so charming and hilarious, and yusuf's death clearly hit him so hard-- why ubisoft

favorite headcanon

ezio paints portraits of his targets, but i also like the thought of him painting portraits of his loved ones. ones that just feel more tender and personal when you're looking at them. and going out to the countryside to paint landscapes with leonardo-- artist couple!!

this is a communal headcanon at this point lol, but in-game ezio tries coffee and suggests adding sugar and milk. so i like to think he's the inventor of The Most Extra coffee drinks, like a triple caramel cappuccino with extra whipped cream and sprinkles type shit

finally, i think at heart he's very sentimental. he probably holds on to all sorts of knick knacks that remind him of the people in his life and the places he's been. he catches a whiff of, idk, a certain type of flower and is instantly transported to picking those flowers for a crush as a boy. gets all misty-eyed thinking about it. ezio is soft!!

send me a character!

[mikeperrucci]

20 Years of Mazeguy Smilies, 35 Years of Pixel Art

It's been twenty years since I first shared my smilies with the world! To celebrate the occasion, I made this collage:

Coincidentally, this year also means I've been making pixel art for about 35 years. I've written an article about my journey which you can read here, but I'll recap a few highlights:

1986: Dazzle Draw

The reason Mazeguy Smilies exists is probably due to Dazzle Draw, a painting program released by Broderbund Software in 1985. My family had an Apple IIe computer at the time, and I believe we bought Dazzle Draw the following year. I was eight years old at the time.

Back in those days, I didn't have a Wacom tablet, and drawing freehand was difficult. I figured out that the best way to create the curved lines and details I wanted was to zoom in and draw one dot at a time. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was learning the basics of what would later be called "pixel art". Today, I create smilies using the exact same technique.

My siblings and I had a lot of fun with Dazzle Draw, filling fifteen floppy disks (the ones that actually WERE floppy) with over 100 paintings. Unfortunately, only one has survived to this day. This portrait of Bowser was converted to black and white, and printed in my junior high school's newspaper.

1992: Mario Paint

My next drawing program was Mario Paint for the Super Nintendo. I loved the fact that you could combine art, animation and music to create multimedia. I still have my copy of Nintendo's Official Mario Paint Player's Guide, even though it's quite worn out from reproducing video game sprites and songs.

Mario Paint included several "stamps", small pictures you that could paste onto the canvas or use as a paintbrush. A Stamp Editor tool let you edit existing stamps or design new ones on a large, 16x16 grid. Sound familiar? Thanks to Mario Paint, my pixel art skills were refined a little further.

So, what kind of videos did I make using Mario Paint? Well... Um... Stuff like this...

1994: Game-Maker

Game-Maker was developed by Recreational Software Designs. It's a collection of design tools that allows users to create their own DOS games. To test out the software, I made a simple game in which a guy tries to get through a maze. Yes, this is where "mazeguy" came from. Somehow, it became my nickname, then the name of my website.

Mazeguy grew in complexity, and eventually morphed into Invasion of the Blobs, which later got a sequel. Both games required drawing and animating backgrounds, enemies, and heroes. Title cards, level intros, and cutscenes were also illustrated pixel by pixel.

2001: Flash Kit and Tripod

At the beginning of the new millennium, I started using Flash for the first time. I needed help learning how accomplish certain tasks, and discovered many helpful tutorials at FlashKit.com. I joined the forums, and found a thread titled "Smiley Award Winners". A user named ThundaChunk, a.k.a. JohnnySix, was awarding a small banner to the best smilies submitted in an earlier thread.

It was too late for me to participate, but after fifteen years of creating pixel art, the idea of making smilies intrigued me. I made a whole bunch and put them on my Tripod website. While I was having fun seeing how many emoticons I could come up with, I was also secretly hoping that another smiley contest would be held in the future, and I'd get my own Smiley Award.

