There’s this game that I’ve been playing on and off for about a month called Dolls Nest, developed/published by Nitroplus. I’ve seen the people in the Steam reviews call it a hybrid between Dark Souls and Armored Core and I think that’s a pretty fair assessment.
Your character is a customizable humanoid girl that you can outfit with a “frame”.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about mentor characters, like Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid, for example. I still haven’t sat down to think what the major theme of the visual novel will be, so I decided to work on a concept for a supporting character that I think would be neat.
I’m feeling pretty good today, well, this week in general. I finally ordered the furniture I wanted from IKEA and it’s scheduled to be delivered this Saturday. I think I’m also going to order my new mattress soon. I’ll aim for it to be delivered on the same day. I’ll be busy all weekend and see myself being offline for the most part. Most of the stuff in my room has been stored, trashed, or set aside in the living room for when I hire some junk disposal people.
I just finished the GFL2 Aphelion event story as of an hour ago. Since I talked about another GFL2 event earlier in the year, I figured I’d do it again. I missed out on the Centauressi event in March (I think), so I have a bit of a gap in the event stories. Aside from that, I’ve been pretty consistent. GFL2 is not my main game so it’s taken me a bit of time to finish. My main game is NIKKE and I can typically get away with doing daillies at work. However, I do a lot of events at home on my PC. As I’ve said many times over the last few posts, March/April has been really busy so I missed out on the last couple of banners. I’ll have to pick up 416/Klukai at another time. I’m glad the events last the entire month, though! Since I’m working on a visual novel, I’m interested in learning what I can about storytelling from games I already like to play.
I’m posting a couple of doodles I made between this week and the other month. These are both concepts for Amagi, the android in my visual novel. She has a very strong likeness to an MMO character I have, so I’m working on creating a design that can stand on its own.
The month of April has been completely chaotic for me. Little to no progress has been made on the VN and I fear that I haven’t had the chance to draw as much. It’s mostly because of work. I’m still working on a big project alone and my downtime in the office is non-existent now. When I get home I just mostly try to relax, but I have trouble doing even that!
Around 15 years ago, when I was still in high school, I stumbled upon fan art of a character named Sansei Muramasa (see below) when I was browsing newly uploaded illustrations on Pixiv. There was a lot about the character I really liked, so I decided to look up the source material thinking she was from an anime or manga. Back then, I was really disappointed to learn that Muramasa was from a visual novel named Soukou Akki Muramasa, or Full Metal Daemon Muramasa as it’s called in English.
Here’s some music as you read:
The month of March has been really stressful for me. Back in late February, my boss at work mentioned that it’d be a busy month for me. I’m an A/V tech at a university, but the role has grown beyond simple troubleshooting at this point. I’m actually the project manager for an A/V project happening in a separate building we support and it’s my first time doing that sort of thing. I have to do my regular job on top of coordinating with several vendors. The people at work, my boss included, have been very patient with me and provided me great advice throughout the process but ultimately I’ve been doing it all alone. Honestly, the stress has taken a bit of a toll on my body. Things should ease up in April, though. I really need some time off from work. I’m actually the one that calls out the least and it always feels like I have to work around other people’s shit to schedule vacation time. Last time I tried to take a day off it was “too inconvenient” or something, and it really pissed me off. They weren’t intentionally trying to deny me a vacation day, the timing just sucked. Nonetheless, it really bothered me because it felt like everyone could fuck off whenever they wanted except for me. Our newest hire even has a remote day while I’m stuck being on-site for the entire work week.
In my first post on the blog, I mentioned that I was reading A Man and His Symbols. It was Carl Jung’s last work written with 4 other collaborators. The first section is written by him and is a general introduction to his work that contextualizes what the unconscious is to the modern, rational person.
When I started drawing last year, I quickly learned that I’d need references no matter how good I got. When I’m bored or want to learn a technique, I try to do an art study and replicate something I like on my own without looking it up.
