It had been awhile since we did a drawing activity, so my brother and I decided to bring back the Return to Mr Marcus World activity a couple of weeks ago day. This activity always involves a variety of art projects and it really gets us thinking creatively on a variety of mini-projects revolving around our characters.
The first one we did was draw over Steam screenshots that we had to include our characters in them and as close to the style of the game as we could. I drew Gair and Lonny in Afterlove EP, and then Piko, Lonny, and Urom in Goodbye Volcano High. We kept most of the background and just drew characters over it.
Then we drew the base of our characters, and swapped for the other person to draw a different character's clothes over top. The base characters I drew were Zandra and Lee, and my brother drew JrTr and Yaro's clothes over them.
He drew the base for JrTr and Yaro, and then I drew the clothes of Zandra and Lee over them.
Then we did probably my favorite activity of the day, which was drawing game design levels on paper! We created a level that the characters would be in and it would be something that they'd enjoy based on their favorite games. Then we presented them and talked about them. First was Grenna's level, which was an RPG about Black Fortress, and based on our old RPG Maker 95 game, Cypriss the Elf.
Then Pubby's level was a 2D platformer with endless runner aspects (until reaching the boss). It was heavily inspired by Sonic levels, and based in Neo Obelisque City, which is where he hangs out with his friend Lonny.
So I had a lot of fun with this activity! We tried to think outside the box for more different activities than we usually do, since this is our 6th time doing this activity. It's always fun to do these creative little activities about our characters!
It's been awhile since I last got really deeply into working on The Nays, but it finally happened! So I have a lot of progress to share on The Nays this time for the CUPdate.
I started by writing the SN World Eventure with my brother. We finally found a day that we were both free, so we wrote that Eventure together in one day.
So after that, we were inspired to continue a project from ~5 years ago where we drew The Nays in the style of Shonen Jump manga panels. So I did a few of those.
During this time, I was also playing Deltarune and replaying Undertale. So all of these combined is what really brought my inspiration back and got me in the mood for working on The Nays again. So the next thing I did was wrote a new Eventure on my own! It's been awhile since I did that. January 2024 to be exact. So this is part of why I've been feeling burnt out, since I really haven't been taking time to write and work on my project. So it felt great to just sit down and write an Eventure. I wrote the Forbidden Beddy Bye World Eventure, which was pretty short, but had some cool new moments that I made up on the spot.
It led me into a whole string of Eventures that I wanted to revisit. There were a few plot points I was considering connecting to Aiml World, so I decided to revisit the Aiml World Eventure. I wrote that Eventure last in 2018, so I figured I could refresh it a bit and flesh it out more. So I decided to completely rewrite all of the parts with just the M Nays so it could include more depth.
After that, I was inspired to draw a NAD for one of the new characters, Mesay. She's Skine's sister. I started with a sketch of her, but then decided to turn it into a full-body drawing as her NAD drawing. I also experimented with keeping the lineart a bit loose and trying to do a faster coloring/shading style. It didn't speed things up a lot, but maybe a little bit.
Then I decided to draw more sketches relating to the Eventures I was writing. I also planned to rewrite the Muko Inc. Delivery Eventure because it's related to all of this. So I did some sketches of some story moments.
So to say the least, I finally found my inspiration and I'm having so much fun working on The Nays again! Starting is always the hardest part, and my exhaustion and lack of motivation is what really held me back. Now that I've started though, it's hard to stop. When I start writing Eventures and planning story moments in The Nays, it's really addicting. It feels great and I've really missed this since it's been almost 2 years since I experienced inspiration this deep. I'm happy that I'm finally recovering from my burnout (for now) it seems!
It's
been awhile since I made a CUPdate blog post here! I still have these
bi-weekly meetings with my friends, but I've mostly just been sharing
smaller updates and talking about various projects from sharing my
Notion pages during these.
I decided to take this week to cover the various projects I've been working on lately!
To start out, here's the first drawing I did this year of Cipo. It's always a tradition to draw him as my first drawing of the year so I drew him from an Eventure moment.