Then, on March 29th, 2001, The all new FK members smiley thread appeared. I quickly posted a link to my collection. And so, after a little prodding, I got my Smiley Award.

Over the next two years, my website would get more traffic, and suggestions from visitors helped make my smiley collection grow. Both of these factors caused the site to routinely go over Tripod's bandwidth limit. My free web hosting service was no longer sufficient, so I registered Mazeguy.net on October 25th, 2003.

2005: Hoagie's Revenge

My brother and some of his friends formed a film group, and they needed an animator for one of their short films. It's about a man challenged by his roommate to complete a brutally difficult video game. My job was to build an original Nintendo game that is so unfair, so impossible to beat, that the programmers didn't even bother creating a second level.

You can read more about Hoagie's Revenge, the game within the movie, as well as complete sprite sheets here.

2013: Wordlock

Fifteen years after completing Invasion of the Blobs 2, I revistited Game-Maker and made a puzzle game containing 100 riddles. The graphics weren't particularly complex, but I think the sci-fi font I designed was pretty neat.

You can learn more about Wordlock and how to play it here.

2021: What's Next?

The introduction of emoji have pretty much made smilies obsolete. One avenue that might be worth pursuing is Twitch Emotes, but I've kind of moved away from creating pixel icons.

These days I spend most of my time working on my webcomic, Chuck's Devils. Sometimes I depict the main characters in pixel form, as seen here:

While the series is nowhere near as popular as my smilies were, or even my domino toppling videos (which is a story for another day), I like the process of creating wacky misadventures for Candace, Yu-Ri, and Lily. I hope you'll check out the comic and follow along. :)

[maijily]

Ella edit!

I might of fricked up on the hair but I don’t have much else to say about it

Original image too

Now i gotta either make more cats, the rest of the cast, or start the pixel sprites!

Ali’s Notes: JASLDSJAKD:ISAJDLSAKDJSALJDASL ELLA?!?! OHhhhhh my god I’m IN LOVE WITH THESE PORTRAITS!! This is some of my favorite things you’ve ever done I was NOT expecting to see an Ella today...

HOW ARE YOU DRAWING THESE SO FAST?!? I turn around for half a second and you’ve sent 5 more, these are some SERIOUSLY cool pieces though... I kinda never want to stop seeing them, they’re so pretty and polished and fun to look at and there’s so much TALENT behind them just AHHH YOU’RE SO GOOD!!

That’s... An INSANE difference between the two of these. You made some absolutely STUNNING edits, the hair was the first thing that caught my eye, I don’t doubt that style was hard but it turned out SO BEAUTIFULLY!! Ella’s full of dark blues, her palette is so eye-catching and new, there’s definitely an atmosphere around her that adds so much character to the whole thing. And that expression kinda scares me, she looks like she’s ready to murder someone and I love that look for her since she’s normally calm, it’s a sweet refresher

So the pixel sprites are next? That or cats? YOU’RE DOING ALL OF THEM AS CATS?!?!? You’re gonna have the cast in 15 different poses and animal species by the end of this I swear

[senpai-no-lie]

Dark Deity Chapters 1-5 Thoughts

Bought Dark Deity last night and played the first 5 chapters before I looked up and realized it was 2:30 AM lol. Available on Steam and on sale for like ~$20ish, so definitely worth checking out if you like tactical RPGs. I’ll put some general thoughts here and then some more specific ones under the keep reading to keep this post from getting to big. I think for the price it’s at, the game is well-polished and fun! Sometimes the sentence structure/flavor of the exposition text is a bit basic, but I just remind myself it’s not fair to compare it to a AAA game. 

I’m not sure if it’s because I was using an Xbox controller or what, but I noticed the game glitching out several times when I was trying to use the button to hop between units on the battle map. Unplugging my controller did not help, so I am tentatively assuming it’s a game problem. Another couple nitpicks I have is the text size being on the small size and the lack of variety with the loading screens. 

