october update

11/4/2024

yes i know i'm writing this in november but nothing happened last month so it doesn't matter

i think i might stop doing monthly updates at this point, 6 seems like enough,
especially since none of them have really had any progress on art...

from now on just expect posts whenever i have something important to share.

anyways, these blogs are mostly for myself so it doesn't make much of a difference.

speaking of which, i think something changed again.

"character development" if you want to call it that...

maybe this is my final form...?

-crystal

september update

9/27/2024

i don't have much to say this month... i've been going through a lot and i'd rather not dwell on it...

in terms of real life, the weather has started to cool down... not that i go outside much anymore...
but at least i won't have to run an air conditioner 24/7 to keep myself from getting heatstroke...

in terms of the site, there's nothing new, and the gallery page still needs to be updated...

in terms of art, there hasn't been much progress, but i do have one 3d model i'd like to share on the
gallery page... it's not totally finished, but i think it's in a good enough state to share for now...
expect to see it next month, hopefully i'll have redone the gallery page and added it by then...

anyways, that's all for now i think... hopefully there's more progress next time... bye...

-crystal

august update

8/24/2024

i'm updating the site right now, so i might as well make my monthly blog post now too...

good news, i'm taking estrogen now! i've been taking 1 mg twice a day since 8/10. not much to say about the effects so far, but i'm glad the process of getting it prescribed is over and that i'm finally taking it after wanting to for so long. i was also told they would increase my dosage in about 3 months, which i'm looking forward to. :)

in other news, as i mentioned at the beginning, i've updated this site again. no new pages yet, but the about me page has been rewritten and restyled. the martian angel xenia page has also been restyled, both now having a purple border, like the posts on this page. i plan to redesign the gallery pages to match this soon, but i'm not sure if the home page or watchlist page will get updated too, since the former is already nice, and the latter is already functional.

no new updates in terms of art yet unfortunately, besides a few mashups i made for tumblewood, which haven't released yet... the heat hasn't died down much yet, so i'm still not sure if that's what's been causing the art block... anyways, that's all for now, i guess... bye...

-crystal

july update

7/31/2024

okay so the date on this post is actually a lie, this is being written on 8/1, but i don't want it to look like i missed a month so... yeah... again there's not really much to say, at least in terms of art... but i did finally get around to scheduling an appointment for hrt, so hopefully in next month's post i'll be able to say i started taking meds...

yeah that's it sorry... not really much to say for this month...

-crystal

june update

6/27/2024

so um... it's same thing as last month again...

no real updates on the site... maybe it's been the heat driving me crazy, but i just haven't been doing well recently... especially not enough to focus on any kind of art... the only real update in terms of art are two dumb remixes i put up on my soundcloud... both of which were made in a state of extreme anxiety... anyways, i'm sure you guys don't want to hear about how little i've been showering, so i'm just going to skip to the part where i talk about my plans for the future... like i said, i really haven't been focused on or motivated to make art recently though... i've been more worried about real life problems, like how i plan to get estrogen, since i want to start it as soon as possible... hopefully within the next couple months... again, i don't know if it's just been the heat driving me crazy or not, but i've been feeling a lot worse lately... especially about my body... anyways, once the weather cools down and i (hopefully) get on estrogen, hopefully my mental health will be doing better again... and then i'll be able to focus on art... i still want to do gamedev, but right now i really don't see it happening in the near future... until then, i guess i'll just keep locking myself in my room, watching anime, and playing video games...

i don't really have anything else to say... sorry...

-crystal

may update

5/24/2024

well, i don't have much to say, but i figure i should make a post here before this month ends. things have been... okay, i guess. my emotions have been on a rollercoaster for the past couple weeks, so it's been hard to focus on making any kind of art... now that i think about it, this post is a lot like the one i made two months ago... there's once again been a lack of any real creative updates due to personal wellness reasons... like my struggle finding the energy to shower, mostly because every time i do, i have to shave my entire body... hopefully hrt will help with that once i'm able to get it... i really need to look inot that more to be honest... anyways, compared to sj, this city is... pretty boring.... it just feels like there's so much less worth taking pictures of when i'm walking... speaking of which, i really need to do something about all the pictures on my phone... the storage is full of them to the point that i've uninstalled nearly every app just for space... i need a way to transfer them all to my pc, but uploading it to google drive overwrites the metadata, and trying to use a usb cable is always really iffy... once i find a good solution though, i should probably make a photos page on this site or something... or maybe make a flickr account..? i'm not really sure yet, but i do have a lot of photos i want to share.... aside from all that, i've also been having some trouble with a recurring toothache, but for now it seems to have gone away again... i really should see a dentist about it though, but i'm too scared to want to make an appointment... anyways, i guess that's about it for this month's post... hopefully i'll be able to focus on my art again soon so that i have more to share...

