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