Well, here we are. Cloudflash's 13th anniversary. I made 4 comics to celebrate the occasion.I intended to make more, but I've had a pretty busy work schedule. This year has been pretty bad for projects overall. I've been able to make more artwork for [insert MMO project], at least. I have a few drawings in progress, hopefully to be completed before the year is over. I still want to do the site redesign thing, but I just haven't had the patience to sit down and learn how to make a decent website. There isn't much need to say more than that since we've all heard my excuses plenty of times in the past.

I'm not really sure what else to say on the Cloudflash front. I'm posting all this during my lunch break at work and I'm just about out of time. I want to do more, but haven't had the time/energy, etc. I'm making no promises, but we'll see if I might start making comics on a somewhat regular basis again in the near future. Remember when C-Mix used to be called "Occasional Comics"? Yeah, me neither. That was 10 years ago! Anyway, it is slightly comical that my consistent comic series has gone back to rare updates. You could say I'm celebrating Cloudflash's roots in an obscure way.

It's been a while since I last made a public post regarding my projects, so here we go. Throughout most of January, I was working on some more NPC portrait art for the MMO project.

After that, I started working steadily on pixel art again. Progress has been pretty good, but there's still plenty of work to be done. I've adjusted some colours in hopes of ensuring there's enough contrast between things like grass vs. leaves; seems like it worked. I've been making more nature-type things and trying to keep the colours vibrant while avoiding blinding the user. I'm pretty happy with how things are turning out.

The base sprite is coming along just fine, as well. I've refined some animations, made sitting poses, and started on attack animations. With a few more adjustments, I'm hoping I'll be satisfied with the walking animations. Once that's final, I can get serious about making equipment and a female character. It's difficult since I want to make equipment now, but I must be patient. After all, if the base sprite is flawed, then everything made to fit that sprite will also be flawed. I don't want to look at it in a few months and think about how I want to make adjustments - it must be in its final form before I proceed.

I have been able to work on hairstyles, at least, since I know I won't be changing the head shape of the sprite. A character's hair will be key to their appearance. All hairstyles will be unisex, though some are generally intended for males (like a buzzcut) while some are intended for females (like pigtails). Currently, there are 20 hairstyles intended just for males. An additional 16 hairstyles are suitable for males, but also customizable to create more feminine looks. These 16 are designed to allow hair length to be added on later, such as a ponytail or braid. The player will be able to mix and match as they please, allowing for a lot of variance. At the moment, there are 44 hair lengths available. In other words, there are over 700 hairstyle possibilities. There will also be different colours and yet another piece to customize hair with. The 44 hair lengths will affect the hair behind the character while the extra category will affect hair that appears in front of the character.

All the hair options are most likely going to benefit female characters more than males. So, for males, I have some plans to create facial hair options. I'm also hoping to make lots of different equipment as time goes on, so there should be plenty of opportunities for players to express themselves and truly make their character their own. With any luck, it'll be uncommon to see two players that coincidentally look exactly alike.

I've been working on the MMO project just about everyday since my last post in January. I've accomplished a lot, but there's still plenty to do. I haven't really been playing games or working on other things. It's been exactly a year since I started making C-Mix comics again, though I ended up stopping on August 18th. Maybe I'll make some comics again in the near future when I need to take a break from pixel art. I've also been wanting to make YouTube videos, but haven't really had time for it. To make things worse, I've recently been thinking about how I used to teach myself Japanese. I kinda wanna get back into that so I don't completely forget everything I learned. As always, there's no shortage of things I want to do. I just don't have the time or motivation to do everything at once, so I suppose I'll mainly be sticking to the MMO project for now.

I dunno how much time and/or motivation I'll have throughout this year. As always, there are many things I hope to achieve, both online and offline; however, it's unlikely I'll be able to get everything done. I've been slacking greatly over the past couple months, playing games and having fun in my free time instead of doing something productive. Is it so wrong to relax when I am not required to work? When I've got so many projects on my plate, I suppose the answer is yes. Yes, it is wrong to have fun.

Anyway, I haven't been doing anything on the ol' MMO project, but I was working on some writing for something else I'm working on. I just wasn't feeling up to working on MMO graphics. I find my motivation decreases when I work on things that can't be used immediately. It's hard to build upon things when my initial work can't be tested out. That is, if I create something and I'm not sure if the quality is satisfactory, I can't work on anything related to it since it'll have a snowball effect. The only way to know if my work is up to par is if I can see it in action; I need to see it from different angles, on different backgrounds, placed in close proximity to other work of varying colours, etc. Without being able to test it out, it's hard to make the proper adjustments and completely finalize the work, allowing me to move on to the next part.

I'm capable of testing out my own work, but it's a rather tedious and time-consuming process. On some occasions, half of the time I spend working on something might be wasted on setting things up to test it out. I got a bit burnt out on all that. It's been a while, though; I think that in the near future, I'll be able to have at it again. I started working on some more concept art very recently. After I have my fun with that, I'll probably get back to the pixels.

So, I suppose here's a list of my realistic goals for the year. Might as well have something specific to refer back to in future posts so I can be like, "Yeesh, I really let myself down. I better get at least 1 or 2 things done from my list."

1. Finish renovating house (hopefully). This'll take all my time and money when the time is right.

2. Create attack animations, sitting poses, and whatever other basic things are needed for the character sprite. Also finish making female version. Create at least 5 outfits with complete sprite sheets.

3. Redesign this website.

4. Make at least 15 new C-Mix comics. Ideally make it to 300 comics total, though.

5. Finish my secret writing project.

Hopefully we'll be online this year. That's all the time we have for now. Thank you and good night.