Spring cleaning still continues, both IRL and digitally. I’m tired of things being a complete mess, so I’ve started to archive, compile and delete data, as well as throw out physical items I don’t need anymore. This should also make the whole “leaving and never returning” business a little easier. Anyway! By now, I have come to a bunch of interesting and rather revealing conclusions, but I think I’ll leave those for the wrap-up posting next(?) week. For tonight, let’s get back to the topic of non-gamedev projects!
You may remember this “Under Construction” artwork from the time when I wanted to revamp Prismanga, but pretty much screwed everything up in the process.
These two are Tama and Ceri, a mischievous catboy and his cute co-worker who’s way too easy to tease. The two of them work in Café Septet, and the blueprint even shows an actual map I made of it – the 3rd floor, to be precise. Now, I don’t remember how much I even said about these two and their purpose, but at the very least, I featured them on a (Twitter?) banner as well… so I guess I must’ve given some kind of information.
Tama and Ceri were supposed to be the main characters of a yonkoma webcomic, and man, I really got into the idea for a while. I created several casual outfits for them, mapped out the entire location, had a whole bunch of potential uniform designs and even downloaded SketchUp for the sole purpose of making a 3D model of Café Septet. (That’s because I had read about webcomic artists using 3D models of their main locations to speed up the drawing process, and I thought this made sense and was a fun idea. Of course, having never used SketchUp before and always tinkering with something else, I didn’t get very far…)
Tama also was used for the tip jar graphic, back when I still had Patreon:
“That’s all well and good, but what about the actual yonkoma idea?” … Unfortunately, I never drew any, even though there’s a document with ideas for about 100 of them. Maybe because I was distracted by other stuff again, or maybe I wanted to try and finish the SketchUp café first? I don’t remember that either, even though it’s “only” been about 4 years. I think Tama and Ceri’s shenanigans were the last big obsession I had with regards to Prismanga plans, which would make sense, given that they were featured on the final artworks and banners. In fact, this might have been the last banner I sketched for Prismanga before its closure:
The white spots in the backgrounds where the lines are interrupted… that’s where some other characters were supposed to be. But I deleted them for the purpose of showing off the sketch, because I didn’t get far with the drawing and they were nothing but wonky shapes.
Anyway – this is what I was doing at the end of Prismanga’s initial run instead of doing, you know… gamedev. But hey, it’s not like these two were totally disconnected from gaming – both Tama and Ceri were supposed to be supporting characters in my YaoiJam 2019 attempt and their scenario required you to play a waiter minigame. A bit like that one minigame in Tales of Berseria, where you need to memorize the guests’ orders.
It’s honestly depressing when you have a billion ideas, but not enough time for everything… and since there’s so much fun stuff to do, it becomes extremely difficult to focus on only 1-2 projects. At least that always was the main problem for me: Not a lack of interests and ideas, but way too many of them. It didn’t help that they even made me feel guilty after a week or two, because I thought “Why do I waste time here instead of focusing on the game project(s) I’ve already announced?”… But resisting the temptation to tinker with unrelated stuff was pretty much impossible nonetheless.
Man, I just want a machine to clone myself… “orz