DarkMage2

Ho there, passing month of March--
Hey, wait, where are you going??

And now it's April 2nd.


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A couple really awesome things started in March, probably the most major of which was the release of advASCIIdraw. Nyaseiru beat me to making a promotion journal for it (so awesome), but still I'll include a bit of my own perspective while I'm here.

Woo!

advASCIIdraw or aady as amul and I call it is one of the core pieces of the Dasky 3 project, the piece that facilitates the easy and non-stressful creation of ASCII/roguelike scenes for the game. The functionality design was pretty simple- quench the limitations and problems I had with AsciiDraw, and push in the direction of more contemporary digital art programs.

As it says on the community page, the idea was born out of a love for forum gaming, something which played a notable role in my earlier life. We were doing this because of a game I briefly ran, but at the same time hoping it would help others of similar interest to do the thing I'd failed to do.

And hell, in truth I kinda messed up, getting caught up here on dA with drawing and such. I wasn't able to support amul and actually, well, do the thing. The thing with the docs and all that. It's thanks to amul's own desire to finally get amulware on the map that we're actually here where we are, after all this time.

Dasky 3 - Project Status (08/04/2013)
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EDIT: Change of plans, Fire of Algir is getting one more attempt to jump start it before I give up (geez amulware makes good arguments). I'll write something about it soon as I have something.
OK, progress update go.
So, I ended up running Fire of Algir Mountain from the 8th to the 21st, just about two weeks. My goal of 'run one(1) complete story' is a bust-- there's only so far you can go against the wind, up a hill, while bearing a reasonable load, while being chased by wolves, during an earthquake.
On a well populated forum like Bay12games I'd expected to get the minimum post requirements to run a game at least, but what I got was slightly less. The intro was good but it went down from there, leaving me wondering what I was doing wrong.
First off, I made two small mistakes at the start- not fatal (except they were fatal), but still.
One, I was treating t

I've been kind of quiet here this month, but being busy elsewhere. I had to lend a lot of time discussing and helping amul with the aady website and release version of the program, for one. On top of that I also started trying to take a practical approach to the Dasky development- with mixed results, I'll be updating the status journal soon on that.

amul is also working on a game for a contest right now, to which I've lent some help as well. If it's completed before my next tally I'll edit in the link to it here. Gotta be all hush hush but the contest theme is "light and shadow".



Some drawing did get done, but really not enough in my opinion! Not enough really shareable anyway, either by 'poor' quality, or personal or incomplete status. A couple other things I've got are Broken from Cordia, another one of the Dasky element icons, random treepony and Iorodar Gets The Crown.

The last one is funny if you've read my game thread on Bay12games, and are me. The rest of my drawing energy for the month went into creating the images used in said game. All in all I guess not a bad haul, but we'll see if I can get more done for April.

Currently nearly done is a character bio for Broken, which might end up getting followed by character bios for my Cordia OCs. I still need to finish that larger picture featuring Etude, but that may drop in favour of first doing more small drawings of canon and OCs I know. I also need to figure out whether to end my current game test and move onto the second one, or try and keep going with the story. Dasky 3 docs fit into this... somewhere. I can do this.

I can multitask this shit.

It's happening.

I warned you Darkicus, I warned you about multitasking.

. . .

_{Shou wants me to do 100 more drawings by the end of the year. Wish me luck.}


-Darkicus out

Where once a worn and withered heart did lay,
peace and comfort make it's way,
and through that withered heart red blood flows,
as deep cuts and old wounds close.

Scraps for the month.



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Businessy Side Of Things

Another month passes, February perhaps with even less to show than January. But despite little pursuit in things drawing related, important stuff is happening. My original plans for the month were to focus on things Dasky 3 related, though some will notice really nothing in that regard as having happened. The best I managed was a meagre bit of arting and some minor rethinking of class abilities--

However, after a talk with amul it was decided that I would go ahead and run a short game, to finally put theory to practice and see if I can actually run a game successfully after all this faffing about, as well as finally put the program he was making for me to it's intended use. I wrote up a short story for what will hopefully be just the start of a series of test games and am expecting to start it in the following few days.

The first test is really just to build up my confidence and make sure I can do all the basic things I'll need to be able to do, such as designing areas, characters, managing the flow of the story non-linearly, all on the fly etc. I'll update this text with the link to the game once it's up, as well as finally reawaken the Dasky 3 overview/status journal.

EDIT: and here it is


Gaw I'm pretty scared actually.

But moving on, I'm happy to announce that amulware is finally set up. He's an indie coder and old friend of mine who unlike me has got a professional education and is seriously good at what he does. Unfortunately like me he hasn't done much Awesome Stuff yet. Yet. We're getting there.

If you want to check out his stuff I'd recommend giving Panic Pong a look, which is his main project currently- and this forum roleplay thing which has been my only taste of forum gaming during this great DASCIIAoS famine. The story updates slow and at our leisure, but it's a read for the curious and/or bored.

Additionally, amulware is looking for someone with sound/music experience to work with, on the off chance that anyone passing by here is interested in collaborating or contributing something. You can contact him yourself here or you can just note me and I'll let him know. *fingers crossed*



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Personally Type Stuff

News and shameless advertising over with- I guess I should actually say something about February and my thoughts and feelings and emotions and so on like I usually do. Except I've kind of run a bit dry here, seriously happiness is kind of boring. But nice. My whole dismay surrounding the chat thing in December has been sorted, even if to my frustration I wasn't able to set something up like I wanted. I still got the opportunity to talk on a level I needed to talk on.