I also already wrote 1 new Eventure this year with my brother: The Frank Lady Eventure! We've been trying to write all of the older Eventures since those are the main ones we skipped over in writing. It's been fun to reimagine those moments with our modern abilities. I also like going back and finding old music to listen to as inspiration during those parts to really bring me back.
I've also been reading Eventures and proofreading them a bit. I've been wanting to get back in and write a solo one, but haven't figured out which one I want to write yet. I did sketch a few moments after reading some Eventures though.
A side project I did one day was check out RPG Maker Unite since they have a free demo. I tried it out initially when it was in early beta, but now it's officially released so I thought I'd give it another try. Unfortunately there are still some bugs that make it a bit more difficult to use than MZ so I'm not really interested in using it for any full projects. But it was fun to test out and I do like some of the new features and what they're trying to do here.
Life has been busy so it's been a while since I've posted my CUPdates here! To catch up on some of the things I previously presented and just didn't formally put into a blog post, I'm going to compile those here.
For June, I did a few sketches for my digital sketchbook. Some of these were for Nay Events.
And then for July and August, I didn't really draw very much, so I combined those doodles into one small digital sketchbook page.
I did a Nay Event where I watched a clip from the endings of games and drew one of The Nays in that scene. They were mostly sketchy and just to get back into drawing more. First was Scott in Wild Arms 3 and the second was Gair in Final Fantasy 3.
I was also playing around with some GitHub pages, since that has free hosting. GitHub has always been kind of a foreign concept to me, so I'm trying to slowly immerse myself in it and figure out how it works. So I made a new page on my side account and uploaded an old website I made for a Nay Event a few years back called "Spriter's Homeland". I had a few issues at first, but after reading some of the guides and watching some videos, I was able to figure out how to get it fully hosted! Check out the site here if you want to see it.
Something else I've been working on is creating game dev vlogs for my Global Game Jam projects! It's been fun to reflect on my game projects and the processes I went through. So far I've finished the videos for the GGJ 2017 and 2018 projects. I recorded the audio files for 2019 and 2020 but haven't edited those together yet. That's been a fun side project that I've been doing when I get in the mood for it.
Also during that time, I did Inktober! I posted them on my other social media like Instagram, but would need to scan and compile those all first before posting all of them here.
I've also been doing some writing to get back into The Nays. My brother and I wrote The Night Kids Eventure, and I wrote some parts on my own that were just with the M Nays. Then I wrote my part of The Gek's Favorite Eventure (which is honestly the majority of that Eventure). And then I also wrote a new introduction to the Pubby & Lonny Reunited Eventure, to tie in more with Pearl's backstory.
This also got me in the mood for doing some Eventure-related sketches. I came up with a new color scheme for El Pubbo so he's not quite the same colors as Pubby. I also came up with a design for his Molee character, Herb. And then I drew an idea for how Clarisse might look. I think Clarisse is gonna actually have white hair instead, but that'll be her design still otherwise.
I've been mostly working on parts at the beginning of The Nays, in terms of writing and drawing lately, so I took a break from that and started to read some of the later Eventures. It really inspired me again. I always forget how much reading these helps me get back into it. So I did a few Eventure sketches throughout November as I was reading various parts.
I've also been wanting to get back into my Nay-A-Day project. I started this project back in July 2014 where I was drawing a full-body character drawing every day, and I draw the character whose birthday it is. Obviously, I don't have the time to do that anymore (especially when they take 3 hours now), but I do want to try and do more of these whenever I get the chance to. It's apparently been 2 years since I last did one of these too. I started with Centrino since it was his birthday on the day that I thought about it. Then I drew Woodsaid.
So that's all of the catching up for this time! We honestly only have one more CUPdate left of this year, so that one will likely end up being a recap of the year, or it'll just be other various projects. But the one after that will definitely be the new year's one where I talk about what's coming up for next year! So it's getting to the end of the year already, which is exciting! I always love this time of year when I have more time off and I get really inspired to start fresh and work on my projects again.
