And so begins another year of wasted potential for Cloudflash! Hopefully within the next few months, I'll take some time to redesign the site and basically turn it into a personal art and comic showcase. I've made lots of drawings throughout the years, so I think it'd be neat to properly display them somewhere (and by 'somewhere', I mean right here on Cloudflash).

I'm still tied up with Re:Spite for now. We had a closed test in December with over 20 players online, which was pretty cool. We're hoping to do a proper public release in the near future, but I've still got plenty to do before that happens! Here's a screenshot from the game.

There are more screenshots available at https://re-spite.com/screenshots.php. Anyway, that's all for now.

It's certainly been a quiet year for Cloudflash, so I might as well make a post. I was reading through about 100 pages of C-Mix yesterday since I randomly thought about one of my comics and wanted to see it again. It sorta reaffirmed my desire to be making comics. For a long time, I was far more interested in animating and making games, though I've stated in recent years how I'd like to focus more on comics now instead. I still enjoy creating different types of projects, but they come with their own set of problems.

I mean, I like animating, but I don't like using stock sound effects or stealing sound effects from other professional works. I want my work to be something I can call entirely my own, so then I end up with awkward homemade sound effects and stuff. I like making games - that is, designing them, making graphics, and making them function the way I want. I'm not a programmer, though, so my projects either fall short or never see the light of day. I also like attempting to compose music, but I don't have the patience to learn how to use the tools properly, plus I can never find instruments that match the sounds I hear in my head.

So, in the end, comics are nice to work on. It's nothing but writing and art - something that anyone with a paper and pencil can do. It's a project where you can convey your intentions without learning how to use special software, without needing specialized equipment, and without reading textbooks to learn how to do it. It's one of the most realistic types of projects where you can expect to reach the same level as professionals just by working on your own and doing what you feel like.

I've been very busy working on the Re:Spite MMO project and I'm excited to see my hundreds of hours of work come to life when people can finally login to the game and play at their leisure. When the game's released and functioning properly enough, I'd like to get back to making more C-Mix comics here and there, though. I'd like to work on other comic projects, as well, like at least making a few more chapters of El Cacto and bringing the story to a close. At the very least, I'm sure I'll at least muster up a few C-Mix comics in August, though hopefully I can do more than that!

Believe it or not, we've actually been using this forum for 10 years now. Well, to be precise, we started using it on May 8, 2008, but I'd rather get this stuff over with on a weekend instead of a Tuesday. Anyway, for some of us, we've shared a lot about ourselves throughout those 10 years and got to know each other decently well. We've got old photos, old opinions, and all sorts of other stuff that could be used against us if someone felt like trolling. That being the case, I've archived all our old posts and have only given viewing access to older members/regulars.

Our forum is quite dead and has been for some time now, so I kept things fairly minimalistic in terms of the public forum sections. This also means that the "Review and Rate" links on the old game/movie pages are all dead links for the general public. I do still want to redesign the site eventually, at which point I'll fix up all the dead links and whatever. Perhaps I'll also add more forum sections in the future when the site is redesigned, i.e. when the site is intended to receive visitors again.

Well, here we are! August 18th, Cloudflash's 14th anniversary. Hard to believe I've been running a site for so long, but it is something I like to do (at least to some extent). To celebrate, I stayed up until 5:30 AM finishing up some new comics. There's 5 in total. I was hoping to get the site redesign done in time, but I guess that'll have to wait for a later date. I mean, I thought it'd be more important to get something new to enjoy on the site rather than just making the site itself look a little different.

Besides possibly getting the redesign done at some point, I don't expect that I'll be getting anything else done on Cloudflash this year. I sure am close to reaching 300 Cloudflash Mix comics, though! Anyway, I'm pretty busy with trying to get my run-down property fixed up so that I can actually live in it (yes, it's still not done after all these years). I'm hoping this is the year it gets done, but we all know how things never seem to get done on time despite my intentions. But whatever, we're having steamed plans. That's what I call goals. It's a... regional dialect. My steamed plans may be awfully similar to the ones they serve at McDonald's, but I assure you it's an old Danno recipe.

Well, that's enough rambling. I made good on my promise to make a few comics for this day. See ya next year, suckers!