I regret a little not managing to do more drawings, particularly finishing a drawing illustrating the icons I envisioned for the 'Five Elements', as well as some more Cordia stuff (poor Steadfast, she deserves more than that cruddy portrait crop D: ). I suppose there was a tiny bit of development towards my colouring, which is nice, but I never really got to show it off or practice much.

Still really pleased, if anxious about what's going to happen next.



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Other Bits Finally

is being the most awesomest ever with his most recent musical pursuits, which unfortunately are hidden away in hidden-ness. I recommend you possibly head over and poke him about sharing them because seriously this guy is epic-win. Just saying.
_{just can't help plugging}

Also something amul linked me to that might be of interest to some people; indiegames.com/2013/02/video_h…
It's a talk on working solo in game development while depressed, which I think ties over quite a bit into drawing and art in general as well.

And I guess that's it? Besides me forgetting that February only has 28 days usually.
That's my excuse for being a couple days late with this.

Actually really liking writing these things now.


-yon Darkicus

*huff* January.

Right now I'm more interested in reflecting on what I'm going to be doing for February, but, my idea for these journals was to be informative on my activities for those just passing by or those who don't have the time to follow my whimsy trail. An alternative to watching my deviations or scraps, in other words, but in order for it to be that I suppose I've got to talk about the four things I submitted in the cold, dark, dreadful month of January. And hey it wasn't all that bad!

Guess I'll start with the enigmatic 'I'm Glad You Came' above.

With the passing of December, I was pretty unhappy. At the start of that month, at the end of my November tally, I quote; "If I can't join or start something up it's no biggie though." This was in relation to setting up a personal chat channel and, despite it being no biggie, I got upset when I was silently shot down. I'm dumb of course, I should have just set something up anyway, as I plan to now, but at the time I was somewhat off-put. In the end it culminated in me alone on New Years Eve, fighting the feeling that I was some kind of cold, disconnected thought machine, locked away in my stupid crashed spaceship.

And that's where the first sketch of January comes from- just after, a journal and deviation by Jezendar and Nyaseiru respectively, combined by the repeatedly positive comments of AstralFoxArt, reminded me that I was being a stupid gloomy bugger. There's a better and brighter me and, quite frankly, I'm glad you came.

The sketch itself is made of memories- the sun dome from Rockin Hard, the tower from Magedreams, the fluttering pages of Whence The Rollercoaster, the sphere-lights of Invasion (obscure) and, of course, the pencil and sketchpad that carried me through the EqD NATG2.



But, then I kind of poofed. Where the hell did I go? Two things;

The first, the illustrious SeptilSix. Like me and my recently reminded past plans, he wanted to do a bunch of things which ended up proving, uh, well we didn't do them alright. Since we were both trying to rouse ourselves, I tried to give the two of us a boost at the same time by helping with his OC Etude, to much temporary success, and that is where a couple of this months sketches lay in hiding.

Second, I had a moment of *not worth seeing*. When I uploaded 'Upheld' at the end of December, I was ashamed of what I did, it was a lazy experiment and I should have done better, because I could've done better. That pretty much set up my standards for January, which, unfortunately were higher than the level of motivation I had to do finished artworks. Here's a selection of sub-scraps as evidence, though there's more. The only important one in there is the 'Barracks rough/wip', because it's the base for a trilogy of drawings I have planned.

Similarly, the image above, 'Acting Guardian' was a piece I wanted to do properly, but, I just didn't have the gusto to finish, so much time was passing without an upload and that was the best that I had. I explained some of my thoughts at the time on the deviation page, so no need to repeat that particular wall of text.



Then I did this, and despite being a relatively quick drawing, it took a long time. All the way until near the very end of the month in fact, a month where I did not a single coloured artwork... publicly, till then. There were two things I coloured prior to uploading Knight Luna, the first being 'Spectre of Expectation', which happened mid way through the month.

At that point, I was highly frustrated that I hadn't done any coloured artworks, so much that I had to do something extreme, something that would make up for my dark and moderated tendency with colouring. But, when I was finished, I couldn't bear to upload it. It's hard to explain why although I ranted about it at the time in the description of the piece. My shame surrounding 'Upheld' still lingered and I wanted to do something good, something functional, not something impulsive and emotional.

So I carried on in silence. 'Upheld' was initially an idea for a pair of drawings, one of Celestia, one of Luna, but I never did the Luna one. So on that principle I set out to do it in an act of redemption, but not immediately. I prepped for it by practising anthros, which is why the anatomy/posing in 'Held Up' is much better than in 'Upheld'. The one other thing I coloured was this kind of possibly mildly suggestive Pinkie Pie, which was a turning-point in the month.

Inevitably I put what I learned to use and created 'the one coloured artwork of January' above, a Luna knight to kick the ass of 'Upheld' in every way that I could. Embarrassingly, I didn't put as much work into it as I could have. However, I'd still count it as one of my better works. Additionally, during this time I figured out brushes and switched away from using the default Photoshop palette. Yeaah.



Finally, as a bonus, I created 'Cookies' above. See, back when I was helping SeptilSix I was doing it with the intention of finally doing a cool drawing of Etude at the end, another thing which I didn't do. Having just drawn Luna I was reminded of a brief conversation we had involving her and the words "delicious" and "cookies", so I just did a quick thing for it.

This piece is unusual for one reason in that it's the first non-squeeze non-pentool'd image I've done since 'Empress'. That would be because I've begun questioning my styles following a comparison between 'Upheld' and 'Held Up'. Something I'll get to, but for now this text has grown long enough.

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Tally complete.

Peace everyone
-Darkicus