I have a pretty small update for this week. May has been super busy in my personal and work life, so I haven't really had time to draw.
For this month's digital sketchbook, I was just playing around with some color palettes and styles for Sagun to figure out the design. I decided to go with the one that's larger on the left.
It was my friend Laura's birthday, so I drew her characters Banana and Belle!
I also went to a baseball game, so I did some quick gesture drawings.
And that's it! I have a pretty busy summer up ahead, so I'm not really expecting any big updates until the fall.
There's not a lot to show here because most of it has been reading Eventures, proofreading, and writing. I have done some drawings though, and have been trying to get back into that daily drawing!
This was another month full of Eventure reading! I've really enjoyed doodling quick moments after reading parts that I've written. I also did some brainstorming on parts relating to the origins/history of The Worlds.
We also finally finished the You-Know-Who's Reign Eventure! That was one we started writing last month, but didn't have a chance to finish until now.
We also continued the Mr Marcus World event so that meant drawing some Nays in anime style. Topaz is in OddTaxi and Pixy is in High Score Girl.
And then other than that, I've just been reading more Eventures and making progress on proofreading. A few other updates too that I'll talk about in the meeting.
I was out of town for a lot of the time leading up to this CUPdate, so not a lot to show on my blog this time!
While I was on the plane, I ended up thinking a lot about the whole history of The Worlds, which meant brainstorming some stuff relating to the First Generation Nays. Also while I was on the plane, I sketched this drawing of Forlorn on my Switch.
With all of this, it also involved thinking a bit about the original creators of The Worlds (Malik, Sagun, and Jesper). And this led into my idea where all deamons could originate from Jesper (The Man Who Does Not Speak), and could be closely related to The Gek. There are a lot more ideas I was thinking about, but I decided to make a family tree for The Gek's family and also how they're related to the Lynx family (I was also figuring out the actual relative names in relation to The Gek).
And then it was my friend Hillary's birthday, so I drew her character Imogen! I had fun playing around with the crystal effects, since she's cursed with crystal powers.
And then I've also been continuing to read through some Eventures and I finally made it to the Preliminary World Leader Exam, which is the longest Eventure of all of them. So I'm anticipating that one will take me at least a week to read through on its own. While reading some of the parts leading up to it, there was a lot of continuity missing since it was around the time when we were making a lot of changes. So I went in and started to write some connections and leave some notes. There were a few scenes that I actually wrote straight in Google Docs and with no plans, so that was new! I need to go back and look at them later, but it was interesting to try that out for writing out some shorter parts.
So yeah that's it for this blog post. I do have a lot of progress on some other projects, so I'll be able to show those here eventually, too!
There was a lot less time between now and the previous CUPdate as there was last time, so a bit less to show this time around.
To start off, it is the end of another month, so here's my March digital sketchbook! I mostly did some sketches after reading Eventures for this one.
And not really a visual, but I finally made YouTube playlists for every single Eventure! This will make it a lot easier to read Eventures while I'm away from my desktop computer, so I can access these from anywhere.
I've also been reading some Eventures and making copy edits. I've been making good progress on those and my goal is to have them pretty much all done by halfway through this year (June if I stay on schedule). I also went through and started to track down some Beddy Bye World stuff story-wise, and ended up adding 4 Eventures in (which meant I had to renumber all of them).
And then we also started rewriting the You-Know-Who's Reign Eventure. We originally wrote part of it many years ago and it was one of our least favorites, so we scrapped it and pretty much started from scratch again. It's turning out a lot better this time and makes more sense and is integrated with the story. We didn't finish writing it, and we won't have any voice chats for another month, so we'll have to finish it next month when we meet up next.
Other than that, I've been trying to get back into things and working on some drawing and coloring for bigger projects, but nothing ready to post yet. I've been trying to work on projects more during the week, but it's been hard. I've been working on figuring out ways to do it more often, but it'll be an on-going thing for me to figure out, so we'll see if I can have more for next ones or not. Next time I'll be out of town for a lot of it, so I'm sure it'll be a smaller update then, but maybe for the one after that!
