Photo courtesy of Garret Spenst at https://www.garretspenst.com/

WE'RE BACK, BABY.

I'm back from San Francisco and have now had ADEQUATE TIME to put my head back on straight. It was busy busy busy for a few weeks there, but I think I'm back to a more normal schedule now. I'm actually SLEEPING at the SAME time every day, believe it or not. Some said it couldn't be done.

POW at DNA Lounge in San Francisco

So, ZAKU got to play POW and it was fantastic. We got what I like to call the "PRIME SLOT" which is the act that gets to play right in the middle of the night. The late-comers have time to show up and the early-to-bed haven't left yet. I had a great time, but it was also a little bit hellish, since I was ALSO showing off Negative Reverie at the Indie Booth.

omg she said the thing (photo courtesy of @exitlava.bsky.social)

By the time the show was over, I was friggin' WINDED. I hadn't eaten for several hours and needed to SIT DOWN. The venue did provide me with a meal ticket for 2 free slices of pizza, but I asked the lady at the counter if I could just exchange it for a single piece and she said NO YOU HAVE TO TAKE TWO hahaha. Turns out, she was right... I needed that second one.

Anyway, sightseeing was amazing, we rented bicycles and toured the coast, I bought $200+ worth of books at Kinokuniya, ate incredible Mexican food all weekend and had a nice trip there and back. No luggage or equipment got lost or damaged either! And we got paid! What a trip.

More about the book on the right later...

2 detective novels and a book of poetry for me; Origami for my gf's family.

THE RETURN OF PIXEL ART

I actually met a few fellow pixel artists at the event and it really put some inspiration in me to start drawing more! Perhaps this is just how life goes... you make art, you leak inspiration, you go out into the world and meet people and see things, they fill you with inspiration, rinse and repeat.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

STUDYING

I did almost 600 kanji and vocab reviews on the way to AND from San Francisco.... That, combined with all those books I got, have ALSO reignited my determination for studying for the JLPT in December!

SPEAKING OF WHICH, I had no idea I was gonna get an actual certification, but LOOK HERE:

It's so.... official!

I ALSO started playing Tales of Destiny in Japanese, so... yeah... you could say I'm still inspired to study and improve! (Tales of Destiny is so sick btw)

...also speaking of games

GAMES

I'm always starting games and never finishing them, aren't I?

Well, the past week has been no exception. I started Tales of Destiny on PS1 in Japanese and Silent Hill f and I'm enjoying both of em. Tales is ESPECIALLY good. I don't feel like I have the time to really dig into a lot of RPGs nowadays, but this one gives me some of that wonder that I used to feel playing them in the 90s. So, I might actually stick with that one. I'm loving playing it on the actual hardware, too. There's a certain unspeakable something that comes with waiting for the disc to load and writing to physical memory cards.

スタン seems like a real "dudes rock" kind of guy and I love him for it.

Silent Hill f, on the other hand, seems like something digestible-sized that I can probably smash through in a weekend or two, so I might concentrate on beating it first. I just got to Rinko's house... if that means anything to you.

After that, I'm CONSIDERING putting my JP skills to the test and playing through the ENTIRE mainline Tales series. I've beaten Arise, Vesperia, Abyss and Xillia before which leaves.... just 13 more that I haven't played... that's only a few hours of gaming.... right...? I bought the PS1 port of Tales of Phantasia on ebay and if it arrives before I beat Silent Hill f, I might play through it first, before continuing Tales of Destiny and then just continuing chronologically from there. We'll see.

NEGATIVE REVERIE

I spent last week going over some bugs that I (the attendees of POW and me) found during the demo. Mostly minor stuff like graphical errors, but there were a couple of changes I made to make 'what to do' more obvious in the intro.

Does something look off about this screenshot? No? Good, That's because I fixed it.

From here... I gotta get cooking on making background tiles again. I can't put in the battles without the scenes they go in... or the scenes without the areas they go in... so it's really THE thing holding the project up. Oh well. I've had enough of a break from them that it's probably time to lock back in and get 'em done.

ALSO, LET'S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING REAL, REAL QUICK:

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THE REALNESS BEGINS
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SOMETHING REAL

Speaking of making Negative Reverie... I'm still having a good time and I'm still stoked to keep working on it, but often I get this sense of "Oh, I can't get into this other thing I'm interested in, because I really ought to be working on the game..." and I think that has been to my personal detriment. Obviously, growth has been a little slow this last month, but I think I'm becoming okay with that. I'm not on a deadline and the game is a passion project, after all.

I saw another solo-ish dev I have a lot of respect for announce this week that they were putting their game on indefinite hiatus and honestly, I'm happy for them. They do a lot of interesting art and I can see how working day and night on a video game has kept them from engaging in smaller pieces that they care about. That's what made me think, "You know, I shouldn't feel too bad about only getting a little bit done on the game as long as I'm still being creative and living fully." IDK! I hope that isn't disappointing or anything, but it's brought me some satisfaction.

I'm also trying to let myself live a little more "offline and offscreen" recently and do more in-person activities like shows, camping, shogi and mahjong, biking, etc. Just tryna do a lil more in 3D space.

For instance... instead of DMs... I actually wrote messages to several of my friends and family on the postcards from the postcard book I bought at Kinokuniya!

TRCOOT is such a good artist, holy smokes.

I didn't even know postcard books existed! Now I'm gonna be looking for em whenever I go somewhere!

Anyway, like I said, I'm still excited and passionate about the project, but I'm gonna take it nice and easy and just do a few tiles or scenes every day or two for the most part. Then, on days I'm ESPECIALLY locked in, I'll knock out a ton of work. You'll see! YOU'LL ALL SEE! shaking my fists

I BETTER GET TO IT!

And you should get to it, too! Whatever it is! For me... I think it's gonna be doing a little vtuber fanart real quick and then drawing some tiles for Negative Reverie! As always, thank you for your support! I appreciate you reading this and I hope you're having fun and being creative! Wahoo! 頑張って！