The text size is a complaint I have with most games in the genre; it’s just more noticeable with DD because I have to play it on the computer/HDMI it to my TV rather than on the Switch or DS I can hold inches from my face. The loading screens, I just wish they had more than the king on the throne, the world?, and the first four characters training to cut between for loading screens. The King one is especially weird because it was used in the opening exposition dump, so seeing it over and over when the King doesn’t show up again until post chapter 5 just didn’t jive with me. Obviously I’m not expecting visually impressive loading screens, but just the character sprites or game tips would’ve worked fine for extra variety (or a black loading screen with the logo. The load times aren’t that long).

More detailed thoughts below, since I might talk about things that could be “spoilery” for people who want to go in blind as possible. 

First of all, I’d just like to put my prediction out there that I think the King killed his own dad. I base this on nothing but vibes. 

Art and Character Designs: 

I love the character portraits and the pixel sprits they use during gameplay/combat. Very cute and reminds me of older FE games. The HP bars being little potion bottles is also very charming. I loathe how plasticky FE 3H looks, so it warms my heart to play a game in the same genre that doesn’t look like that. Also hot take, but I really do prefer the limited voice acting to every line being voiced. It’s a little disappointing that the combat animations for weapons don’t change when you select a different weapon, but every one of your units has a unique battle sprite and getting promoted changes their look. Enemy sprites, for the most part, are the same character (generic guy), but that’s fine. 

Characters and Supports: 

I don’t have too much to say about characters right now except that I like them. Too early to tell if there’s any shipping material, but I like each character as an individual and I find all their designs to be pleasing. I’ve started unlocking supports (I have most of my characters’ current support logs filled to C), and it seems like some of them might only unlock after a certain chapter, because I see an ! for Irving and Elias, but smashing the A button doesn’t let me see anything. Also wanted to say thank GOD for useful archer characters. Been burned by fucking FE:SD Gordin and FE:RD Edward just sucking monkey butt after their intro chapter, and I’m very pleased Garrick and Sophia are tactically useful. I haven’t had any deadweight characters yet, I’m happy to report, though it is only 5 chapters in. 

Difficulty: 

I appreciate that they have three different difficulty options, and looking over all the menus, there looks to be a lot of potential replayability because they allow you to randomize items, recruitment, and weapons iirc. I chose the middle difficulty, and thus far it’s been smooth sailing without being a cakewalk. Can confirm, because I am a hasty person in tactical RPGs, that when your units are defeated, they do not die; they merely lose a random stat point. I lost both my mages during chapter 4 lol. Another thing I noticed is that there really isn’t a tutorial and the game doesn’t necessarily “pause” to explain mechanics to you. This game is definitely for people who like FE or other tactical RPGs, but even so, I think for most if it you don’t really need a tutorial. I just wish it was more clear in the beginning how the different weapons work (there is no weapon durability, from what I can tell, bless) and the different types of classes/damage types. For example, I promoted Elias during chapter 5, and based on my choice (there are 4 promotion options), he went from being a spear user to using axes, but I don’t fully understand how much that really matters. 

Chapter 5: 

This gets a special section because it’s most fresh in my mind and I wanted to chitchat about it. The gemstones are obviously going to be important later, but a henchman of a presumable Future Big Bad pretending to look for it for his father and then three Mysterious Ladies also looking for it and that leading to a big battle is kind of funny. Worse reasons to have a battle, and also Brooke is hot, so welcome to the team. I had assumed that the three ladies you were asked to promote wouldn’t be permanent members of your party, so while I stand by my promotion choices, I still wish I had known you’d be keeping Brooke beforehand. The map design of chapter 5 is... interesting. It took me a bit to figure out what the fuck I was looking at, and that the colored circle things were portals I and the enemy could use to make it further on the map. The map design did make it very easy for Garrick and Sophia to do some impressive chip damage, though. 

