ey yooo

i was originally going to post this update as a comment, but it of course ballooned naturally into a full-length post. so here we go.

a fog-veiled cave stands before you. its depths are obscured by darkness but you hear a faint voice calling out from within, slowly growing in strength until your eyes adjust and recognize a bedraggled figure with incongruously great hair emerge from the cave, as if born from the blackness...




..oo.....he...o...Hel..lo.....Hello!

Yes, hello, dear reader! I'm so glad to see you! I've been wanting to tell someone:...I've decided what I will do with Oathguard!

For the foreseeable future (likely about a year or so), I will be focusing on developing my skill as an artist, while writing the novel for Oathguard on the side.

Art (in terms of the actual skill of drawing/painting; ie the mechanical skill, recognizing and using value and shapes, not drawing awful Saturday morning anime figures with horrifically incorrect anatomy, etc) in general has always been my weak point, and has always limited me in what I could do. When it came to RM2k3, the solution was always to use rips, others' works, and anything else I could frankenstein together; and when I did sprite/draw something on my own, it took forever because I had no idea what I was doing. I had no basic artistic skill, but impatiently insisted on trying to do advanced things in order to create what I had envisioned (just like many others here on RMN and in the RPG Maker community over the years who, in our vain pursuit of making the JRPG of our childhood dreams, consistently and predictably overextend ourselves).

I've finally faced the music and realized that if I want to ever develop Oathguard into something bigger (yes, probably a game in the end) that I can really be satisfied with, I have to build myself up a bit first. So I am focusing on learning how to draw and paint, from the ground up. I am sure that this is the best route to take; despite how long the process is bound to be, I know that it's the only way. In the end, even if I still can't get to where I want to be artistically, I'm sure the journey will leave me with something I can work with.

At the same time, like I said, I'm working on a novel(la?) on the side. Writing is my thing, so it's not too hard to punch out a few hundred words on most days. It's probably not going to be great, though, since a) I've probably never completed anything over 10k words in my life, and b) it's basically a novel about anime JRPG people doing anime JRPG things (hey at least that would qualify as a "light novel" in Japan). But like I said, I'm sure just trying to do this will do great things for myself and Oathguard in the future. And if the novel turns out to be pretty good in the end, that's cool, too.

On that note, I actually finished a sort of prologue chapter (which may or may not show up in the finaly product, since nobody likes prologues, after all) that covers Gela's last moments. If you want to read it, drop me a message and I'll send you the ~secret link~

Well, that's all for now. Who knows when I will emerge from my cave next...but rest assured that I will always be working on Oathguard. And always have great hair.

Thanks for reading, and don't be a stranger. See ya around!