-crystal

new place + new page

4/18/2024

it's been a while, huh? well let's see... since my last post here, i've moved out of SJ to an apartment in another town, so i guess that's noteworthy news. but that's not really what i'm here to talk about. i wanna talk about the new page!!! it's a new addition to the gallery where i'll be posting pixel art.

i'm adding this page because just today, i decided to start using and learning aseprite. so far, i've just made one animation of tomoko walking, but tomorrow i plan to make more. once i have full animations for all 4 directions, i'm going to try to import the sprites to godot, though they would also work well in rpgmaker if i decide to learn that too. i'm very happy with how the sprites turned out so far, and excited to make more in the near future and add them to the gallery. i'd also like to say that in terms of style, this animation and the sprites that i plan to make in the future are mostly inspired by the SNES games Chrono Trigger and Sailor Moon: Another Story.

now that i'm done rambling about the pixel art, i'll also mention another change i've made to the site. this page and the gallery pages now use the same background as the rest of the site. the main reason for this change is to make the text on the gallery page easier to read, although it also makes the style of the site more cohesive overall. anyways, that's all for now, i guess. blog post over.

-crystal

no update

3/21/2024

this one's probably just gonna be a ramble with no formatting. i haven't been doing very much for the past month because i've been struggling recently (mostly with showering and getting out of bed), and just haven't been able to dedicate much energy to my creative works. weirdly though, on the days where i do shower and get out of bed, i've been doing a lot of walking. like, walking 10 miles across town in a straight line, just for fun. well, fun and to burn calories i guess. i've actually lost a lot of weight over the past year from walking more often. anyways, i guess this is the part where i just restate that i've been too tired to be productive lately, meaning absolutely no progress on my last two projects i planned in the posts below have been made. on top of all this, i am likely moving away within the next few weeks. this will actually be good, because my current housing situation is a bit stressful (the house is under constant renovation) and hasn't been helping my anxieties. plus, i've been getting tired of walking down the same streets where i live, so moving somewhere new will give me more motivation to keep exercising, hopefully. oh, and i forgot to mention, but when walking i often take a lot of pictures. i want to find a good place to post all of them, possibly flickr? i'll mention it in another blog post if/when i get around to setting up an account. also, i have to delete all the duplicates and transfer all of the pictures from my iphone to my pc... which is a pain in the ass. anyways, hopefully in the next few months things will get better and i can get back to a good mental state where i can work on my creative work again.

-crystal

dreamscape soundsystem

3/5/2024

okay so, basically i was watching a video and just got a great idea for a big project i could do.

the idea is basically since that what you hear can influence your dreams, i would make a program that would play sounds in a way that would influence you dreams without interrupting sleep.

for example, since it's hard for me to fall asleep to music, the program would let you set a timer that would run down, then slowly fade in music, to influence your dreams without waking you up.

hopefully, i can put time towards developing this in godot, in order to get a grasp of ui design, timers, and sound effects in the engine, while also creating something i could use myself.

the system will also most likely be designed to function as a sort of alternative to those "x hours of silence randomly interrupted by y sound effect" videos, in addition to having a background sound (ie. rain) and a song or list of songs that would only play after a certain amount of time.

also, i should make a to-do list page for myself sometime... i want to have a definitive list of all my projects and what needs to be done with them... but for now i should finis watching this video...

-crystal

martian angel: xenia

2/24/2024

blah blah blah NEW PAGE !!!!

basically just for me to get some basic outlines and character details out for an idea for a story i MIGHT turn into something one day hopefully. probably a visual novel.

it's very inspired by 80s/90s anime, but in terms of medium i feel like it would work best as a visual novel that reads like a manga? i'm not sure if that's been done much before or how it'll work out but i think it could end up being pretty cool. will probably be episodic with some inconsequential choices thrown in for variety (ie. ARCHANGEL:NEMESIS, my #1 inspiration to make a VN). maybe even some consequential choices in a few episodes that just give you a bad ending?

anyways, it's very fun to think of ideas for the story, it's constantly revising itself and it's fun to see how so much of it sort of just naturally comes together on it's own. i literally started with a list of things i thought were cool and thought of the basic premise, and i've just been iterating on it ever since. so i guess just for the record, my first plans for this story are from 9/23/2023.

anyways, now that that's out of the way, i should get some sleep...

-crystal

new blog page

2/17/2024

hiii welcome to the new blog page!

i really don't have anything else to say here, sorry...

here's a cool gif of sephiroth to fill space.

-crystal