So far, the map objectives have had a nice variety, as had the layout of the maps. I wish it was easier to tell which unit is the commander/boss you must beat, and it was easier to look at your units’ skills while at camp. I have no idea what button it could be, because I’ve tried them all. I do appreciate there is a zoom-in and zoom-out feature on the battle map, however.  I like how the weapon system works and it was fairly intuitive to figure out how to forge/strengthen weapons. I do like feeling like a genius/sense of discovery from figuring out a game’s mechanics, but they could’ve fleshed out the tips section a bit further all the same. 

[gamersonthego]

GOTG Review - Banner of the Maid

Banner of the Maid (Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC) Release Date: PC - May 27, 2019 | Console - August 12, 2020 Developer: Azure Flame Studio, CE-Asia Co., Ltd.

Banner of the Maid is a strategy RPG cribbing a lot from classics of the genre like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics. But it also has a lot of interesting ideas of its own that prominent SRPG developers like Intelligent Systems should absolutely learn from and incorporate into their future games.

Banner is set during an alternate history French Revolution, a time of political turmoil that has your character, Pauline Bonaparte (sister to Napoleon), being pulled in many directions by the different factions within France. There are the Royalists, led by King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the military-focused Feuillants, the citizens of Paris and more. Pauline is a rising young military general, but she is also thought to be a Maid, one of a number of women blessed with extraordinary abilities who could shape the future of the country. This makes you quite the hot commodity among the factions, and your choices on who to support can affect how you’re viewed and treated by the others…sort of.

While there is potential in this system, in practice, it’s quite shallow, with few actual choices to make. You’ll end up supporting all the different factions as you progress through the story regardless and your only rewards are tiny bonuses like getting the opportunity to buy slightly better gear or getting a bit more money from finishing missions. There aren’t really any drawbacks either. Even when the king is put to the guillotine (spoiler alert if you didn’t take a history class) your potential connection to the Royalists never once raises suspicion. Thematically, the idea is cool, but it could’ve gone a lot deeper.

Being an SRPG, the real focus is on the combat, which is…fine. While there are a number of different classes, they all fall into one of six categories. Line infantry are your basic musket wielders and are strongest when fighting together. Light infantry uses longer range rifles to attack from safer positions. Artillery fights from even further away, but can’t retaliate against close-range enemy attacks. And there are two types of cavalry, light and heavy: the first being faster while the other is bulkier. And lastly are support units who can heal or grant units the ability to take an additional turn.

If you’re familiar with Fire Emblem’s famous weapon triangle, it’s basically represented here, but more as a class diamond (you can see it in the top right of the image above. Light infantry beats line infantry, which beats heavy cavalry, which beats light cavalry, which beats light infantry. Artillery and support are their own thing, but that’s kind of it. There are no flying or naval units and attack ranges are quite short, making battles a bit dull and basic. To spice things up a little, on lower difficulties you are given a choice between two bonuses for each battle. Some of these can really break the game (especially the one that ups all your characters’ damage by 30 points), but it does provide some excitement for each skirmish, which I quite enjoyed.

The units you control are pretty cool too, with cute, anime-style boys and girls of every stripe being represented, from a lush with cannon, to a grumpy veteran, to a little drummer girl, to the damn princess of France herself. Each character has their own exclusive skill, along with slots for four additional skills determined by their class. Some of these skills are earned with level-ups, while others can be taught at the Ecole Militaire training school. Most classes are also able to promote to better classes, but the system is way more rigid than Fire Emblem, only allowing promotion when you’ve maxed out your level. The upgraded classes rarely actually change the abilities of your characters, instead just giving them some extra stats.

While the classes are largely uninteresting, the best part of Banner of the Maid is undoubtedly the weapon system, which has struck the perfect balance between strategy and fun. As much as I love Fire Emblem, I cannot stand its use of weapons with limited uses. I end up hoarding the best weapons so as not to “waste” them, but then never end up using them at all. Some Fire Emblem games let you repair weapons, but those opportunities are either very rare or very tedious (like in Fire Emblem Three Houses.) Banner of the Maid also has weapons with limited uses, but they automatically resupply after each battle. This makes for interesting strategic choices in the moment, but doesn’t bog you down with upkeep between maps and lets you enjoy your coolest stuff more often. I NEED this for the next Fire Emblem game.

