that sounds about right owo

I've been theorizing that the stakes that really matter in art are real life stakes, but i'd be dumb to deny that immediate high stakes within stories themselves are a good idea x)

btw yeah I've been thinking about my findings from yesterday, about the fact maybe my first projects need to focus on the writing and less on the prod

I think a good format might be gamejams / ...short-movie jams?

are animation jams a thing? x)

another thing I was thinking about recently is hmmm

how great/popular media projects (games/movies/series, etc.) have "interactivity", not directly, but in the ideas they present

prods that make you *think* are interactive, you're engaging with the material

and to combo with that, I've been thinking for a while about the fact that so many of the games we "interact" with in this way are games we *watch* on twitch or youtube, instead of interacting with the game mechanics by actually playing them

and so I kinda realized, it's because

the internet is a whole interactive interface in itself

you don't even really have to build interaction yourself in your projects, the internet literally makes your stuff interactive for you Oo

what kinds of affordances do people have on the internet ?

writing
posting screenshots, memes
fanart
posting video, let's plays, commentary
making fan music, etc.

so I'm thinking even harder about just making video instead of games, in such a way that my vids are as interactive as possible in the sense that the internet will be the interactive interface, right ? :3

I might even look into making "choose your own adventure" vids? xD

I used to play as RP GM as a kid :3 so doing interactive writing might be a good idea for the type of content I want to make hm :D

Noospherika was always kinda intended as an RPG of sorts (MMARRPG actually but hey x))

so that'd make a lot of sense oWo

though now I think about it...

I'm also feeling like using something like RPG-maker or something xD

damn you undertale, why must you be so cost-effective

I mean heck, 2D FF games have been one of my main influences the whole time too

I've been pitching megaman-like games the whole time, but maybe good FF tributes might make more sense ?w?

oh shit and yeah then I can use my fast-ff gameplay idea OWO it'd be perfect xD

k I'm in the mood for working in pureref, let's see x)

one more moodboard thrown in, like, 11 more to go xD

I gotta say, working in graphicky styles instead of textured/lit styles really helps my designs to grab attention pretty dramatically xD

black, white, a saturated blue or red, possibly both. hard lines with flat texture/shade. eyes, teeth, hands, spikes. simple primary shapes.

some colored fog/scattering/glow effect to make it pretty and immersive. Oddly, while black & blue & white looks unnatural for skins, it's actually a very natural night-time color palette, i.e. pretty relaxing to look at :D

I'm thinking, most of my artworks are "not final quality" because they fall into the following categories:

-concept research
-prod experiment
-teaser/beta material
-school exercises

the only "shipped" ones are these

oh there's tomberry murloc too, brb xD

sah so much art <3

I gotta say, on the one hand, I don't feel like an actual artist because I'm too multi-specced

on the other hand, these quick pieces are really starting to add up huh

I'm kinda trying to figure out the "texture" for my work (not just visual, but aesthetic as well), and I'm thinking, I have these different styles/vibes, but I think what would actually make them pop is

making them interact / get some friction/framing going between them

refreshing forest? foggy ethereal forest? show the transition between them, either in space, or in time

cartoon upbeat characters? pretentiously grandiose scenes? how do they mix?

constructed stuff, glitchy destruction? see where I'm going? OWO

that's how you get some topic interaction depth going actually :DD (the thing I called "topic nesting depth" or "topic narrowness depth" a while back OWO throw in "topic context layering depth" while we're here)

I think I got what I wanted out of aggregating some of my visual material onto one board, but I have a suspicion there's a ton more value to get extracted if I keep adding my other 32684 moodboards here OwO

dropped a bunch more of mine at the bottom, including some of my favs :D

cf

looking at these, it's kinda obvious my work is a bit "too dramatic" for its own good

like, if you only have dramatic piece after dramatic piece, where's the part where you can relax y'know? :3

I have to use less of my own style x) it's too spicy hehe xD

I'd be serving my work better by letting it breathe a lot, making the drama *count* by contrasting with some refreshment :3

so yeah making the opposite ends of my style work together should make everything pop :D

I'm also thinking, my /process/ feels a lot like reaction-diffusion / cellular automation :D

like, I throw random stuff on the page until something interesting happens, then I build around that

I scrap things that don't work for me, then by emergence, only the parts I keep stay

it's like a tree that grows rings around it's core :D

makes me wanna experiment with reaction-diffusion & automata proper at this point hehe :D

I think a good way of tying the refreshing side of my work with the dramatic parts is to think of it like water :D

water can be smooth and chill, then thing go splash and it can get maxi rough :D

water-themed, wavy patterns and "neo-baroque" wrapping-based patterns have been in here a while actually n_n

I know for my characters I'm thinking of exploiting their halos, auras, UIs, subjective perspective and souls as visual design elements :D makes them a lot more permeable and fluid than just having a figurative character onscreen

a lot of my current or former protag chars in one place, hah :D

speaking of interactions, yeah, fleshing out how my protags relate to the antagonists would obviously be one of the more interesting things to do ^-^

right before watching the vid at the top of this thread, there was this one which was interesting as well :3 (kinda basic, but it's always good to get reminders for the basics x))

btw I should probably double-down on everyone wearing masks in NX content x)

cheaper prod for faces, but not necessarily less interesting facial expressions hehe :D