Holy fuck I can't believe it's been a year of captial G Genocide in Palestine. And the US continues to back Israel. I fucking hate my country bro, please fucking stop. And of course Democrats are also chomping at the bit to throw more bombs at the Middle East. I hate that even the more left leaning politicians are like "hey now maybe this is a little bit of an overreaction don't you think?" Of course getting America to stop supporting Israel is like trying to separate the condiments of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after it's been sitting in your lunchbox all day. I don't have a good end to this paragraph. If you have a buck or two to spare use it here: Gaza Funds

It's also been about a year since I quit my job. Nocti's next update is getting really really close, and I'm kind of nervous about releasing it to the wild. There's so many little details that I need to remember and double check. Lots of character sprites to finish. My wrist is acting up so I took some time to start getting the portrait sprites from sketches to something useable. I have a weird, convoluted way of making the portrait sprites that I might have talked about in one of the devlogs on itch, but here's a quick n dirty explanation:

First I draw the sprites in Clip Studio Paint with a pixel brush. Then I color and shade using the Nocti Palette. Then I blur the inside of the sprite so I have a crisp outline and anti aliasing on the inside. I throw it into a program called Pixatool and shrink it down to half of RPGMaker MV's resolution. Then I clean it up and export at 200%.

Everything is done in 24x24 pixels because when I was starting to get back into pixel art 48x48 was too big and 16x16 felt too small.

For the demo I'll probably only get the first two steps done for all the sprites since I want to release the next update sometime in the next couple of months. Ideally before I start looking for a new job. That's a thing that's happening soon. Thanks disability programs. Don't know how it's gonna turn out, but we'll see.

Having backup via disability services feels so... weird. If I wasn't white and didn't have a mother with more determination than an Undertale video essay I wouldn't get these kinds of breaks. I'm thankful for it but... I don't know. Complicated feelings. I'm privileged as hell and I know it and I hate that my situation is considered being "lucky". I dunno.

Gotta go meet up with my BF since we're going with his friend to the nearby Asian Market (that I won't name for anonymity) so we can have vegitarian Hot Pot tonight. I love Hot Pot Mondays.

Current Mood: HOT POT MONDAY