What I don’t need is the presentation, which is, unfortunately, a little all over the place. The character portraits are quite pretty, even though most of the female cast is supernaturally and unnecessarily well-endowed. Their pixelated incarnations during battles are also very well designed, as are the maps themselves. What isn’t great is the lack of variety in animations. Each time a character attacks, there’s a slow, boring animation of one line of soldiers firing or charging at another with very little personality. While I keep combat animations on in games like Fire Emblem and Pokemon, I turned them off in Banner of the Maid as soon as possible.

The view is also just a little too far away in battles, with no way to zoom in or out. It’s not terrible when played on a huge, 70-inch TV, but in handheld mode, it can make it really hard to determine the attack ranges of enemies on some terrain types or how much health an enemy has left.

For all its rough edges, I’m actually really enjoying my time with Banner of the Maid. It’s a little odd to see a game with Chinese voice acting (Azure Flame Studio is based in China) and English subtitles that has a French setting, but it’s a weird mishmash that just kind of works. You can tell it was made with a lot of passion and a lot of thought, if not a lot of resources, but that’s part of its charm. It might not be revolutionary in the SRPG genre, but I really do hope some of its lessons take hold.

[indig0tea]

Final 2020 Update: 2021 Goals!!

Cross posting from my devART

Also links to all my alts and shit will be at the end of the post if you need them!

So some of these may be unrealistic due to my struggles with ADHD/Depression Combo but. I wanted to get these down somewhere so you guys can see them and be aware..

Please note, my executive functioning abilities are absolutely Butchered on the regular by my ADHD alone, and the various stressors of 2020 have absolutely taken anything else I might have had in that department and tossed it out the window.

Something something something, financial stressors outside of my control sends me into shut down mode and I can't do anything productive or even fun until it's handled, but because I'm not doing anything productive, I'm not making any money, and the stressors gets worse and worse and it just ends up in a horrible cycle where I constantly want to die because I'm not able to create anything to relieve the stress! Which is why you've all seen... pretty much a standstill on my productivity save one or two pieces a month if I'm lucky

That said, I'm going to start trying (hopefully with some outside help/accountability to keep me on track while I'm unmedicated) to put a system in place that doesn't make me constantly want to die while like. maybe actually getting stuff done! So I'm making some optimistic goals for 2021 regarding both my art and ability to make money, so here goes!

I'm breaking this down into 3 parts:

Changes to expect regarding my social media, commissions in general, posting, etc;

Overall Goals for 2021;

and Goals for January specifically.

Changes to expect going forward from here:

I'm going to be making some changes regarding my social media accounts, including this one, mostly concerning when, where, and how I'm posting.

I am also going to be making some changes to my commission policies, prices, and payments in the coming year, namely:

Lastly, I will be making some changes to my art discord server!

Moving forward, I am going to be MOST active on my twitter and tumblr accounts. They're just easier for me to maintain in general, and although I hate twitter's formatting, it's just easier and faster, and frankly after deviantART and Instagram fucked with their websites/algorithms, it just makes the most sense for me as an artist.

I'm also going to be making an effort to make scheduled cross-posts on all my accounts. In the past, I've been really irregular about when and where I post things (most things got posted to my old tumblr account but never here, i rarely remember to post to instagram, etc).

This is going to include commission slots, finished piece dumps, etc.

I will also be making an effort to semi-regularly post sketch dumps, both digitial and traditional. I am also considering at this time offering a monthly digital download of my sketch collections, though I am undecided as I'm not really sure how many people would be interested.

