Holidays are a mixed bag. I immensely enjoy spending time with loved ones, and I was excited to do so after living states away from my mother for over a decade, but my anxiety about not getting my own work done was really wearing on me. As much as appreciate doing what I want for a living and love being creative, it’s not always easy. I have a hard time getting into the right mental space of properly exploring the worlds in my head again after years spent out of this mode. There are distractions abound, and I am to blame for most of them, but I’m finally in a decent routine again.

I was using an HP 2740P Elitebook tablet PC for most of my digital painting and sketching in the past, but it crapped out on me sometime over the summer before I moved and I had no backup tablet. I recently picked up a Wacom Intuous Pro and a slightly better, refurbished model of my dead tablet PC, an HP 2760P Elitebook. I got to work doing some drawing exercises and a digital painting of a heart piece from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, seen here:

I referenced an in-game screen shot, and it took about 5 hours. By no means is it perfect, as I think some of my line work and blending/glazing is a little messy, and I cheated by using symmetry to reflect half of the heart, but overall I’m pleased with it. Felt good getting back to my roots as an artist.

I had some trouble with the Wacom drivers in the new-to-me Elitebook, but I did some light programming to fix the stylus pressure sensitivity. It took longer than I wanted, but I couldn’t be happier with the finely-tuned responsiveness now, and I’m happy I get to use the modified stylus that I made in the past (more on that another time). Started working on new concept art for the upcoming game and reworking the main character design, but I can’t spend too much time on that until I make some more game mechanic decisions as I want to adhere to form following function. I also did some light storyboarding for a possible opening to the game.

Two or three times a week I’ve been sitting down to work on music. I spent several hours setting up my work environment so I could just open up the software and get into a good flow. I like to think I have an idea of how to produce music; to compose, tinker, jam, and convey, but I absolutely know I still have a ton to learn. So, before my sessions I’ve been reading up on theory, and studying some music and producers/composers that I enjoy.

When not being visually or musically productive, I’ve been further developing a master game document that covers everything from an elevator pitch, game concept and plot, to mechanics and dynamics. I’m well-acquainted with software project scope creep, and I recognize it happening all the time while I work on mechanics/dynamics and features, but I want to strike a good balance between big-picture brainstorming and refining a minimum viable product (MVP). For the end of 2019, the MVP is not the finished game itself, but rather: a game demo, decent promotional material, and a well-defined plan for growth– as those will help me get additional funding to realize a finished product in distribution.