Increasing commissions prices to reflect time spent working on specific commission types, as well as my personal cost of living.

Planning and announcing commission slots in advance.

Taking and finishing regular commissions to cover living expenses on a monthly basis

Payments will be exclusively through paypal invoice, and will be broken up in halves: first half will be taken up front after I have started and given proof of start (base sketch), the second half will be paid after completion, with WIPS given between first and second payment. Fully completed art will be given after receipt of second half. This is both for my personal protection as an artist, as well as for the comfort of the commissioner as my completion time can sometimes be long due to my ADHD/executive dysfunction.

Moving forward into 2020, my discord will be SFW, but 18+ only. This is a personal comfort thing. I'm 25 years old now, and just really don't want to spend time hanging out with teenagers.

I'm also going to start trying to schedule art streams again! Since this is the only place I can live stream due to my art computer's limitations, it just makes sense to like. Schedule them so more people are able to attend. I haven't decided exactly how that's going to look, but once I have I'm going to make an announcement and formatting guide somewhere for people to see so they can make an informed decision about joining the server.

I will also be regularly posting in the server again. This may or may not be cross posts from twitter and such, we'll see, but I DO plan on being more active there since it's been kind of dead.

I may also reformat the whole server again. We'll see!

Goals for 2021

Regular Adopt Sets -- 2-3 per month. Size, price, and number in set will be decided on case by case basis.

I'll be doing a monthly prompt for myself as well. This is just to get me back in the habit of creating things I like for myself to just feel... less bad about my art in general, and about making art. Also it'll be good for my artistic development i think?

Keeping a monthly sketchbook for warm-ups and in-between pieces. May be offered as a paid download at the end of the month, we'll see.

Might start a patreon? This is EXTREMELY dependent on what my userbase looks like. Tiers and rewards to be decided at a later date

Regular traditional sketches + scan and upload of said sketches. May also be offered in the monthly sketchbook.

Draw more self portraits & self-expression pieces! I don't know if any of yall realize how repressed I've been in the last year without therapy, and I did't either until I forced myself to pursue a vent piece earlier this month, and then felt immensely better afterward so. Going to start doing that! Maybe I'll feel better weee

Regular posting to social media! (see changes above)

Drawing less fantrolls bc I'm just bleh about them lately, drawing more original content!

Drawing fancontent that ISN'T homestuck? We'll see but I'd like to. I don't usually draw fan art bc like. Idk in my mind I don't feel like my interpretation of things is important or cool and I think thats a confidence thing and I'd like to change that so! I'm gonna start making more fan content.

Draw more full illustrations & backgrounds in general because I actually enjoy doing them it turns out?

Practice painting more !! Both traditionally and digitally....

Goals for January 2021

Finish at LEAST 1/4 of my art queue. I'm shooting for half, really, because fully completing it might actually kill me but! We'll see! Maybe I'll surprise myself. But I'm setting the goal low to keep my mental health problems in mind.

Finish and release the base set i've been working on, on and off. It's an homage to  the old pixel doll days of 2009-2012, and the full sheet will be free to use (with stipulations, as I have some people blocked that I don't want using it). BUT! There will also be a mix and match .psd that will be pay to use (it'll be pay to use a, bc it'll be huge, and b, bc the edits to make it mix and match results in like 6 seperate bases in general so.... yeah. pay to use)

Finish the pay-to-use base pack i started in june (i may scrap and restart though, we'll see)

Possibly release all old p2u bases of mine in one pack on gumroad? price tbd but it will include old iterations as well as unreleased remakes.

Making some dainty-specific bases! One will be f2u, one will be p2u.

I have a whole dainty YCH set for january! I just have to finish the example... (:

Perhaps I'll be announcing a collaborative project later in the month! It depends on where each of us are at, at the time! We'll see! (: You should be excited though! It'll be a ton of fun!

EXTERNAL LINKS

Instagram

Twitter

Tumblr

deviantART

Discord server